One of the most highly anticipated games of 2006, and certainly at this year’s E3, is Scarface: The World is Yours. Based on the hugely influential Al Pachino film, which has spawned a huge following and is constantly quotes by rappers and sampled in hip hop songs, the game allows the player to become Tony Montana and live his life…with a twist. The storyline begins with that violent shootout at the top of the staircase from the end of the film, thrusting the player right into the action, except this time (if you play your cards right), Tony survives and the game assume a “what if” scenario.

Due out this fall, the Scarface: The World is Yours  gameplay recreates the historical time period and environment of film: Miami, the Florida Keys, and the Bahamas in the early ‘80s. There are even references to the politics, news items and events of the day. Players roll through the crime-ridden streets, seedy back alleys and steamy nightclubs of the Scarface underworld as Tony tries to rebuild his empire, taken from him by the end of the film. While on your mission, you secure information, negotiate business deals, smuggle contraband, and avoid rivals and DEA.

The game (to be available on PS3, PS2, Xbox, and PC) was shown publicly for the first time at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on May 18th and G4 had a chance to chat with Peter Wanat, Vinvendi Universal Games Executive Producer, about how the game plays, what goes into making a movie based game, and the relationship between the game producers and movie studio. Read on…

Can you explain the goal of Scarface: The World is Yours?

Whenever we make games based on films we try to find an isolated question, like, “What kind of brand fiction do you wanna extend?” This is our third movie license with Universal in the last five years, the other two being The Thing and Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. So when we did The Thing, it was, “What happened to those guys after the film ends?” You know, Kurt Russell is sitting there in the snow, like, do they survive? In Riddick’s case, it was, “How did Riddick escape from prison?” He mentions numerous prisons in the movies that he escaped from, so we wanted to pick one. We picked Butcher Bay. So what was it like? How did that happen? How did his eyes get the way they are? So it is finding those questions that will be the most intriguing plot points for us to extend into games. So for Scarface, Tony Montana is massively iconic character. He’s so beloved in so many parts of popular culture today. So what would happen if Tony didn’t die? What would happen if he gets reborn through the game? And so we start our game at the very end of the film and allow the player to actually be the one to change the course of events from the movie. It’s a “see the movie, play the movie” kind of experience…

…So what if Tony didn’t die when Skull comes up and shoots him?

Yes. I mean, why should Skull be a special character? Why should Skull have the ability to kill Tony? Why make Skull’s shot the one time that Tony should die? It felt, to me, like a plot point that didn’t work for the game. Tony has to live.

So now you have the whole shootout on the staircase and you, as Tony, have the ability to win that battle?

That’s our opening. So we start our game off very differently than other open world games. We start out with a massive firefight, the biggest fire fight in the whole movie. It’s our Saving Private Ryan opening, just hails of bullets, and one of the best weapons in the game are given to the player right away. It’s that Tony Montana attitude. Like, you gotta reward the player right away. He’s Tony. So, the gameplay experience has to be that rich. Then we felt like once he survives the mansion shoot out, he’s got the whole rest of the game to rebuild his empire. And why is that significant? Well, the American dream is to come here with nothing, work really hard, and achieve massive success. And Tony does that, mind you, in very illegal ways. But, he’s still determined. He literally comes to America with just the shirt on his back and works really hard and achieves massive success. We love the American dream, which is to come here as an immigrant and work hard and do well. But Americans like another fundamental story too. We are also really attracted to the comeback. We love people who achieve massive success, fall, lose it all, have nothing, work really hard, and come back to achieve that success again.

It’s the classic Rocky story. You pull yourself up from your bootstraps, you’re the champ and then you’re back down again.

That’s right. Everybody loves the comeback. And this is Tony Montana’s comeback. You start Tony with nothing. He’s lost all of his crew. He’s lost all of his money. Everybody’s turned on him. But he’s determined, has a singular focus, to not only come back, but to get revenge on Sosa. To get revenge on the person who did him wrong.

Do you get to choose your own missions as far as how you rebuild your empire or does the game send you on missions?

You basically have to challenge each of the remaining bosses. So, if you remember from the film, Gaspar Gomez, Nacho Contreras, the Diaz brothers. All those of villains have ownership of a section of Miami. We break the game into four sections of Miami. And the player can decide how he wants to go through what areas. So it’s Tony taking back Miami, which at one point was his. He’s lost it. They’ve jumped all over his territory after he’s supposedly being killed by Sosa. We felt like that was a great strategy for him from the player’s standpoint. The player can go and do it how he wants to do it. It’s an open world game after all. The difference is that we’re an open world game that has an ID on it. Other than Spiderman, which is really a terrific example of how to do that. If you’re looking for that crime genre with an open world and a certain level of violence then this is for you.

How much sex and violence is there in the game? The movie was obviously filled with that stuff?

It’s true to the film in terms of its profanity and sexual nature. We really don’t skip out on any of those things. We give you, for the first time, a complete experience with a movie based ID wrapped into it. And it really is woven into the seams of everything about the game. I mean, we have a ball speeder in the game. And that’s all inspired by the line, “All I have in this world are my balls and my word and I don’t break them for nobody.” Everything that we do, we always ask that question, what would Tony Montana do? How do we make sure that this is true to Scarface? We take this really seriously. Probably more seriously than most people take original IDs. Our group at Vivendi, like, we specialize in this. This is what we do. Other people are dying to go after original IDs. We look at what’s the next great film or television or book property that we can clamp our teeth into and change the perception of how those games are seen by not just the players but our industry as a whole. So we push it forward. We try to raise the bar on every property we do. I’m not saying we’ll never do original IDs.

Stay tuned to Part 2 of this exclusive interview!

Read Part 2 of the Peter Wanat interview here.

Watch Morgan Webb's Scarface: The World is Yours E3 coverage.

Watch the Scarface: The World is Yours party at E3.

Watch footage from Scarface: The World is Yours for PSP.

Watch footage from Scarface: The World is Yours for Xbox.