The Godfather II Trailer

In most crime games, you're never given a chance to fully control the fate of your organization. Even though you work your way up from a low level soldier to a leader, your moves and the growth of your organization is somewhat rigidly tied to linear story features. The same can be said of the opposition to your maneuvers by rivals, who will only react to you and your activities only after you've committed something significant. As a result, you never get a sense of being a true crime lord who has to deal with the consequences of your actions nor do you feel like you have to watch your back because your enemies will attack you where they feel you're weakest. EA is hoping to change this lack of control with its upcoming release of The Godfather II, a game that lets you run the family business with a mix of action and strategy.



At a recent event, we were introduced to the game as well as the design philosophy that has influenced the entire development process – Act like a mobster, think like a Don. This was a two part system that the developers spent a lot of time working on, because they wanted to expand on the elements from the previous game, such as the extortion maneuvers, pressure tactics and executions that you could commit, as well as making shootouts more visceral. However, the developers wanted to include a system whereby you control and make decisions for your family, recruiting new soldiers and choosing the businesses and rackets that you'll take over. But they didn't want to stop there, because they wanted to implement a much deeper open world where all actions have consequences and are connected to each other.