The Godfather II Interview
With Executive Producer Hunter Smith
EA is readying the follow-up to their big-budget action game The Godfather. While the first game didn't exactly go down as a classic, it did innovate with several new ideas that have since been fleshed out in other free-roaming action games since. The sequel is almost finished and also includes some new features as well as more fleshed-out versions of the combat controls and a more strategy-oriented overview. I got the chance to ask Executive Producer on the project, Hunter Smith, some questions on what to expect with The Godfather II.
AtomicGamer: The first Godfather game had the voice work of Marlon Brando, who recorded his lines just before he passed, but not enough of the budget seemed to have gone into development. Overall, it was a solid effort, but forgettable to many gamers; do you guys see the first Godfather game as a success? Did it lay the groundwork for what you're doing in the second game?
Hunter Smith: Well it’s kinda funny – when you make the game, you spend a lot of time worrying through all the things you didn’t get to or didn’t get quite the way you wanted, but at the end of the day, it’s the gamers who buy and play the game who decide. The feedback we got from them was they did like the game; in fact, in one of our key gamer surveys Godfather 1 received one of all time highest scores from gamers when asked if they wanted to play a sequel.
Taking into account feedback from gamers, reviewers, focus groups, etc.. Godfather 1 definitely laid the groundwork for the second game. That said, we know we didn’t hit on all cylinders and really wanted to focus on some key areas as we started on the sequel. We wanted to improve and leverage the areas gamers told us they liked - Blackhand action, territory acquisition vs opposing families, your story intersecting key moments of Godfather story - as well as address areas gamers said were not done as well such as canyon worlds and long commutes, or things that felt somewhat missing, like a greater sense of being more of a decision maker as you progressed.
And we went after each of these areas, with the biggest additional focus being on tying the gameplay closer to the experience of being the Don. This led into our major new feature, the Don’s View, and the tools that enable you to pull the strings this time around.
AG: With Robert Duvall on board reprising his role as Tom Hagen and taking a major part of becoming your character's mentor, it seems he'll be a pretty big part of The Godfather II. Beyond just Duvall, who else have you tapped to add authenticity to the whole thing?
HS: Tom Hagen’s role works in both the fictional thread and the strategy game; he acts as the Consigliore, as an advisor, but you, as the Don, still need to make the decisions. In addition, we have the likeness rights for most of the key characters that we wanted to bring to life in the game: Fredo Corleone, Hyman Roth, Senator Pat Geary, Frank Pentangeli as well as some of the opposition such as Tony and Carmine Rosato.
AG: Do you feel like the cast in The Godfather II does a better job than the first game did in making players feel like they're living the movie?
HS: Whenever you’re working with a well known property there’s a world of expectations around how the player will experience ‘the story’ in a different medium. Much like when the book was “turned into a movie” and their goal was to create the best experience for the film viewer, we have been focusing on creating a role to play in a game that would match the player’s ambitions/fantasies of this Corleone’s world of organized crime. When we talked to gamers, what they were most excited about, was being in the world where they called the shots, where they could make the Don-like choices of leading their family to success, of course, without giving up all the fun of the using the Blackhand themselves... In addition, we wanted to continue to build on one of the cornerstones of the game franchise which is to put the player in charge of his success in the game and to put him in the position to develop his character and “storyline’ by the choices he makes in the game.
The film is a wonderful experience; an experience delivered in a linear, controlled, movie telling format. However, our goal was not to make you feel like you’re “living the movie”. Our focus was to build a game inspired from the world of the Godfather, with over-arching game goals, mechanics and systems that intersect with that fiction, where you could participate in key moments from the Godfather II story but from a fresh “gameplay lens”, and, in all honesty, play with and interact with characters that are relevant to the goals and obstacles you’re working through as you’re trying to “win the game.” In our game that means capturing all the Organized Crime Rings, Fronts and defeating the other families, i.e. your job is to put the Corleone’s on top of the crime world.
AG: The Godfather II offers a mix of both action and strategy. Does the player have the freedom to adjust this balance based on their style, going either more hands-on with the action, or more hands-off to spend more time using the Don's View?
