TRANSCRIPT:
ELIZABETH TOBEY:
Welcome to episode 5 of the Mafia II podcast. Today I’m back with Jack and we’re going to be talking more about the characters in Mafia II. To get this rolling, we’ve talked previously about the characters in the game. Do you want to go more into detail about the speaking characters in the game, and how many there are, and what kind of project and scope this game has, character-wise?
JACK SCALICI:
I think since we last spoke, it’s gone up from about 150 to almost 200, when I looked at the script again. So, I think about out of those 270, I think we have about 50 that just comprise pedestrians, people you’ll meet on the streets, whether they’re criminals or just nice little old ladies or taco vendors, or whatever. There’s about 150 characters in the main story that will speak. I think each one has a minimum of about ten lines. And obviously our main characters, our core group, they have in excess of a thousand lines each. Just to put that in perspective, most other games I’ve worked on, I think the biggest script we had was about 20,000 words, and we’re looking at 120,000-150,000, right now.
ELIZABETH TOBEY:
We’ve met Vito and Joe and some other main characters in Mafia II. Other than those characters, can you talk more about the people and the families that we’ll encounter in Empire Bay, that makes the city rich and alive and diverse?
JACK SCALICI:
The first thing that I want to point out is that we don’t just have the Italian-american Mafia. Like any city, we have all different ethnic groups. Especially early, not early, but 1940s, about 50-60 years ago, a lot like it is today, where you’ll have the Italians, you’ll have the Irish, you’ll have the blacks, you’ll have the Chinese, we have that in our game. You’re not just going to interact with a bunch of Mafia guys the entire game. One of the things that makes the city so alive and so organic is that there are different people. You go to one neighborhood and it might just be all Irish people. You go to little Italy and you’re going to have predominantly Italians and Sicilians. So that’s one of the things we did to just make our city mirror a real-life city.
While there are different criminal organizations in the city, you’re also going to interact with what we call hired guns or freelancers. These are guys who don’t really have an affiliation with any of the Mafia families, or with the Irish gang, or with the blacks, or with the Chinese. They’ll work for anyone. You can just go to them, and maybe you’ll get a quest from them. You have guys. Basically, for every job, there’s someone who’s doing that job. If you need to get rid of a car, you can take it to this guy. If you want to steal a car and make it your own, you take it to another guy. If you want the quest to steal ten cars really quick, you go to this other guy. And not all those guys are necessarily affiliated with the Mafia or with any of the other criminal organizations.
ELIZABETH TOBEY:
Let’s talk more about the mob families that you’ll encounter in Empire Bay. How are they structured?
JACK SCALICI:
They’re structured just like the Mafia that dates back to Sicily hundreds of years ago. We didn’t really take any liberties there. This is how the mob works. Everyone knows this is how the mob works, this is how the mob works in our game. You have the Don, and under him, you’re going to have his underboss and his Consigliere, and underneath them, you have the capos, which is basically like a lieutenant, who will control his own crew, and be responsible for making money for the guys above him. And underneath them, you have the soldiers, which is the lowest form of made men. These guys typically don’t have too much of a say in how things are run. Their job is they’re the enforcers, these are the guys on the ground. That’s why they’re called soldiers. And then, along with that, you have associates. Associates can be small-time guys, they can just be mob muscle, they can be pretty much anything. I think the general rule goes that if your father – or back then, I don’t know if it was still like this, but I think the rule nowadays is – if your father is Italian or Sicilian, you’re eligible to be a made man. Back then, it may have been both parents had to be Italian or Sicilian. You had to be able to trace your roots all the way back to Sicily or Italy. And those are the rules we’ve adhered to. It’s the same rules the mob adheres to today. And you’ll interact with different people in the game, and these guys don’t come out and say, “Oh, by the way, I’m a Capo for this family.” You just know. You understand who’s in charge. Vito is told to do something by someone everyone respects and listens to, he’s going to do it, he’s not going to say, “Oh, by the way, what are you?” You know?
ELIZABETH TOBEY:
You sort of segued nicely into my next question, which is, of the characters we’ve met already, where do they fit in this hierarchy?
JACK SCALICI:
Well, Vito and Joe, they start off as nobodies. And as we said previously, they don’t aspire to become the Don. You know, Vito’s just trying to make some money to get his family out of a jam, and Joe, this is pretty much his only option because he’s not that bright, and this is the easiest way he knows to make money. Henry Tomacino, you probably saw in the E3 demo or cutscenes. His father was an important man back in Sicily, and when Mussolini came to power, he sent young Henry to America to work for one of his contacts in America, who ends up being the head of one of the main families of Empire Bay. So, Henry is a soldier working for him when we meet him. Henry’s role will change and evolve throughout the game, but I’ll leave it up to you guys to find out what that is.
ELIZABETH TOBEY:
So, as our final question, how about we talk a bit more about Vito’s family and you give us some more background on Vito himself? How is his family featured in the game?
JACK SCALICI:
Well, when we first meet Vito, at the very start of the game, he’s a young kid. You learn that he came here as a young kid from Sicily, because like everyone who came from Sicily and Italy back then, they just wanted a better life. They wanted to come to the land of opportunity, where there was work and there was money. Vito’s father just moves his whole family here, and they quickly find out that it’s not really the American Dream that they thought it was. So, he ends up a poor dockworker, and eventually he suffers from alcohol and gambling problems, and he passes away at a relatively young age. When Vito gets back from the war, years and years later, they find out that their father left them with a pretty sizable debt, and the people he borrowed the money from – when you die, your debt doesn’t die, your debt gets passed on to your family. So, Vito gets back from the war, after literally going through hell, and the first thing he finds out is oh great, now his family’s in trouble. So, he’s not thinking about anything else, he’s just thinking, “How am I going to get my family out of this jam? I need to make money quick.” So, after he gets back and he finds out about all the problems and everything, his main goal is to take care of his mother and his sister, who are his only surviving family. His mother is just a typical old Sicilian lady. Very nice, deeply religious, doesn’t leave the house much, doesn’t speak great English. His sister, his older sister, Francesca, who I think you may have seen in the E3 trailer, she’s just a typical nice American girl, just wants to get married, have a family. Vito is the man of the house now, his father passed away, it’s his job to protect these women now. So that serves as his main motivation early in the game, is just to get his family out of trouble. There will be other characters you’ll meet later in the game, but I won’t go into too much detail about that.
ELIZABETH TOBEY:
Well, I think that we’ve given a good overview of the characters and the diversity of the city. I think that any more will probably be spoiling the game for some. So, I think we’re going to cut it here, and I will see you guys again for Episode 6, and I want to thank you for listening.
