The Godfather is different. It has to be different, for so many reasons. For a start, it's thirty years old. Some of the actors are dead, others are older, many are far more famous and in demand than they were at the time that the movie appeared. None of them are under contract any more, of course. Videogames barely even existed when The Godfather first appeared. Consoles had yet to be imagined; home PCs were the territory of science fiction.

Eurogamer: Is the game, then, going to be much more action-focused than the film was?

Hunter Smith: We look at it, and think about it in terms of, whether you're talking to somebody or shooting or driving or just moving through the world, you're always feeling very fluid and action-oriented in your controller. However, you're conscious about the consequences and the effects of what you're doing in each one-on-one interaction, and how that's affecting your growing reputation through the course of the game, because your ultimate goal is to become a Don.

Philip Campbell: People are going to step into this, I think, with the same preconceptions - you know, they're going to go in with their guns blazing. We call it the Jimmy Cagney, 'Top of the World Ma!'. They're probably going to go out in flames, and then they'll start realising that often in our game it's going to be about not killing someone - until you've extracted the secrets that they hold. It's about getting them to break, getting them to give you what they have - because if you just kill them, you're not going to get anywhere. You can kill them at the end of that, you know - we're not putting any bar on that - but it's like juggling. It's dealing with people to earn their respect, or realising that you're never going to get that respect.

Hunter Smith: You know, if you think about most shooters, it's about shooting that opponent before it shoots you - but there's no value you're getting out other than mowing them down and getting to the next set of NPCs to shoot at you. In our world, they're alive - they have roles and they do things. So you're trying to control this world, control this territory, have the businesses out there running money in to you. You want them to stay alive - you want to get power and figure out how you can take over more of the world than the opposing families.