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N-Philes: A few more questions about Scarface... Many people noted that Al Pacino's character and likeness was missing from The Godfather games and presume it was due to the commitment he made to Scarface. In addition to getting the real deal himself, what else will Scarface have to set itself apart from other crime-based sandbox games?Thomas: Our goal with Scarface is to 100% deliver on the experience of being Tony Montana. Right from the start we put everything in the game through the wringer by asking ourselves "What Would Tony Montana Do?" We even put that question up on the walls of the team space to ensure that all of our design decisions came from the right place.
Tony is a complex and rewarding character and we really want this to shine through in his attitude, actions, and dialogue. He'll cut down anyone who gets in his way and enjoy doing it, but that's not to say Tony doesn't have a strong moral code. He won't kill women, children, or anyone who, in his mind at least, doesn't have it coming. So in the game if the player tries to kill a pedestrian Tony will pull his arm back and say "What are you doing Tony? I don't need that shit in my life".
N-Philes: If you were a bad guy, how would you try to kill Tony? And if you were Tony, what would be your favorite weapon, your favorite car, your favorite boat, and your favorite femme fatale?
Thomas: I'd do whatever it takes to make sure Tony couldn't tie it back to me, because like he says, he don't die so easy.
Favorite car is the Lakota Fastback... fast and heavy with lots of style and a nice big grille to grind enemies up in.
Favorite boat is without question the Cigarette Gun Boat, as sexy as you remember seeing on Miami Vice, but with the added benefit of fixed dual machine guns on the front.
As for favorite Femme Fatale, I like them all so I'll defer to the Spike TV Video Game Awards and pick Vida Guerra, who won Best Performance by a Human Female for her role in the game.
N-Philes: Radical Entertainment is based in Vancouver, quite a different setting compared to Tony Montana's Miami. What did you do to get the feel of Miami and to ensure its authentic reproduction, both physically and atmosphere-wise, in the game? Were you lucky enough to go on any sun-filled fact-finding research trips?
Thomas: When you're making a game in a setting as beautiful and tropical and Miami, you make sure that reference trips are plentiful! All kidding aside, we sent our artists and designers down to Miami on massive reference trips to immerse them in the sights, sounds, culture, and attitude of the city.
But beyond simply reproducing the city of Miami, we've rebuilt the Miami you see in Scarface. So players will visit Tony's Mansion, the Babylon Club, the Sun Ray Hotel... all of the pivotal locations from the movie are there and play a role in the game.
N-Philes: Did you get a chance to work with or meet Al Pacino during the game's creation? What about any other stars from the movie?
Thomas: Al was involved in the creative process during development, including approving Tony's likeness and the script.
Many of the other stars of the film play roles in the game. For example Steven Bauer, who played Manny, and Robert Loggia, who played Frank Lopez, play characters in Scarface: The World is Yours. They play new characters of course, as both Manny and Frank didn't survive the events of the film.
Beyond that, we have dozens of celebrity voice talent in the game. You'll meet characters voiced by James Woods, Jason Mewes, Daniel Dae Kim, Ricky Gervais, Cheech and Chong, and many others during the course of the game.
N-Philes: Licensed games have a huge stigma in the gaming world, especially for gamers – largely because they're bad games. Radical Entertainment, bucking this trend, has a done a great job of making well-known franchises such as The Simpsons and The Hulk into videogames. What's different about how Radical handles licenses or approaches their development from most other developers?
Thomas: At Radical we don't make any decisions about the game that don't feel right and come from a place of total respect for the license. Part of that stems from the fact that we don't work on a license that we're not already fanatics about, but beyond that we also realize that the core audience for a game based on a franchise is made up of people who are huge fanboys just like us.
So we always work to ensure that our games ‘get it', and that doesn't always mean carbon-copying the content we're basing them on. Scarface provides a perfect example... we made the decision to change the end of the film because we felt strongly that people cared more about being Tony Montana than just playing a rehash of the movie. The theme of rising from nothing, of making the world yours and all of the difficult decisions that go with it, is at the core of the Scarface experience. We knew it would be unsatisfying to simply re-do the movie. Everyone would already know how it ended.
N-Philes: What else would you like to turn into a videogame? What about any thoughts or plans for original games?
Thomas: Haha, no comment!
N-Philes: Violent videogames and legislation aimed to curb the sale of them to minors has been making a lot of news recently. What's your opinion on this political trend?
Thomas: Games like Scarface are rated mature for a reason. Many of the people who worked on Scarface have kids of their own so we perfectly understand and endorse the restriction of mature-rated content from younger gamers.
As far as legislation moving forward that supports that, it would be difficult for anyone to disagree that it's a good thing.
N-Philes: One last question, Which three games of all time are your favorite?
Thomas: Too many to choose from! But the first three that come to mind are Diablo, Zelda: The Wind Waker, and World of Warcraft.
Much thanks to Geoff Thomas and Radical Entertainment for taking the time to speak with us about their murder simulator for the Nintendo Wii, in stores now.
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