Mafia: The Old Country is very close, and in this editorial we review a franchise that marked a generation a lot.
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The Mafia saga debuted in the early 2000s, my first contact with it was on a friend’s computer who was very happy with his copy of the game (this was back in 2002) and I remember that it seemed absolutely brutal to me, so brutal that my humble Pentium 2 couldn’t run the title even by a miracle. I had no idea that the saga would have such a privileged place in the world of video games and that it would manage to sell around 34 million copies.
The first steps of a mafioso
The first title arrived first on PC and then appeared on the original Xbox and PlayStation 2. This installment was set in the city of Lost Haven, a fictional name that seems to be a mix of San Francisco, New York, and, of course, Chicago. The action took place in the 1930s and followed the adventures of Tommy Angelo, a humble taxi driver who finds himself in the world of the mafia by chance after being caught in the middle of a shootout.
- You’re interested in: Mafia: The Old Country and the entire saga, discounted on Steam and Xbox for a limited time
In this way, Angelo begins to rise through the ranks within the Salieri family, a group almost in disarray at the time the story begins. The narrative is very well done, and the story is told in retrospect from the perspective of a Tommy Angelo who is persecuted and repentant for his actions and just wants to leave the underworld behind.
Critics lavished praise on Illusion Softworks’ game, and so did players. The setting and level of detail in aspects such as vehicle and scenario damage were very innovative for the time, as was the historical period in which it took place, like having a GTA 3 in the past and much more realistic.
In 2020, Hangar 13 released a remake of the game titled Mafia: Definitive Edition, and in addition to the obligatory changes in the graphics department, the title incorporated other vehicles into the game without modifying the original story and mechanics too much.
The mafia changes scenery
2010 arrived, and with it, the second installment of Mafia, this time from 2K Czech. This sequel would take players to Empire Bay, a city with many elements taken from New York, Boston, and, again, Chicago.
On this occasion, the story follows the steps of Vito Scaletta, a World War II veteran who survived the bloodiest conflict in human history, only to find out that his father had left him a huge debt that put his already gray future in jeopardy. With a post-war world, Scaletta accepts the advice of one of his best friends, Joe Barbaro, who contacts him with the mafia of the old continent, with which he will forge bonds and pave a path that will lead him to rethink many things.
For many, this Mafia installment surpassed the previous one, and this led to the title being expanded on three occasions with DLCs: The Betrayal of Jimmy, Jimmy’s Vendetta, and Joe’s Adventures. The game even had a mobile version, Mafia II Mobile, a kind of prequel that served to connect the two installments of the game. The main negative criticism the game received focused on the limitations of the scenarios, which were much more linear than in the first part, despite the higher budget for development.
The mafia doesn’t discriminate by religion or skin color, or does it?
In 2016, Hangar 13 returned to the saga with an installment that, for me, was the best for several reasons, but take this as an opinion from the writer, since for almost everyone else, Mafia 3 was more or less an aberration that should never have existed.
The game takes place in New Bordeaux (a copy of everything related to New Orleans) and completely changes the era, taking the player to 1968, with the United States in the midst of the conflict in Vietnam. This is not a minor detail, since Lincoln Clay, the protagonist of the installment, is a former member of a special intelligence force who returns home with the bad luck that his entire adoptive family is murdered shortly after his return by the Italian mafia. From there, the title develops between the strategy of assigning territories and the most bloody revenge.
The narrative of the adventure reflects, with a lot of character, the discrimination of the time in the northern country towards black people, something very present in the title and includes a really great soundtrack with artists like the Rolling Stones or Jimmy Hendrix, to name a few.
The base game was followed by three DLCs: Faster, Baby!, Stones Unturned, and Sign of the Times, which took Lincoln to explore illegal street racing, international conflicts, and even a sect. Not even these additions could significantly change the public’s opinion of the game, whose foundations had a solid foundation, it must be admitted.
And it’s that the game arrived on the market with an absurd amount of bugs and with a rather questionable enemy artificial intelligence. Many of these things were solved, at least the main problems, but this didn’t make people return to the game en masse, despite the initial sales success. Another criticism was that the title became repetitive very quickly; (something that is true) but the new mechanics that allowed conquering territories of the city and assigning them to lieutenants to obtain different benefits were not taken into account, something that was very dynamic, innovative, and had certain changes in the story depending on who obtained different territories, which greatly increased replayability.
Finally, another complaint was that it deviated too much from the original setting, which is also true, although we could see an old Vito Scaletta, among other surprises, but I don’t think it was decisive for the saga, in fact, I see it as something quite positive for giving the franchise a fresh touch and incorporating new elements.
It’s time to go back to the basics
Mafia: The Old Country will arrive soon on Xbox Series, the title will be a prequel to the first installment of the franchise and will take place in Sicily, southern Italy.
What we know is that the protagonist will be Enzo Favara, a miner who joins the Torrisi family in order to improve his life and gain the respect he believes he deserves. This new episode of the saga returns to the most traditional aspects of the franchise with a much more linear story, leaving aside the innovations in the open-world genre that Mafia 3 included.
Being set in 1900, the game will incorporate typical weapons of the time, both firearms and melee, something that will also be replicated in the vehicles that can be used and even in other forms of transportation, such as the possibility of traveling on horseback from one point to another.
Translator and video game localiser with a passion for retro titles and simulators. He has never let go of a controller since he was given an Atari 2600. He collaborates with different developers in the localisation of their titles into Spanish through Camelot Translations.
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