One of essentially the most spectacular trailers proven throughout The Game Awards this yr was for Mafia: The Old Country.
The first completely new Mafia sport in 9 years, The Old Country takes each the collection and the story to its roots by setting the sport in Siciliy within the early 1900s.
While Mafia 3 was typically well-received, its late ’60s New Orleans setting gave a really completely different vibe to its predecessors, and whereas it had followers others felt it didn’t fairly match the mob film picture the ‘Mafia’ title normally conjures up for some.
The identical definitely can’t be stated for The Old Country, which seems to take The Godfather Part II as its major inspiration and will have gamers practising their greatest Pacino, Brando and De Niro impressions.
A couple of days earlier than The Game Awards kicked off, VGC sat down with Hangar 13 president Nick Baynes and the sport’s director Alex Cox to take a look on the trailer and chat concerning the choice to deliver the collection again to the Mafia’s roots.
As satisfying as the entire Mafia collection is, I feel the phrase ‘Mafia’ instantly conjures up photos of The Godfather and the like for many individuals, and that will have been why some didn’t really feel like Mafia 3 match tonally with the remainder of the collection. Was this what led to the choice to go to Sicily for the fourth sport?
Alex Cox – I don’t suppose it’s a response to Mafia 3 in any approach. Every Mafia sport is exploring a distinct period, let’s say, of organized crime – the Twenties, Nineteen Thirties, and many others. I feel we just about do 50% of the twentieth century.
So for plenty of completely different causes, we wished to return to the beginning with Mafia: The Old Country. It’s a brand new engine. It’s a brand new period for the franchise. We thought it was actually good to return to the start.
And like with the opposite eras we’ve explored, we glance to what’s the enduring vibe and feeling of the time. So after we say 1900 Sicily, what’s the picture you get in your head? What’s the expertise going to be like? That’s what we wished to placed on the display.
Mafia 3 had its personal take, Mafia 1 and a couple of have their very own takes as nicely on their respective eras. So I feel a part of our temporary, our inventive path is to ship the fantasy of enjoying a mob film. So we glance to that for inspiration, the supplies on the time of the setting that we’ve chosen for every sport, and we actually do our greatest to ship on that.
Nick Baynes – I feel one of many issues we’re all the time taking a look at each time we begin a brand new sport is how can we do one thing that’s completely different however acquainted?
Because individuals like Mafia video games, as a result of they do have a sure really feel and vibe, they usually’ve all received their very own tone, and clearly a few of them are barely completely different, however all of them match inside that Mafia franchise.
And so after we first sat round deciding how we wished to method and the place we wished to take the story, it actually was that form of query. What can we do this feels prefer it actually intrinsically suits with the Mafia franchise, but additionally offers the participant one thing new?
I feel Sicily on this period has form of actually jumped out at us, as a result of it’s not only the start of the Mafia, the precise Mafia, it’s the start of the entire franchise. So it’s like a brand new expertise.
AC – I imply, that’s the factor, isn’t it, precisely that. Going to Europe, going to set the sport and do a prequel, you recognize, plenty of completely different angles to this, which can make a distinction to the opposite Mafia video games, in fact.
But you recognize, the Sicilian Mafia underpins all of those tales, it’s the form of the legendary backstory to all of these American-set Mafia titles.
Whether it’s in our video games or different video games or TV exhibits, motion pictures or no matter, there’s all the time the ‘previous nation’, that title which is clearly a reference to how the gangsters in these media consult with the place their tradition, their heritage comes from.
“I feel Sicily on this period has form of actually jumped out at us, as a result of it’s not only the start of the Mafia, the precise Mafia, it’s the start of the entire franchise. So it’s like a brand new expertise.”
The first three video games have been set in massive cities, and though clearly Sicily has its cities as nicely, I’m assuming the setting results in a really completely different sort of sport, as a result of I’d think about it doesn’t have something just like the cities you’d see within the different Mafia titles, it most likely seems like a smaller scale in a way?
AC – Yeah, and that is one thing we actually wished as one other large level of differentiation, let’s say, between Mafia: The Old Country and the Mafia Trilogy – let’s simply form of group these all collectively, as a result of they’ve received an analogous form of design – was the setting.
Sicily on the time was largely – you recognize, clearly it has cities, it has cities in it and issues like that – nevertheless it’s predominantly a rural atmosphere, with a primarily agricultural form of setting.
“Whether it’s in our video games or different video games or TV exhibits, motion pictures or no matter, there’s all the time the ‘previous nation’, that title which is clearly a reference to how the gangsters in these media consult with the place their tradition, their heritage comes from.”
