Scarface

Written by Adam Woolcott  on August 24, 2004

Early Thoughts: Joo think joo can f***** kill Tony Montana, mang? I'm f***** Tony Montana!!

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What we have here is a unique situation. 21 years ago, Scarface made its debut in theatres, becoming a cult classic despite reviews panning the film for its incredibly over-the-top display of violence seemingly every 10 minutes. Despite that, the movie depicting the rise and fall of a Cuban refugee turned Cuban drug lord has maintained its popularity despite itself, thanks to the character of Tony Montana and his wide array of famous phrases. A couple years back, Rockstar Games paid homage to Scarface with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, with many aspects of the classic action game borrowing greatly from the 1983 movie. Here lies the tricky part - now, Vivendi Universal and Radical Entertainment are hoping to cut their own slice of the crime-game pie, withЕwellЕScarface, the video game. The announcement of this game was quite a shock when it was revealed not long ago, because despite the popularity of the movie, there was no real clamoring for a game - after all, Vice City filled that void. At this point, Scarface is a fall 2005 release (and without any real announced platform as of yet, though PS2, Xbox, and PC are the likely targets), meaning it won't be available for quite some time, making any speculation of the quality of the game just that - speculation. It could work though, despite early snickering, which keeps the door of optimism at least slightly cracked. Until then, let's take a look at the how's and why's of a Scarface game.

Of course, the notion of a Scarface game is a bit awkward; after all, Tony Montana died a violent, bloody, wet death at the end of the movie, a victim of his own moral code and cocaine-fueled rage. SoЕ how to make a game based on a movie where a guy dies at the end? You don't. Instead, Radical Entertainment is taking some serious liberty with the video game version, and picking up after the events of the movie. Which means, yes, Tony Montana doesn't die. If you're finding that difficult to swallowЕ you're not the only one. But Tony isn't dead after getting filled with bullets and taking a shotgun blast to the chest; instead, he's just a bit bent out of shape and slightly injured, and now must rebuild his empire of cocaine and criminal activities, and also find and kill the man responsible for the hit that took - err, nearly took - his life, Alejandro Sosa. This is where the Scarface game begins, and it's your duty to regain Tony Montana's lost glory and riches before someone else kills himЕagain.

Scarface, naturally, will be a free-roaming game with missions, side-missions, and random acts of violence and/or narcotic sales, a la Vice City. In this case though, it will take place in the real Miami, at least the Miami known in the Scarface movie. Famous locales like the Babylon (where many scenes, including the first hit attempt on Tony took place) will be there, as well as whatever's left of Tony's shot-to-hell mansion. There also are plans to have various islands off the coast of Florida for Tony to adventure to, and likely, if the main goal is to find Sosa, you'll be headed to South America at some point. Within the city, Tony will do missions that help regain his criminal prowess, as well as take part in some side stuff like boat races, drug pushing, and who knows what. What shall NOT be in Scarface is the ability to kill anyone, unlike Grand Theft Auto. Radical is saying that because Tony Montana wouldn't harm innocents (after all, he did say СI ain't never f***** over anybody who didn't deserve it' in the movie, and refuses to do the hit that ultimately lead to his own Сkilling'), he won't be able to mercilessly gun down anyone on the streets for kicks. However, you can accidentally run people over with a car if they get in the way - gotta have some realism and/or collateral damage, I guess. Tony does, however, have the ability to either be nice, or nasty to the people he cannot kill. You can interact with pedestrians, and either be respectful and kind, or tell them to get bent, or any other nasty thing Tony might say (you're a f****** cock-a-roach!). There's very little else revealed thus far on what's to come, which is understandable seeing that this game is probably 15 months away or so. There's plenty of time to reveal more.

Early on in the development cycle, Scarface looks decent, but lacks a lot of polish (a screen showed Tony fighting 4 enemies who looked the exact same). This is probably going to be fixed up in time, so that can be forgiven for now. It's likely many of the songs from the movie will return despite already being mostly used up in Grand Theft Auto III on the Flashback station, but likely they'll use them plus the ones Rockstar didn't stick in their game. The question does remain - who's going to do the voice acting? While the joke is anyone can re-create Al Pacino's infamous Cuban accent, they'll likely use a good set of actors to handle it, if not the original cast from the movie (though with so many of the main characters kinda dead, it's probably not a real issue). It would be something if Pacino were tabbed to return to the character he's most famous for. It's doubtful, but it would be a pleasant surprise.