The Godfather Preview

I have to be honest with you. From the time the news hit the street until now, I was never genuinely excited about EA's upcoming video game adaptation of Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola's famous movie trilogy. Sure, I loved the movies, and I found the book even more tantalizing, but somehow, I could never see The Godfather franchise as being huge with today's 17-year-olds. They sadly know much more about 50 Cent being shot nine times than they do about Sonny Corleone being riddled with bullets at a tollbooth.

I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse...

Me and my friend Tommy, we had a ball!

But then a very interesting report piqued my interest about this GTA-style, M-rated title from the mighty Electronic Arts. In a press release timed to go out alongside its annual summer press event, EA announced that all versions of The Godfather game, including the PC version, would be released during the company's fourth fiscal quarter, which concludes on March 31, 2006. The reason EA gave for the delay was that the game's simply not ready yet.

Fair enough.

What is even more interesting, however, is that, shortly after making the announcement, EA's stock fell, sparking comments from analysts like P.J. McNealy of American Technology Research, which scrutinize the move by the company to, "move arguably its biggest marquee new game (as far as properties go) out of the key December quarter."

So regardless of how I may feel about The Godfather game, it seems that EA has a lot riding on this one. EA has secured the rights from Paramount Pictures - all character likenesses from the movie will be included and *most* of the original actors will be lending their voices to the game (some 20 actors from the first movie in all). These include James Caan as Sonny Corleone and Robert Duvall as consigliore Tom Hagen. What is fairly certain now is that, although the developers will use Marlon Brando's likeness to represent the central, enigmatic character from the first movie, Don Vito Corleone, the voice-overs recorded with Marlon Brando in his final days will only be used alongside those done by a professional voice mimic. EA worked with the actor in his Los Angeles home just shortly before his death. But the actor was on his death's bed, hooked up to oxygen tubes, which created an audible hiss. His voice was described as "strained and full of effort."

"We didn't have much time with Brando before he died," sound director Ken Felton told the Times, "but he really gave us a lot of insight into the mind of the Don, into the essence of his character. And in trying to understand the Don, in trying to understand 'The Godfather' universe, it really does all come down to the concept of respect."

The good news for Brando fans is that the actor's voice will be present in the game after all, according to Head of Electronic Arts Corporate Communications Tammy Schachter. "Typically we require multiple sessions with an actor and we were not able to record his complete dialogue before his passing," said Schachter. "But, fans of Brando and the Godfather will definitely get to hear his voice in the game."

Still, whatever is happening with this game "behind the scenes" is not as important as the actual content that players will get to explore on a wide variety of platforms in Q2 of 2006 (The Godfather will come out for the Xbox 360 and PS3 - which hits the stores in spring 2006 - in addition to the PC and handhelds).

For those of you not familiar with the movies or the novel (and I'm sure there are some), in The Godfather, "you join the Corleone family and earn respect through loyalty and fear as you rise through the ranks to become Don in a living, 1945-1955 New York." Interestingly enough, the game will let you create your own Italian-American character by utilizing the "MobFace" face-creating technology, similar to that from Tiger Woods PGA Tour and The Sims. Another interesting thing about your character is that, during the 10-year course of the game, your character's face will age accordingly - he'll get wrinkles and possibly gain weight too. (Too much linguine.... - Six)

Although the core campaign will be based on the movie plot, and you'll get to play out scenes from the movie, the very nature of the game genre indicates that you'll hardly ever feel as being led on rails. What I'm envisioning here is definitely a Mafia-like take on GTA games, with both vehicular and foot action (the official word is that it's about 80% foot action and 20% vehicular). A game played from the third-person perspective, where players are placed in a bustling (and huge) game environment and offered a number of non-linear side-quests in addition to the main (linear) storyline. What's unique about The Godfather, however, is that it "will offer gamers countless choices for solving the family's problems with brutal violence, skillful diplomacy, or a cunning mixture of both." This implies that the game possesses another form of non-linearity, besides the aforementioned branching side-quests. Players should be able to take a number of different approaches to solving certain problems. EA says that, "Decisions made by the player in the game will have lasting consequences." For instance, violence against the other families will increase your vendetta points, and this might be too much for you to handle. Sometimes, using your influence and tactics will land you a profitable underground operation, if you play your cards right. You'll start out small, possibly intimidating or beating up shop owners to gain respect (and respect points), but in time, your area of operations will increase considerably by even having crooked cops on your payroll. You can use political savvy and effective and timely intimidation tactics to gain respect (Horse's head anyone?), or you can act like the brawler Sonny did and just make more enemies. It all depends on the given situation really - sometimes, it will be required of you to look a man straight in the eye, while he's eating dinner, and shoot him in the face - as Michael Corleone did in the famous diner scene.

In addition to this, EA makes a rather bold move by offering three different endings to the game, which will correspond to the way you've played as Don. This does not mean, however, that the players will be able to alter the main points of the movie-based storyline. It looks like the main campaign will remain linear for the most part except for the ending. However, while the key points in the plotline may remain constant, the way of getting to them may differ from one player to another, which is certainly cool.