David Chase revolutionised TV with The Sopranos 20 years ago, but he held no such ambition for video games. When HBO execs decided to cash-in on the series’ popularity with a PlayStation 2 exclusive back in 2006, the cantankerous screenwriter scrambled to distance himself from the project.
“I certainly never wanted to sell the game on the show or do any cross-pollination," he told MTV at the time. "What I didn't want to have happen was that the game and the show bleed together […] It's certainly not going to teach them anything about The Sopranos”
Needless to say his words didn’t pop up on the box art. But as far as half-arsed TV tie-ins of the noughties go, The Sopranos: Road to Respect shares more DNA with its source material than most. The original cast provided (predictably impressive) voice acting throughout, and the main plot is based on a story written by Chase before the show’s debut.
But it’s the game’s strange treatment of the late Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero that will interest die-hard fans – especially as Chase oversaw Allen Rucker’s (The Sopranos Family Cookbook) script, “to make sure the characters were true to the characters”.
Taking place between the fifth and sixth seasons, Road to Respect sees you play as the whacked gangster’s illegitimate son, Joey LaRocca, who Tony contritely recruits after catching him snatch a purse outside Satriale’s. Your first job? Fetch sandwiches for the guys with "lotsa pickle". Your second? Murder a man in cold blood by slamming his head against a urinal.
It’s no exaggeration to say that 90% of the game is spent beating people to a pulp, from random grunts to handsy Bada Bing dirt bags. You can also wield metal poles, lob dumbbells and employ a table saw if the mood takes you. It’s clear from the very first mission that Joey is a murderous, unrepentant psychopath who makes Ralph Cifaretto look like the Dalai Lama, and this endears you to everyone – especially the ladies.
The Bada Bing strip club acts as the main hub of the game, but female characters generally wear lingerie regardless of the setting. It’s pretty evident that far more graphical work has gone into rendering realistic boobs than anything else, with the main cast looking eery and lifeless, like extras wearing stapled skin grafts. Needless to say none of the women from the series appear in the game. It’s a tits’n’hits Sopranos supercut from start to finish.
You quickly rise through the ranks of the crew, but one man remains unimpressed: the ghost of your murdered father, Pussy, who occasionally materialises in bathroom mirrors and water reflections to question your life choices (before helpfully directing you towards your next mission, anyway.) Does Pussy hold a grudge against his old friends?
Fans will remember that Pussy rose from the dead for a split-second of series three, reflected in a mirror at Livia Soprano’s funeral. The stern-faced apparition betrayed the guilt and conflict that clung to Tony for killing one of his closest friends, even after he became a police informant. A guardian angel he was not.
But that's the role he plays here, watching on as his awful, awful son whacks and wisecracks his way through thirteen mercifully short, button-mashing missions. The barely intelligible main story isn't worth diving into – and the sub-plot about AJ hosting a rave and falling foul of the 'Dreads' gang even less so – but it ends with your character taking the oath of omertà that your father fell foul of, finally earning the respect of the Soprano crew. Press X to Get Made.
How would your father feel about you joining forces with his killers? As luck would have it, his ghost is perched in the corner of the room. Let's go ask him:
"So me working for Tony. You don't mind?" Joey asks, in his first display of basic empathy.
"Hey, I wish things were different, but you working with my best friends on Earth? It's like a fuckin' dream come true," Pussy replies.
So there you have it. Pussy is at peace beyond the grave, as overseen and therefore technically approved as canon by David Chase. Tony Soprano has finally paid his penance to the Bonpensiero family, and Joey presumably catches a stay bullet to the temple right before the start of season six, never to be spoken of again. All's well that ends well.
The game was universally panned by critics as a lazy, clunky, overly-linear cash-in that lacked any of The Sopranos poignance, humour or charm. At least part of that is down to Chase, who couldn't see any feasible way to transport the emotional depth of the show to a console.
"The act of watching a movie or a TV show or reading a book, God forbid, is you're seeing someone else's story and you can go through their story and learn from it or feel with it or laugh at it without having to go through any of the pain or the adventures," he told MTV. "The game is different: There is no identification, really, any emotional identification.
"Cooking dinner, going to Lamaze class, there's no way to figure that into a game at this point. Maybe somebody else can do it and maybe somebody will, but that wasn't really what this game was about."
It would turn out to be Scottish developer Rockstar Games who took on that mantel, imbuing their detail-heavy Grand Theft Auto series with increasingly richer storylines and flawed anti-heroes. One of the main characters from 2013's Grand Theft Auto V, Michael, is widely considered to be based on Tony Soprano himself.
But it was their 2018 hit Red Dead Redemption 2 that arguably came closest to realising the grand ambition. Just like Chase two decades ago, Red Dead 2 unshackles itself from orthodoxies with a cinematic mixture of action and pathos. It's a game about gun-toting cowboys, but its heart lies in relationships, sketchy morality and the seemingly mundane.
David Chase has previously stated that he has no interest in creating video games, and while he recently went back on his word to stay away from The Sopranos universe, we can't see him budging on this one. Which is a shame. With David Chase behind the wheel, maybe we'd finally be playing a video game that transcends the medium and cements gaming's inherent artistic worth once and for all.
But oh well. As it is, Road To Respect just leaves us longing for the game The Sopranos deserves.
