A Godfather
July 10th, 2005
The New York Times looks at the development of the video game based on The Godfather:
The game, which takes place mostly around New York City, is set from 1945 to 1955, the period covered by the original novel and the first film. Though the Godfather, Sonny, Fredo and the other famous characters are all present, the game takes a "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" approach, turning one of the story's nameless henchmen into the star. The character, an up-and-coming member of the Corleone family, builds respect by taking over rackets and businesses and serving his masters in the family organization. Respect is recorded on the player's "rap sheet," a sort of scoreboard. The game developers stress that killing opponents is only sometimes the path to maximizing respect; as one developer put it, "You can't extort a dead man."
Considering that Electronic Arts are basically borrowing the characters and several scenes from a legendary film and grafting them onto what sounds very much like a clone of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, I find it highly amusing that the last quote in the article, from an EA executive, refers to, "this living world we are creating."
