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The Godfather 
Release date: Sep 2006
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Be The Ultimate Mob Boss
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If you look up “hype” in the dictionary you might just see a picture of EA’s action adventure game, The Godfather. That’s not such a bad thing either, just so long as the game comes through on its part of the deal. While branching out from sports titles hasn’t been as smooth of a ride as Electronic Arts has hoped (I think we’re all still trying to forget Catwoman), they are getting better as evidenced in Batman Begins. This marked improvement is in large part due to the fact that EA borrowed heavily from Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell series. EA is looking to do the same thing again with The Godfather already showing similarities to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and The Punisher in certain aspects. Thankfully, these similarities look to only go so far as the concept of certain gameplay mechanics, and not the implementation or actual visual style, so it conceivably feels more like Electronic Arts paying homage to the other games than blatantly ripping them off.
The Godfather is based on the book from Mario Puzo and the film trilogy from director Francis Ford Coppola so you can expect vulgar language, lots of shoot outs, and tons of dead bodies. The game itself will take place in New York, 1945. It will feature the five boroughs, an in-depth map similar to the ones found in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and recognizable land marks to help you navigate through the huge world. Since you are not playing as any of the members of the Corleone family (i.e. Fredo, Sonny, and Michael) the game will branch off at times showing other events that happened throughout the Godfather story. You will take part in some sequences from the films, but you will also live your own life. If you wish, you can try to make the game follow the movies as close as possible, but if you want to empower your own character you will have to deviate from the film to gain your own notoriety and regime. Depending on how you play you can become under-boss to Michael, the boss of the Corleone family, or the don of all New York. And that’s really the foundation of The Godfather . . . choice and consequence.
Your ending depends on how you play. You can just do the core objectives, or all of the missions, or terrorize the city until you have the whole place under your thumb in the end. The choice and consequence factor goes much deeper than an ending though. Throughout the game you’ll have the opportunity to muscle in on businesses and interrogate people. You can talk to the owners, threaten them, thrash their place, and beat them up in order to get them on your payroll. You can even go so far as to kill them, but that obviously wouldn’t be good for business seeing as they won’t be able to pay you if they’re dead. You will also get a bad reputation around the city if get too violent with the citizens, and the police will eventually come looking for you. The cops can be bribed, but it will be harder for them to look the other way if you play like a madman.
Almost as important as choice and consequence in the game is respect. As your respect grows so to does your character’s attributes. While the story moves on you will get a sort of reputation and other characters will give their own opinions on what kind of person you are. If you make your character serious, but not over-the-top, he will get respect. When you get enough respect you may not even have to get physical with anyone to get what you want. Just your presence and the sheer possibility of violence will be enough to get some people to fall in line. You’ll want to be a tough guy, but you can’t just walk around killing whoever you like. Hostility against any of the other four families will result in vendetta points. If you become notorious enough and acquire enough vendetta points, you can start an all out war which would also be bad for business.
In order to gain respect you will need to practice an even blend of force, influence, and good family business. You’ll start with trying to get small shop owners like butchers and barbers on the payroll. As stated before, you can accomplish this feat in a few different ways. You can smash up items in the store, talk to him man to man, or beat him up until he submits or dies. If you choose to fight you will have a solid amount of moves at your disposal such as choking him, upper cuts, haymakers, head butts, and even ramming the owner into other objects like walls, windows, and cash registers. Some attacks and interrogations use a bar mechanic to judge how much force and persuasion you are using. This is very similar the interrogations found in The Punisher game from THQ. As you move up the crime chain you will graduate onto bigger misdeeds such as attacking opposing families’ supply trucks and taking over their businesses. You’ll then attack family compounds and if you’re good enough to succeed you will have taken down one of the other four New York families. And in another nod to GTA: San Andreas, your territory will then grow that much bigger as a result, and you’ll be that much closer to total city domination.
The visual style seems to be an acquired taste among gamers. Cars and buildings look very well modeled, but the world seems to lack any kind of color outside of browns, grays, and blacks. Perhaps Electronic Arts feels the chosen color pallet is necessary to keep the old and gritty vibe intact. The characters themselves look amazing, especially in the facial features and expressions (excluding the zombie eyes for which EA is now infamous). The targeting system looks nice and adds a fine aiming mechanic similar to the ones found in Red Dead Revolver and True Crime: Streets of L.A. New York is giant and daunting, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that overall the city wasn’t alive. This is largely due to the fact that there aren’t many pedestrians in the game yet. This is a fairly minor problem though, seeing as this can be easily fixed and the game isn’t due out for a few months still. Minor gripes aside, The Godfather seems to be shaping up quite nicely. It looks as though all the push backs the game has gone through have been put to good use. Hopefully everything can come together for a final product that will give gamers an unforgettable experience that we just can’t refuse.
Preview by Travis Johnson on 18 Feb 2006
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