Part two of Keith Stuart’s interview with three guys who really know about organised crime…

What elements were you really gutted to leave out?
HS: Giving up the Di Nero part, the early life of Vito, that was really hard, because that had some great action to it.

But is it still important to capture those iconic moments – do gamers understand Godfather beyond the name and the basic franchise?
GR: I got involved in the Godfather 38 years ago, and to me, it wasn’t as important then as it is now. I walk down the street and young kids come up to me and say ‘hello Carlo’ It’s amazing how it’s crossed the generations. They all know about the game too; the waiters in this restaurant know about the game!

Okay, but Godfather is a movie about emotion as much as action. How have you captured that in the game?
HS: Well, look at the family. You build these guys up, you fight alongside them, but then you meet someone later in the game who’s got, say, two specialties already and a grade three weapons license. You want that guy, but you don’t have a slot for him [you can only recruit seven family members at once]. So you look at your family and you’ve got to make a choice, you’ve got to kill a guy. These are your responsibilities as a don, these are the choices you’ve got to make.

And then there’s Fredo, whose role you seem to have built up in the game…
HS. Yeah, he’s a useful character, he helps you a lot. Yet you know eventually he screws up. That’s part of the experience.

You have three locations in the game, Havana, New York and Miami. How realistically are they depicted?
HS: In Godfather 1 we looked at New York maps a lot and wanted to make it as authentic as possible. But we ended up building a sandbox that fought against what you wanted to do as a gamer. With Godfather 2, we knew our mechanics, we knew how the AI played, so we wanted a world that allowed the player to go wherever they wanted - to climb onto roofs, to snipe… One of our team was an architect, a city planner, before he joined EA, so he spent a lot of time looking at the locations, and saying ‘okay this is what New York //feels// like’. We’re not going to lay it out like Manhattan or Queens, we’re going to lay it out how the game plays best.

Another interesting thing you’ve done is make the single-player and multiplayer modes interdependent, you can earn money in one and spend it on upgrades in the latter. What’s the idea behind this?
HS: We wanted the choices you make in the single player experience to affect how your family plays online. That’s why you don’t play as Dominic online, you play as one of your family members. So the specialties you get for these guys and the stats you upgrade, it’ll effect you when you play that character in multiplayer. We want to make you feel like your choices are relevant in both arenas. We also wanted to ask, ‘what does organised crime mean in the online space?’ And obviously organized crime is team-based, so we concentrated very much on a team-based path.

Finally, Hunter, I’m pretty sure you won’t comment on this, so I’ll ask the other two. Would you like to see a Godfather III game?
BD: We’re Godfather I and II guys!
GR: No wait, there should be a Godfather III videogame so you can correct the movie! The opening scene is you walking in and shooting George Hamilton…”