Mafia: The Old Country will be the first all-new game in the series in nine years, taking us back to the roots of the story, taking the action to Sicily in the early 1900s. To find out more about it, VGC spoke with Hangar 13 President Nick Baines and game director Alex Cox ahead of The Game Awards 2024. We have prepared for you a translation of the interview into Russian.
No matter how exciting the entire Mafia series of games is, most people immediately associate the word “mafia” with films like “The Godfather.” This may be why some feel that Mafia 3 didn’t quite fit the overall feel of the series. Was this the reason for the decision to move the action of the fourth part to Sicily?
Alex Cox: I don’t think this has anything to do with the reaction to Mafia 3. Each Mafia title explores a different era of organized crime: the 1920s, 1930s, and so on. We can say that we cover approximately half of the 20th century.
For a number of reasons, we decided to return to our roots with Mafia: The Old Country. This is a new gaming platform, a new era for the franchise. It seemed right to us to start over.
As with other eras we have studied, we ask ourselves: what does this period symbolize? When we talk about Sicily in 1900, what images come to mind? What feeling and atmosphere do we want to convey? This is exactly what we tried to bring to the screen.
Mafia 3 offered its own take on things, as did Mafia 1 and Mafia 2 for their time periods. One of the main goals of our team has always been to convey the feeling that you are participating in the plot of a mafia film. We take inspiration from the era we choose for each game and try our best to live up to those expectations.
Nick Baines: I think every time we start creating a new game, we ask ourselves: how do we make something new, but also familiar?
People love the Mafia series for its certain mood and atmosphere. Each game has its own unique tone, but they all fit within the framework of the franchise.
When we first got together and started discussing what direction to go in and what story to tell, the main question was: what can we do that will fit seamlessly into the Mafia series, but at the same time give the player something new?
Sicily at that time immediately caught our attention because it is not only the origins of the real-life mafia, but also the beginning of our entire franchise. It’s like a new, unique experience.
Alex Cox: I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it? That’s exactly it. We’re going to Europe, creating a prequel, and there are a lot of facets to that approach that make it different from the rest of Mafia.
But, you know, the Sicilian mafia is at the heart of all these stories. This is the mythical backstory for all American mafia stories – be it our games, other games, TV series or films.
There is always an “old country” (The Old Country – approx.) is the name that gangsters in such works use to refer to the land from which their culture and heritage originate.
So the choice of Sicily in this era was really obvious to us – this is the origins of the mafia and the origins of the entire franchise. This is truly something new.
Three games in the series have been set in big cities, and while there are cities in Sicily as well, I imagine the new location sets a very different tone for the game. It probably won’t resemble the cities from previous Mafia games and will most likely feel more compact, right?
Alex Cox: Yes, and that was one of our key ways to differentiate Mafia: The Old Country from the Mafia trilogy. Let’s call them that because they have a similar approach to design, but here we decided to focus on a different setting.
Sicily at that time had cities and towns, of course, but it was mostly rural with a predominantly agricultural economy.
This is where the mafia historically originated. It appeared as a reaction to circumstances in the countryside – on lemon plantations, farms and other similar places in the Sicilian countryside. We wanted this to become the basis of our world.
Obviously, this atmosphere is very different from the bustling cities we saw in the Mafia trilogy. Here the action takes place in a rural area, so most of the game takes place in villages and small towns.
We have already mentioned that San Celeste is the main city of our game world. And, as you might guess, it is not like busy city streets with traffic, cars and crowds of people. It’s all about riding horseback through the picturesque Sicilian countryside, and that’s the atmosphere we wanted to convey.
So the game is very different in that regard. While its core is still a mafia story that lives up to what’s expected of the series, its overall gaming experience and mood stand out greatly.
When you say it’s a Mafia-type game, I noticed that it’s marketed as a linear game with a focus on storytelling. Was this a deliberate move to return to the format of the first two parts?
While I personally enjoyed Mafia 3, it seems that some players were confused by the choice to make the game regionalized and give it a more open world feel. While this might have been a plus for other series, Mafia fans were more pleased with the narrative approach of the first two games. Would you say that The Old Country is an attempt to return to more linear storytelling with an emphasis on history?
Alex Cox: I don’t think it was a conscious decision to compare it to Mafia III, because that game was successful in its own way and had a different structure than the first two games.
The last game we released was Mafia: Definitive Edition. It was this team, which is now working on Mafia: The Old Country, that also created it.
We love all the Mafia games. We had a blast working on the Definitive Edition, and yes, of course, the emphasis on storytelling was something we wanted to bring to The Old Country.
Nick Baines: Yes, as Alex said, many of our team worked on Mafia: Definitive Edition. Moreover, we have employees who participated in the development of the very first Mafia, which was released on PC in 2002.
Every game teaches us something new: what works, what doesn’t, what we like, and what we want to try differently next time. With The Old Country, we had a clear story we wanted to tell and the entire game was built around it.
In that regard, it’s really closer to Mafia 1 and Mafia 2. We know that Mafia fans value linear narrative stories, so yes, you could say it was an intentional choice to focus on the story and build everything around it.
However, I would not say that this is a direct return to past forms or a rejection of something. It’s more a result of years of experience in creating games and the desire to find the right approach for each specific story we want to tell.
You mentioned a new engine…
Alex Cox: Yes, we moved to Unreal Engine 5, so we had to completely rebuild the game engine. Of course, this required reworking our technology, as we abandoned the old engine, which was based on internal developments for previous Mafia games.
And, of course, Unreal opens up many new possibilities for us, especially in terms of visual design. The game looks absolutely amazing.
In many ways, even though we’re rebuilding the game from the ground up, we wanted to keep the controls familiar. When you play, we want the game to feel in the spirit of previous Mafia titles without straying too far from what players have come to expect from the series.
However, since we are rebuilding everything, this also became an opportunity for us to update everything, bring the game systems to modern standards, so to speak.
With the story now set in Sicily, it’s fair to say that the move to UE5 gave you the opportunity to emphasize the scenery in a way that would be difficult to achieve in a more built-up city.
Alex Cox: Absolutely true. With Mafia, which is set in a city, we have always strived to capture the vibrancy and atmosphere of city life. Whether it’s New Bordeaux, Empire Bay or Lost Haven, we tried to create that feeling.
In Sicily, in Mafia: The Old Country, the atmosphere is completely different. The magnificent landscapes were what we wanted to show. Unreal helped us a lot with this. We’re taking full advantage of all these exciting new technologies that come with Unreal 5.