EA and Paramount Digital Entertainment finally released some solid information on The Godfather II and fans of the game can rejoice because it sounds great. While the sequel is inspired by the film, it goes beyond the movie’s story and puts players into the mafia world of the 1960’s in Florida, Cuba and New York.

Players will be charged with building the most powerful mob family in America, after Don Corleone makes them Don of New York. This will be done throughout the open-world environment spanning multiple cities and locales as players extort businesses, monopolize illegal crime rings and take on rival families.

Building up a family is hard, so EA has given players a new tool to help them rise to the top — The Don’s View. This may be part of the top-down gameplay we’ve been hearing about. Players will use The Don’s View to build and defend their territories while keeping an eye on the movements of rival families or forces.

Executive Producer Hunter Smith explained what makes The Don’s View so pivotal. “In the 1960’s, a mafia Don was only as strong as his family. We found the hierarchical culture of organized crime intriguing. Running an organized crime family in a world defined by family loyalty is something that we felt could introduce a new strategic element to the genre. That is what the Don’s View is all about — laying out a strategy to pick off the competition one by one. The Don’s View is so unique, it could fundamentally change the rules of open-world games by blending action and strategy to create something entirely new.”

Don’t worry though, this change isn’t meant to make The Godfather a strategy only game. The signature Backhand system is back and ramped up featuring even more visceral hand-to-hand brutality. It also introduces a new combo system for pressure tactics and executions. As a Don, players will command multiple missions, but take it to the streets personally with their own hand picked crew. Each family member specializes in fields like demolitions, arson, engineering and first-aid; so the Don must carefully build the family and promote their best men within the ranks.

Gamers will get their chance to be the most powerful Don in America starting Feburary 2009, but only on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC so far.

GameTrailers TV will have an exclusive first look of the game next Friday, August 15.