Mafia: The Old Countrytakes fans of the franchise on a tour of 1900s Sicily, as protagonist Enzo Favara finds himself getting tangled up in the web of the Sicilian mafia. Promising a compelling narrative, exciting gameplay, and authentic locations and traditions, thenewest installment in theMafiafranchiseis looking to make players an offer they can’t refuse.
Game Rant sat down withMafia: The Old Country’s game director, Alex Cox, and art director Steven Noake to break down some of the core ideas behind the game. They talked about some of the research that went into its development, as well as the potential for future installments.This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
How the Idea For Mafia: The Old Country Was Conceived
Game Rant: What inspired the decision to set the game in Sicily at the turn of the 20th century? What makesthat era so compelling for aMafiastory?
Cox: From the franchise perspective, the story perspective, and the game experience perspective, there was an opportunity for us to go right back to the beginning. It’s the birth of the mafia. The first three Mafia games were all about the Italian American mafia. We’re very familiar with the setting there, and we’ve seen loads of cool movies about it. That’s the fantasy. But preceding that, right before all of those stories started, where do we begin? We begin in that sun-dredged Sicilian setting that we see in The Godfather movies. That’s one of the few mainstream examples that really touches on the Sicilian mafia.
Mafia so far has been about the story of organized crime in the 20th century. And it really begins there in terms of mainstream movies and most people’s popular conception. Of course, there are lots of different forms of crime around the world, but this is the one which has captured the popular public imagination and is the most pertinent to our game series. So, anyway, when we put up on the board that we were going to make another Mafia game, Sicily at the turn of the century was the front-runner right from the start. That was before we even said we were going to upgrade our engine, going from our own internal tech to Unreal Engine. That’s a big reboot for us as well, on the technical side, as it’s been 10 years or so since Mafia 3.
It’s kind of a new start for us. When we looked at all the options on the board of where we could go through the Mafia story, Sicily stood out so much. It’s just very different to what we’ve done before. So many new gameplay possibilities, a brand new historical era, something that’s not so well known to players, stuff to explore, stuff to discover. It was all just so exciting. Of course, we are still making a Mafia game. It’s got new ideas and new concepts in there that came along free, but plenty of familiar ones too.
Game Rant: How did you go about researching thehistorical and cultural aspects of Sicilyduring that time period, and what sources proved most influential?
Noake: To begin with, it was going on the internet looking at pictures of Sicily. I think we’re super lucky that there were people at the time going around in the early stages of photography, photographing these locations, and we could see the incredibly rich amount of storytelling in those scenes. There’s a real juxtaposition between these very poor people living in these beautiful locations. Extreme poverty in some cases, but then also this beautiful architecture, which today would look like very expensive stonework. That was the thing that really sparked my imagination. I started to think about the stories behind these photographs.
We were also put in touch with academics, talking to them about some of the cultural things. It was fascinating. We talked about some elements of the story and how they may have sort of turned out, perhaps at the time, which we didn’t always think were necessarily right, but there was such a richness of specific detail, because it’s that specific sort of storytelling that makes it so much more real. Then, when we went out there, they took us on this incredible tour of locations which we were planning to build in the game. They found locations which were very similar to what we wanted. At one point, we spent the night in this amazing wall farmhouse which had barns full of what essentially felt like game props! There were period baskets, period farming equipment, so we could really just go around and, just in real detail, look at items that had been used, which were not museum quality. They hadn’t been restored, they really felt like somebody just stopped working with them and then swept the floor. And that allowed us to make the locations feel inhabited and real.
It’s very easy when you’re researching this stuff to almost get a slightly processed version of the story, because it passed through academic hands and multiple people have told stories about it. That often happens. If you’re using research just based on watching films like that, it passes through a few hands. But certainly, for me at least, it felt like we were able to portray a much more authentic and much more closely researched version of Sicily.