HS: Our goal was to fulfill the fantasy of our tagline – Act like a Mobster, Think like a Don. To be successful, you have to make it in that tough world using your brains as well as your brawn. At its heart Godfather II is an action game, with plenty of fist pounding, gun totting, molotov throwing excitement. But we also provide an additional layer where you recruit, invest in and promote key talent into your family... then you drive the family’s success by directing your family’s actions through sending some men out from the Don’s View and by leading your crew to success alongside you in the action game.
Our conceptualization was it would be 75% action, 25% strategy. If you think about playing open world type games, you frequently go back to your map to plan your next moves. We build on that process and provide a layer to give you stronger motivation, longer range and immediate goals, up to date insight into your opponent’s movements, and a variety of approaches & tools so you can determine how you want to win the overall game. And you’d better be smart cause your opponents are playing to win too. In fact, the way it’s set up, we find ourselves playing it differently each time through, and we’ve certainly found many players & testers tailoring the tools of game to direct more or play more according to their interests at that time in the game.
AG: How do you feel the game's depiction of New York stacks up against the amazingly immersive rendition of Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City?
HS: GTA IV’s Liberty City is a great, immersive sandbox world with a strong linear thread – and one that is done as well as any to date. Our goal was not to try and better GTA in their approach to their game and their world, but to build a world that focuses on the Organized Crime game you are playing against the other Mob families. We have 3 fictionalized cities we’re calling New York, Florida and Cuba, inspired by research on these locations in the 1960’s but designed and built to support gameplay first and foremost. The three locations open as you progress through the game, and eventually you are directing your family’s success across all 3 cities at the same time. There is a linear progression of beats built on the key fictional threads from when Michael was the Don of the Corleone family in Godfather II, but our game and the world we created are designed to support winning the battles of organized crime, taking over the crime rings and defeating the other families.
AG: Can you give us an overview of what the new combat controls are like?
HS: For our fan favorite Blackhand controls, we really wanted the player to feel much more connected to his on screen avatar so we moved the controls for the avatar’s left hand & right hand to the left triggers & right triggers on the controllers. This enables the player to control rights and lefts much more effectively than he could previously on a stick and perform combos at will. Additionally, we have added Pummels and many new Executes when you wear your opponents down.
Of course, we have retained one of the cooler mechanics of manhandling your opposition: when you want to grab a guy, when you need to make sure he knows you mean business, you squeeze both triggers, and now your avatar grabs the enemy by the collar with his right and left hand. You’re now free to kick in some serious power by using your right stick to head butt, knee, swing him right and left, slam him against a wall, lean him over a ledge, even toss him out a window. The key is usually applying the right amount of pressure to ensure things go your way.
Then when you want to crank it up and pull out the weapons, we added a full free-aim targeting system with zoom in and lock on when and if desired. This makes the shooting experience feel much more intentional and since you are most frequently playing with your crew, this control scheme provides you with very simple controls to direct your crew to different locations or to perform their specialties in battle. Mastering the free-aim also comes in handy when you move in and out of multiplayer modes where free aim is required.
AG: The Godfather II includes a kind of class system where you'll have an explosives guy, medic, brawler, and more all fighting together. Is this something that the player can tweak? Could you set it up to have one medic and the rest of your crew brawlers?
HS: You have complete freedom to set up your family any way you like. In fact providing the player with the freedom of how to build and upgrade his family, defeat his opponents, and really customize his experience was a core value to our approach to the game design.
As the player you decide which guys to bring into your family, which specialties you want. When you promote a family member, you can add another specialty; up to three specialties for your Underboss. There are 12 RPG type skills, several with multiple levels, and you can upgrade any and all of your family members, as long as you’re successfully bringing in enough cash into the family business to pay for it...
The illegal rackets you’ll need to wrestle from the competing families are built with several ways to access them, so if you bring an engineer, an arsonist or a bruiser you might go in a different approach, and depending how the other family values that location at that stage in their game, you’ll encounter differing resistance. As the Don, you decide not only who to bring with you as part of your Crew, you can have up to 3 guys with you at all times, you can also decide what you’d like your other family members to do, whether offensive or defensive, and their specialties and RPG skill levels you're invested in will influence their success.