This is the place the Mafia really sprung up in historical past, it was a response to… it began on the lemon groves and the farms and suchlike within the Sicilian countryside, and we wished that to be the setting for our sport.
Obviously it makes it really feel loads completely different to these form of bustling metropolis environments of the Mafia Trilogy, it’s a rural setting, so yeah, we’re form of largely in cities and villages within the sport.
We’ve talked about that the city of San Celeste is the principle city of our sport world, and yeah, as you’d count on, it’s not like bustling metropolis streets with visitors, vehicles and pedestrians and issues like that, it’s using round on horseback by way of a form of extra rural atmosphere, and needed to visualise that by way of the gorgeous Sicilian countryside.
So yeah, it’s loads completely different in that regard. While the core of the sport is a Mafia sport in ways in which you’d most likely count on, that a part of the expertise is strongly completely different.
When you say it’s a Mafia sport in methods we’d count on, I discover it’s being bought as a linear narrative-driven sport. Again, was that an intentional design to take it again to the primary two video games?
As a lot as I personally loved Mafia 3 I feel some individuals have been thrown by the choice to separate the sport into areas and make it really feel extra open world. While for different collection that may be thought-about a optimistic, it seems like Mafia followers most well-liked the extra narrative drive of the primary two entries, so is The Old Country an try to deliver it again to give attention to the story as a extra set path?
AC – I don’t suppose it was a acutely aware choice as such, you recognize, as a result of Mafia III was profitable in its personal proper, and it was completely different to 1 and a couple of, it had a distinct construction.
The final sport we did was Mafia: Definitive Edition, so the staff that’s making Mafia: The Old Country, that was our final Mafia sport that we shipped.
We love all of the Mafia video games, however the sport was profitable, we loved engaged on it, and yeah, certain, a give attention to narrative definitely is what we wished to ship with Mafia: The Old Country.
NB – Yeah, Alex stated there how quite a lot of the staff labored on Mafia: Definitive Edition earlier than this one. I imply, we’ve received plenty of individuals on the staff who really labored all the best way again on the very first Mafia when it got here out on PC in 2002.
So that is form of… each sport we do, clearly, we be taught issues from it, what works, what doesn’t work, what we like, what we wish to attempt otherwise subsequent time. I feel one of many key issues right here was we had a really clear story we wished to inform, so the sport is constructed round that story.
So I feel in that regard it’s very near Mafia 1 and a couple of by way of… we all know that the Mafia followers love the linear tales as nicely, so yeah, it was deliberate by way of we’re telling a narrative and we’re laser centered round that, however I wouldn’t say it’s one explicit factor or one other. It’s simply constructed on years and years of expertise of constructing these video games and deciding what’s proper for every story that we’re telling.
You talked about the brand new engine…
AC – Yeah, we moved to Unreal Engine 5, so we’ve rebuilt our sport engine. We’ve needed to rebuild our sport expertise, in fact, as a result of we moved from our previous engine, which is what we constructed on the inner tech of earlier Mafia video games.
And so, yeah, Unreal clearly opens up quite a lot of new potentialities for us, significantly visually. The sport seems to be actually wonderful.
In quite a lot of methods, whereas we’re rebuilding the sport, we wished it to be fairly acquainted on the pad. So once you’re enjoying the sport, we wish the sport to really feel considerably in step with the earlier Mafia video games and never be a giant diversion or distraction away from what gamers are going to come back to a Mafia sport anticipating.
But once more, as we’ve come again, within the means of rebuilding all the things, it’s been an opportunity for us to refresh all the things, to deliver all of these sorts of Mafia sport methods as much as current-gen expectations, let’s say.
And with Sicily being the setting now, I’d think about that the shift to UE5 offers you the chance to go wild with landscapes in a approach that you simply possibly wouldn’t have been capable of do in a form of extra constructed up metropolis.
AC – Absolutely. Yes. You know, in a Mafia sport that’s set in a metropolis, the factor that we actually wish to promote is the hustle and bustle of town. So whether or not that’s New Bordeaux, whether or not that’s Empire Bay, whether or not that’s Lost Heaven, we wished to actually put throughout that vibe.
In Sicily, in Mafia: The Old Country, the vibe could be very, very completely different. So the gorgeous landscapes, as you say, is strictly what we wished to ship and Unreal’s actually helped us in that regard. You know, all of these form of eye-catching new applied sciences which have come on board with Unreal 5, we’re placing them to good use.