Cox: There were three angles for us, really. The first one is the fantasy that we’re trying to fulfill for players. Like, what do players see in their heads when we say it’s a Mafia prequel set in Sicily? We know that it’s going to be something like The Godfather. In their minds, start with this mainstream understanding of what that would be. That’s how it becomes a fantasy fulfillment. Then we have the academic research, which is the stuff that Steve is talking about here. The thing that’s actually quite difficult about the Sicilian mafia is that its very senior history is much less known. Its all just very secret. It’s much less documented than the American mafia or anything in the 20th century.
There are two main reasons for that: Firstly, it’s not on TV shows and movies. Secondly, there are far fewer people from the Sicilian mafia that ever confessed or testified or anything like that. Historically, it’s a much more ruthless and violent organization, and people really were rightly terrified of betraying the organization. John Dickie wrote this book called Cosa Nostra, which was very formative for us. I recommend anyone interested in this to give it a read. It is the globally recognized, definitive work on the Sicilian mafia. It’s really excellent. When we went to speak to other academics, they would refer back to this book. Anywhere on the internet that I was researching would inevitably lead back to this book. It’s an incredible book which covers lots of stories, anecdotal and actual, things that happened throughout the history of the Sicilian mafia, which we used as inspiration. So then there’s that aspect.
The third part was working with Sicilian developers, who really helped us understand the history. We’ve got some Italians on the development team, but that’s not quite the same. Steve mentioned connecting us with professors of Sicilian history and all sorts of stuff, going and visiting locations. And out of those three sources of inspiration, it was this that was most influential. In the end, talking to real people, who can sort of advise us about avoiding stereotypes, in addition to adding lots of embellishment and detail. There’s a limit to what you may learn in a book or by watching a movie. They took us to real places; We ate the food and listened to real conversations, they explained the body language and the terminology, and spoke to us about history. They taught us how to properly swear!
It’s just been an awesome process for all of us, all of that research, because it’s just been really interesting to go through it. We also learned that in Sicily, the role of a Don is very different. It’s part of a patronage network, which has kind of evolved into almost a term of endearment or respect for a significant figure locally. It’s not the boss of a crime family, although this is what it means now to most people in the English-speaking world. So it’s just been an interesting journey, I think, for us, and hopefully it will be for players as well.
Game Rant: Are there anyreal historical figures or eventsthat inspired characters or plot lines within the game?
Cox: We’ve not used any real-life historical characters or anything. The franchise has always tried to maintain a distance away from real people and real events, up to this point anyway. Mafia’s always taken place in a fictional setting. We wanted to have artistic license in there as well, so we haven’t used real people.
How Mafia: The Old Country Balances Historical Accuracy With Compelling Gameplay
Game Rant: How did you balance the historical accuracy side ofMafia: The Old Countrywith engaging gameplay mechanicsand make sure that those two were woven together as smoothly as possible?
Cox: Gameplay comes first when you’re developing a game, right? The rest of it’s kind of context. And it’s a good question, because we did have to think about it. I suppose, in real life, if we really went by what really happened in the Sicilian mafia, it’s the same as anything in a video game. As the protagonist, you kill like 1000 people. In real life, that wouldn’t happen. The Sicilian Mafia is a secretive and insidious organization that rules through fear, assassinates, and violently intimidates the right people to get their way. Sure, in this video game, we’re a shooter, so we embellish those scenarios in the first place. It’s action-driven. However, the story still has all of that tone and vibe, so that we smoosh those two things together in the first place. It’s a game first and foremost. In terms of the game’s features, there are a couple of big differences.
Firstly, the game is set before the Tommy gun, before the kind of iconic weapon of the American mafia, before automatic weapons. Which is a big difference for us in terms of what the combat is going to feel like, because it inevitably slows things down a little bit. So we leaned into that. We said that rather than it feeling chaotic and the environment exploding around you with these kinds of modern weapons, we wanted to make it a bit more tactical, a bit more dangerous, so you get that feeling of being in a fight for survival in a resource-scarce environment. We’re not going full survival game by any means, but players will be looting a little bit for resources.
