The Godfather Presses Start Button

I'm excited about the Godfather video game. There, I said it. I really shouldn't be since we gamers are all supposed to be hating EA right now. They appear to possess a long checklist of ethical wrongdoings, and are currently busy placing a mark next to each and every item in the hopes that they might attain some evil ranking that would usurp the artist formerly known as Lucifer.

This is to say nothing of EA's foul elimination of competition (equivalent to the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan debacle) and the spout of creativity along with it. The very prospect of taking a beloved film and book property and converting that experience into a video game (with all its inherent differences from the other two media) can itself be blasphemy against the original creators' artistic vision. But with a soul-sucking corporation behind its development, the daunting idea of an artistically successful translation should now be wholly lost to me.

There are two basic approaches to making a game based on a movie. You can attempt to recreate every scene from the movie as closely as possible, or you can try to create a backstory that doesn't interfere with the original plot but carries the ideal that you are fleshing it out with every conceivable sundry that movie audiences had pondered upon. Both have fundamental flaws, the former especially. What fun is it to replicate scenes I've already watched and must play out to a specific outcome? I may as well watch the movie again. As for the backstory approach, it falls into the pit of boredom by providing only lesser characters and uninteresting plot threads, in essence featuring all the cutting room floor excisions. Nearly all movie-licensed games have failed thus far because they cannot be anything more than those two approaches offer.

With that said, EA's opted for the latter approach in making a Grand Theft Auto-style game that places you as a create-a-mafioso character as you start off small-time and eventually cross paths with the Corleones and other characters from the Godfather films. While EA's ineptitude at creating a spin-off has just been exemplified in recent palpable failure, they should at least have some form of template established by 2002's similarly GTA-styled Mafia. They've also managed to secure voice acting performances from key actors in the films, namely James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Marlon Brando (recorded shortly before his death), admittedly a feat that only a deep-pockets corporation such as EA could accomplish.

I'm excited about the Godfather game because living out the life of a Corleone-connected mafioso is something I've always wanted to do, or at least seems like something I've always wanted to do, despite any heavy reservations against near-certain desecration of an iconic film by a video game. Obviously, I could never carry out that fantasy in real life because I don't think that the Italian mob registers Chinese men among any of its charter members. We could also go into the moral argument here, but I think that's unnecessary because we all know that Godfather's romanticization notwithstanding, gangsters are bad people who steal, kill, and generally spread animus.

Nevertheless, we all have a fascination with the mafia after the popularity of The Godfather, The Sopranos and other fine mobster dramas. Surely we've all wondered at some point what it'd be like if we were put in the Corleones' proverbial shoes and not resigned to merely watching them. Forgetting for the moment my lack of faith in EA's ability to deftly handle this property, their decision to use the GTA-style of open-ended gameplay fits appropriately with my vision and I also believe that there can be enough room for interesting, canonical side-stories. This Godfather video game could provide that immersive, interactive experience that we've all been longing for.