One of the coolest parts of managing your family and crew is sending some made men from the Don’s View off to a different part of the game world, and then when you zoom back into the game world to go down a different direction, you get updates on their status and need to decide what to do. Do you leave them to their own success or if they are losing do you change plans and head over to go join them in the action game yourself. You begin to realize they are not only playing in the “strategy game”, they are actually playing in the game world and your gaming skills will determine your success. Additionally, in that way you can have even more fire power to fight along side you in a particularly tough battle or if you see your guys are starting to get overwhelmed, you can head over and help turn the tide.
AG: We've read that you can take your customized solo-play crew into online versus play and bring the winnings back to the single player game. Does any of this involve the Don's view, or is it all action? Is there any kind of cooperative multiplayer included at all?
HS: The goal in multiplayer was to bring our organized crime & family concepts into online and to ensure your choices as a Don and your family’s success moves fluidly between both online and campaign. You play as your family members so the choices you made as the Don impacts your multiplayer experience. For example, when you spend your hard earned $’s upgrading RPG skills of your family members in the Don’s View, those skills impact not only how the AI character plays for you in both the action and strategy layers of single player, but when you play as that character in multiplayer, it will effect how you play. When you earn honors playing as a family member through team play, kills or special ability scores in a multiplayer session, those honors are applied to that crew member. When he reaches certain Honor thresholds, his weapon license increases so he can now carry higher level weapons found in the game world. We really tried to ensure all the things you can do in the game are not only fun, but have real value to your overall experience.
In multiplayer matches, it’s often very hard to create real team play – so often people are just playing their own game. In Godfather 2, we built the 4 multiplayer modes to leverage the fun action mechanics and provide individual & team scoring, and we also focused on ensuring team-based cooperation would be crucial for your success. For example, one of our modes is Firestarter mode. In Firestarter, the team scores points by setting things on fire using the arsonist specialty. If you are playing as a family member with the arsonist specialty, you can score points for you and the team by setting targets on fire. However, access to some of the scoring opportunities either require cutting fences, blowing up walls - things that en engineer or a demolitions expert can do. If you are playing a Capo or an Underboss and have 2 or 3 specialties you may be both an arsonist and engineer so you could access that scoring advantage yourself. If not you will need a team member with the specialty to gain you access. Also while you are actively doing the specialty scoring activity, you are vulnerable to enemy attacks – so you’ll want your online family members to have your back.
Another aspect of Firestarter that dynamically changes player focus towards team play is the fact that as you score more points as an arsonist, you get a Scoring Multiplier, up to a 10X Multiplier towards every scoring opportunity. When a player has this Multiplier it is signaled in the game, by flames surrounding that player – the higher the multiplier, the bigger the flames. Now if you are his teammate and you see that guy with huge flames, you know he’s going to score big points for you which will help your team win and so instead of focusing just on your own scores, you know your biggest advantage is your team win, so you start focusing on protecting him. As an opposing team member when you see that guy with lots of flames, you stop thinking about your own scoring as much and you try and take him out – not only cause he’s going to score much faster with his multiplier and get their team to the scoring goal faster, but if you’re the player credited with his kill, you instantly get the multiplier yourself and your team shifts to protecting you. It’s really fast, really dynamic, highly cooperative and team oriented and forces you to be as mindful of the team goals as you are of your individual scoring opportunities.
AG: How have recent games like GTAIV or Saints Row 2 affected development of The Godfather II? Are there any features you decided to back off of, or ramp up, based on the reception these games have gotten?
HS: While I know these comparisons are as inevitable to the other open world games as are the questions of how our story compares to the story or acting in the film, what we really tried to do was make a game that focuses on the player being the Don of his own organized crime family. All our game mechanics, systems, missions and even the world itself were focused on building this play space to lead your family to success in this game of organized crime. So sure we played GTA IV and Saints Row 2 and many, many other games, but we we're not trying to be their competition in the sense of how two “hall shooters” go feature for feature or how two basketball games compete in the player’s mind, heart and wallet. Instead, we really focused on building a game that is it’s own, unique experience, that stems more from the game we saw at the core of the Godfather property, that offers the player the fantasy of being a Don, and that provides a compelling action game world in which a player can determine if he has what it takes to Act Like a Mobster and to Think Like a Don.
Thanks to Hunter Smith for his in-depth answers and an inside look at The Godfather II. Ready your Blackhands, because the game is set for release on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC on April 7th. The release date was originally set for late February, but the development team seems to have gotten several crucial weeks from EA to add that extra layer of polish that gamers will surely appreciate.
