Q&A with Mafia II's Denby Grace

2K Czech senior producer Denby Grace / Photo: M. Concepcion

GDC never fails to give the press opportunities to chat with developers and producers (even more so than E3 since GDC is meant for the development community). Among the many folks we spoke to was Denby Grace, senior producer of the highly anticipated Mafia II.

So what's the vibe like now that you're at the home stretch of development?

We're really positive. This is really the first event where people are able to play it and we're excited to let people experience it as we've worked on it for a long time. It feels more real as opposed to how the game felt just as a concept with a lot of potential. Obviously we have a standard to maintain from the PC version of Mafia I. People recognize the game soul-wise. It's the same cinematic storytelling experience.

One of the things we're really pleased with is the improved combat. The way it plays is significantly different from Mafia I and it's up there with some of the best third-person shooters. It's a huge jump forward for open-world gameplay as well. It doesn't play like an open-world game when you get into these combat scenarios. We have destructible environments, we have this cover system, and we don't rely on an auto-lock system like other open-world games.

The premise of a character coming back from World War II obviously echoes one of the storylines in The Godfather.

It's a good point. Obviously you want people to start at the bottom which almost always makes things interesting. Something we thought about early on was the question of "How do you start with someone on the top who's got everything?". Assassin's Creed 2 did something very interesting in that way. Here's a guy from a rich family who was stripped of everything and you spend the game earning back your family's honor and credibility by killing people. It's not really "earning" but you know what I mean?

Our story was written a long time ago, and that's a fact. We're not going to change parts just because someone has done something similar. When you play Mafia II, it's the definitive gangster experience at least from our perspective. The quality of what you're playing and seeing stands alone. Maybe some of it is a little cliche, but the story has its own twists and plots. One big difference with Godfather is that our characters don't have aspirations to become a Don. They just want to become wiseguys in the mob, made men. They don't want to be bosses of families or anything like that, so it's a bit of a slant. It's more Goodfellas than it is Godfather.

You mentioned during your media presentation that Mafia II is set both in the 1950's and 1960's. How does that work in the game's overall flow?

The way the structure works is that it's much like a movie, going back to Goodfellas as a nice reference point. A mission in the game is a period in Vito's life. Now a period might be one hour long, three hours long, or a day long. We play that mission and we might then jump three months in time or it might very well be the next day.

We use it much in the same way a movie does. What we didn't want were these series of events presented in some infinite time loop like how it happens in some games. You can have this thing where Vito does his job like killing a mob boss and then he has to lie low for 3 months because that's what you do when you kill a mob boss. You can't just appear the next day after such a killing and say "Hey, everything great!" We create sensible gaps like that. We use devices in movies like montages so you get to have more exposition in the time that Vito was laying low.

Many in the community were very impressed when your team released the first screenshots in 2007. Have many things in the industry affected your development approach since then?

Yes and no. It was our intention back then to be very far ahead of everyone else. People obviously have caught up a bit, but we feel we have a very stunning game. Some of the things we've done since is then is we've improved the motion capturing and used Nvidia's technology to improve the physics.

One really important area that was on our minds but did not implement until later were the Gears of War/Uncharted cover systems. We really looked at those games and what those expectations from players would be compared to what we had two, three years ago. So yes, we've looked at what has come out.

Fundamentally the design is the same from four, five years ago. The execution and the quality level is partially a result of us looking around. We knew that our story from five years ago would maintain its quality no matter what has come out since.

This is in a sandbox world, yes? Do you provide the user with a sense of direction to move the story along?

It's a linear cinematic experience, but for it to work, it had to be in an open, sandbox world. Ultimately the experience feels like a third person shooter, but when you need to, you go out into the open world to get some stuff that you need. There are points in the story where you have to get weapons, see someone, or sort a car out, but the game is primarily linear. It's something we've embraced, in the same way as a movie. We looked at branching storylines and we felt it took away from the overall presentation and experience.

So we don't have to worry about being a GTA-style errand boy? Is Mafia II closer in its story focus with say, The Getaway?

That's exactly what you're gonna get in Mafia II. The objectives are clear at all times. We had considered having optional side quests at one point. What we did was we looked at the secondary characters who were involved in those quests and for the ones who weren't important in the main story we simply cut them. Then we made these missions non-optional. They may be side stories to our main story which focuses on Vito. These side quests explore the relevant secondary characters like Vito's sister and stuff like that. That's fully intergrated now.

The way we were looking at it at one point is like doing these side missions gives you the "director's cut" edition of the game, whereas skipping those missions made the game feel too much like a TV version of the game. We don't want that. We want everyone to experience the game fully with exposition of all our important characters. These have been some interesting decisions we've made. We haven't been afraid to make cuts on things that haven't been working because it gave us time to reenforce areas that were really good.