Scarface Gets a Virtual Sequel

After a year of extra development time, Vivendi Games is putting the finishing touches on Scarface: The World Is Yours. Pete Wanat, executive producer of the game at Sierra Entertainment, put down his "little friend" for a few minutes to talk about what the Xbox® game plans to deliver.

Live the dream as Scarface.

Alternate Ending
"The story starts just before the film ends, where Tony Montana blasts his way to the balcony in the mansion and enters into a huge gun battle against Sosa's attacking goons," said Wanat. "In the movie Tony dies at the end of this classic mansion shoot-out scene."

"Since we didn't want to do a simple retelling of Scarface the movie in videogame form, we decided to make the video game be more of a sequel that answers the hypothetical question of 'What would have happened if Tony had survived the mansion?'"

Drug Kingpin
In the game, the player gets to be Tony Montana (complete with Al Pacino's likeness and a voice-alike actor), who survives the epic shootout and must rebuild his decimated drug empire. Ultimately, however, the goal of the game is to seek revenge on those who tried to kill him.

At first, gameplay revolves around the acquisition of fronts for distributing drugs, and storehouses to stockpile them. As Montana acquires more turf he encounters several enemy bosses which are drawn from the film, including Gaspar Gomez, Nacho Contreras, and the Diaz Brothers.

Cause destruction and look stylish at the same time.

"The game also features several locales from the film like Freedom Town, Lopez Motors, the Babylon Club, Tony's Mansion, and Sosa's Estate in Bolivia," said Wanat. "By including these elements, we have created a mix of the fictional and the real eighties-era Miami for the player to explore as Tony Montana."

Hollywood Talent
From the movie side of things, Steven Bauer, Robert Loggia, and Al Israel all provided their voices for the game. Even though Bauer's Manny died in the film, Sierra brought back the actor to voice some new characters in the game like Sandman.

Sierra also worked with a huge cast of 50 actors and celebrities to fill out the cast of 250 characters that Montana interacts with in the game. There are over 35,000 lines of dialogue in this open world game.

Take some time out for the ladies

"With such a high profile project in the works, all the new actors we brought in to fill original roles were thrilled to be involved," said Wanat. "Some were pro voice talent, some were DJs, and all fit their parts and helped to give the game one of the best casts ever assembled. They all contributed their skill and talent to make the Scarface world come alive with inhabitants."

The Man
Al Pacino was involved with how the game developers portrayed Tony Montana's character. "In the game, Tony still has the strict moral code that he had in the movie," said Wanat. "He doesn't take out anyone who doesn't have it coming to them. Tony cannot kill innocent non-playable characters. If the player tries to shoot a pedestrian, Tony won't shoot."

"If the player wants to go on a killing spree, they can just jump into one of the other three playable characters and kill anyone, anytime, anywhere, as they are not obligated to Tony's moral code."

Open World
The game world reaches out to islands in the Keys and Bolivia, but most of the action takes place in Miami, which is divided into four turfs: Little Havana, Downtown, South Beach, and North Beach. As the players get more familiar with the map, they will discover shortcuts that will allow them to cover a great deal of ground very quickly, which will come in handy when running from cops or chasing down the competition. Players will be able to explore small islands and even fight pirates and the Coast Guard!

"The depth of Scarface comes from how the player chooses to build and manage their empire," said Wanat. "The player's success with building up their reputation depends heavily on how they manage their economy—what exotics they choose to spend their money on, how often they choose to launder cash, and the way the player manages the rise and fall of the demand for coke at each of their fronts."

Extra Time
Wanat said that Radical Entertainment has been using the past year to improve all aspects of the game.He said the game's art has been fine-tuned with more refined textures and enhanced lighting and shadow effects. They also went back and retooled the most important aspect of the gameplay—shooting.

"Radical did an amazing job getting this done to a level not seen in an open world game up until now," said Wanat. "We added massive upgrades to sound and audio, including two full sound passes up at Skywalker Ranch with Academy Award-winner Randy Thom."

In addition, the extra time has allowed all of the vehicles to be tuned so that each has their own individual feel and style. The open world gameplay has been expanded with more in-depth drug dealing and front managing. Radical also worked on the flow of the story and the missions.

All told, the wait is promised to be worth it as gamers for the first time get to step into the shoes of a Hollywood icon, and take over Miami with some help from their "little friend."

Article by John Gaudiosi