The next installment of the Mafia franchise, Mafia: The Old Country, is slated for release in the summer of 2025. The fourth entry in the series will be the prequel of the original game, setting the background in Sicily in the 1900s. There are quite a few things that are under discussion by its fans, one of them being why the game revisits the franchise’s roots.
President of developer Hangar 13, Nick Baynes, and game director Alex Cox have joined an interview with Video Games Chronicle to have this topic explained.
Hangar 13
“Every Mafia game is exploring a different era, let’s say, of organized crime – the 1920s, 1930s, etc. I think we pretty much do 50% of the 20th century,” Alex Cox said. “So for lots of different reasons, we wanted to go back to the start with Mafia: The Old Country. We thought it was really good to go back to the beginning,” he added.
The very first Mafia game was released 22 years ago and won acclaim for its narratives and gameplay. Players have high hopes for the new one, as they have been waiting for the next Mafia game since Mafia III, which was released in 2016. Talking about what the new game will bring to the fans, Cox teases:
“Like with the other eras we’ve explored, we look to what’s the iconic vibe and feeling of the time. So when we say 1900 Sicily, what’s the image you get in your head? What’s the experience going to be like? That’s what we wanted to put on the screen.”
Hangar 13
Yet, for a franchise older than two decades and has a few games released, it might not be easy to work on a new title: developers must keep the original and iconic vibes of the franchise while bringing something new and creative to avoid being too cliche. This has been a challenge for developers at Hangar 13.
“Sicily at the time was largely – you know, obviously it has towns, it has cities in it and things like that – but it’s predominantly a rural environment, with a primarily agricultural kind of setting.
Obviously it makes it feel a lot different to those kind of bustling city environments of the Mafia Trilogy, it’s a rural setting, so yeah, we’re kind of largely in towns and villages in the game.”
And thanks to Unreal Engine, the developers are capable of presenting the vibe and pretty landscapes. “The game looks really amazing.”
Read the full interview by Video Games Chronicle here and don’t forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
