The Godfather II Preview - PAGE 1

I had the chance to fly down to Redwood Shores, California with the opportunity to check out Electronic Art's latest upcoming game, The Godfather 2. For those of you who are not aware of what The Godfather is, the original game in the series is inspired by the movie, 'The Godfather'. The basis of the movie, and the game revolves around the 50's time frame and the Sicilian mobster families.

The first Godfather game was strictly based off of the movie. You started off in the bottom of the ranks and worked your way up to the status of the Don. In a mobster family, the Don is the head of the family. Unfortunately you didn't get to actually play as a Don. The game first came out for the PS2 and the XBOX with later adoptions to the PS3, 360, and Wii. With a lot of feedback from the community, EA took both positive and negative feedback from the community and worked some of those into The Godfather 2.

The basis for The Godfather II, while still taking into account the scenarios and story line from 'The Godfather II' movie its focus is to make it "your" game; a unique experience that isn't a mirror reflection of the movie but still holds true to the franchise. The game has been built from scratch, none of the resources from the original game were used in this second iteration. With this, the team was able to utilize both technologies in the PS3 and 360 a lot better than the previous game.

I had the chance to spend some time with both the Single Player campaign and the Multiplayer side. Within this article I'll be going over aspects found within the Single Player campaign. Details regarding Multiplayer will be mentioned later on.

The majority of the EA team for GF2 were apart of the original GF game so they knew the genre well from past experience. I was introduced to the concepts that the team wanted to focus on for the second iteration of the series. The team had set three distinct goals for the game, even with the current Economic turmoil the team is standing behind those three goals without having the Economy making an impact on development. The three goals are as follows;
1) Be authentic
2) Be compelling
3) Support the game

With the goal of being authentic, EA is striving to be a unique game and not just a mirror of other games in the open work genre. Some people may be thinking "GTA with mobsters in the 50's" but that is not the case with The Godfather 2. By being authentic they are also keeping true to the Godfather 2 movie by retaining key scenes that you'll remember from the movie, that is if you've seen it.

Their second goal of being compelling means that, like the first game there will be three acts (aka Locations) to play in. The three locations mentioned are: New York, Florida and Cuba. The team decided to solely focus on the 50's era for the entire game, unlike the movie.

The final and third goal of supporting the game means downloadable content. That's right, we have confirmation that there will be DLC available. Now, what type of DLC that means, I have not been informed yet. One of the obvious choices for DLC would be extra maps for Multiplayer and perhaps different outfits for your characters.

What entirely makes GF2 different from GF1 is that you start off as a Don. You get to step in the shoes of a Don from the moment you take control of your character. You can still go out and do mobster related activities but you also get what is called 'The Dons View'. In this mode you get an overhead map of the city with all the locations of interest. While in the Dons View you can strategize your next move.

With all of this mention so far about the 360, PS3 and the PC for the Wii owners out there I have some unfortunate news. There will be no Wii version of the game and currently EA have no immediate plans for it, either. While in the bar / lounge of my hotel for an "after party" with some of the EA guys I had a chance to meet Regi Fils-Aime who, coincidently was also staying at the same hotel. I don't think Regi was aware that there would not be a Wii version of the game because after finding this tid bit of information out his remark was, how can they [EA] not have a version out for the most popular SKU (platform) out there at this moment and that EA would be losing out on a large portion of the market. Bold words from Regi, but the man does have a point. I'm sure EA has their reasons, though.