I suppose the other example is knife fighting. So, we really leaned into that as a new opportunity from the time period. It was a big feature of Sicilian culture generally. Knife fighting is a kind of martial art in Sicily. If you see the Sicilians do knife fighting, it’s sort of elaborate, almost performative, kind of like a martial art. We adapted it into something much more like a fight for survival. Just two guys really going at it. We made this system where you can use your knife. It’s a good complement to your firearms, because the firearms have limited ammunition. The knife is always there, so it’s got more value in the combat economy. And then you get into these furious knife fights, which I think really kind of speak well to that hot-blooded Mediterranean gangster trope. We use it a lot in the story; it’s almost like a boss battle. It’s an opportunity that came from the time period and this kind of culture of Sicilian knife fighting.
Noake: Your question is about the research and the authenticity versus the gameplay? My answer is:you try not to put those two things in opposition to each other. I don’t know that we would have had the classes of knives that we came up with if it wasn’t for the fact that research taught us there are these regional designs of knives. So you look at that, and build on it. But where it’s used in the narrative is super important, we have to try and tie it to key moments. You attempt to ensure the historical accuracy and the gameplay fit together really well.
Cox: When you actually see the knives that these guys would fight with, I would say that we made some big compromises. The classic blades they would use looked more like a sword. And so we really couldn’t actually make them that big! Everybody was going around with these swords, and they would rub the blades in soap—yeah—so that the wounds wouldn’t heal properly. It was a vicious kind of tradition. The knife was known as a ‘soap licker.’
Game Rant:TheMafiafranchise is often bold with its storytelling. How would you sayMafia: The Old Country’s story ties into the first three games, and are there Easter eggs for eagle-eyed fans of the franchise to find?
Cox: One of the things we had to do with this game was make it so it was great for returning players. We wanted to go to fans of the franchise first, really, so we wanted to ensure fans find something intriguing in this prequel story, but without having a story where you know the ending. That can be a big problem when you have a prequel story with a returning character: you feel like you know what’s going to happen in the end. So we were careful in the first place to make sure that the core cast had their own stories.
It’s important for us to tell a good story. In previous Mafia games, they all kind of overlap a little bit; a character or an important event connects them. They’re not direct sequels to each other, but, for example, Mafia 2’s Vito kills Mafia’s Tommy Angelo, right? So we were inspired by that, and actually we wanted it to feel like a Mafia game that players are familiar with, so we’re careful to make sure it’s got similar connections to the other games, but indirect.
But, there are some returning characters, Easter eggs and all of that other stuff in there too. So there’s hopefully a lot for returning players, but because it’s a new story, and because it kind of goes back to the beginning, it’s great for newcomers too. Sicily is a fresh start. Players that haven’t played any Mafia games shouldn’t feel like they don’t know the story and won’t get who the characters are. They can enjoy it in its own right, without knowing anything about prior games.
Game Rant: TheMafiaseries has tackled several time periods, and each game is distinct and different. Are there any time periods that this series has yet to visit that you think you might explore further down the line?
Cox: As time goes on, we have this ambition of telling this kind of overarching narrative that goes generation to generation, place to place, traverses the world, and tells the story of that Italian-American journey of organized crime in the 20th century. There are loads of examples of places that we’ve yet to visit. We have a kind of chart on the wall of all of these moments in history. There are time periods before the first Mafia, pre-World War One, before Prohibition, for example. There is Las Vegas, there’s Cuba, there’s the Cuban Missile Crisis. The JFK assassination.
There are all of these moments in history that are ripe for storytelling. Then you could go outside the Italian-American mafia. Long story short, there’s no end to the stories we can tell. It really is a rich ground for lots of new ideas. Even returning to places we’ve been to before and in different eras is interesting. Or eras like the 1990s. What’s that look like? It’s fertile ground. There are still plenty of potential stories that we could revisit in the future.
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