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Video Games

Two games, four million units, one final Marlon Brando performance, and a director who publicly objected to the whole thing.

The Godfather (2006)

At a glance

Developer
EA Redwood Shores (ports: Headgate, Page 44)
Publisher
Electronic Arts
Released
March 21, 2006 — PS2, Xbox, Windows September 2006 — PSP, Xbox 360 March 2007 — Wii, PS3
Sales
4 million+ units by 2008
Metacritic
77 (Xbox/Wii) · 75 (PS2) · 72 (PC) · 59 (PSP)

What it is

An open-world crime game set in the 1945–1955 New York of the first film, in which you play Aldo Trapani — an original character, not from the fiction — rising from street soldier to Don while the film's plot happens around and occasionally through you.

The design is Grand Theft Auto with a family-business layer: extort businesses, take over rival rackets, manage vendetta levels with the Five Families, and work your way up the organization. The melee system was called BlackHand, and grappling and intimidation were the mechanical hook — you could shake down a shopkeeper by degrees rather than simply shooting him, which is at least gesturing at the source material's actual thesis.

It is, by the standards of licensed games in 2006, considerably better than it had to be.

The voice cast

Returning from the film:

Al Pacino declined — both the voice work and the use of his likeness. Michael Corleone appears with a different face and a different voice.

Brando's last performance

Marlon Brando recorded dialogue for Vito Corleone, and it was the last acting work he ever did. He died on July 1, 2004, before the game was released.

Most of it was unusable. Brando was seriously ill; the recordings are audibly compromised, with oxygen equipment noise through the takes and a voice that had gone. EA employed a professional sound-alike to complete the part.

There is something both fitting and grim about it: the final performance of the greatest screen actor of his generation, recorded for a video game, largely discarded, and replaced by an impersonator doing his most famous voice.

Coppola objected

Francis Ford Coppola publicly criticized the game, saying Paramount never consulted him and calling it a misuse of the film — his objection being that it took a story about family and consequence and turned it into an exercise in violence for its own sake.

He had no legal standing to stop it. Paramount held the rights and licensed them.

Whether he's right is arguable. The game genuinely does foreground extortion and intimidation over shooting, which is closer to Vito's method than most crime games get. It also has a mechanic for beating shopkeepers until they pay, so.

The Blackhand / Don's Edition

The Wii ("Blackhand Edition") and PS3 ("Don's Edition") releases in March 2007 added motion controls for the melee system, improved visuals, dynamic weather, crew recruitment, and additional missions. The Wii version's gesture-based grappling was well received and is the most interesting thing anyone did with the license.

The Godfather II (2009)

At a glance

Developer / Publisher
EA Redwood Shores / Electronic Arts
Released
April 2009 — PS3, Xbox 360, Windows
Reception
Mixed
Sales
Poor

Set across New York, Miami, and Havana, following the second film's geography, with a strategic overlay — the "Don's View," a map-based layer for managing crews, territories, and rival families, sitting on top of the third-person action.

The strategy layer was the ambitious part and the reason it's remembered at all. It didn't work well enough, the action didn't match the first game, and the reviews and sales were both down.

A third game, based on Part III, was cancelled. EA has not returned to the license.

Other games and appearances

There have been assorted mobile and social-network Godfather titles over the years — the standard licensing tail — none of which are worth cataloguing.

The trilogy's more significant influence on games is indirect and enormous. Every organized-crime game since 1997 is downstream of it: the Grand Theft Auto series (which quotes it repeatedly and directly), Mafia (2002) and its sequels — whose first game is an unusually sincere attempt at the Godfather's tone — Yakuza, and Saints Row's parody of all of it.

Mafia (2002) is the one to play if you want the actual experience. It is not licensed, it is not called The Godfather, and it understands the material better than either game that is.

Canon status

None. Tier 5 — the games invent a protagonist, rearrange events around him, and let the player alter outcomes. Interesting as artifacts; not continuity.

See also