The death of the family
“Mafia is known for its stories… stories about crime,” Andy Wilson, Hangar 13’s executive producer tells us, shortly after the game’s debut unveiling in Cologne, Germany. By this point we’ve seen protagonist Lincoln Clay in action – he’s exactly what you’d expect from a Mafia protagonist: angry, dejected, with a violent disposition, but also somewhat charismatic and – in his own way – alluring. Obviously, he’s on a revenge quest (he’s just returning to New Orleans, where he was raised, after the Vietnam war), but that doesn’t mean Hangar 13 wants to simply churn out the same gangster revenge plot that’s been stuck in a feedback loop for years.
“The key tenets of Mafia are that it puts you in a city, it puts you in a time period and then you know exactly where you are: you’re absorbed into this journey of one specific character,” says Wilson. “That was the strength of where we wanted to work. Haden [Blackman], the creative director of the studio, his background is in writing: in his spare time he’s still a comic book writer (on Batwoman for DC, at Marvel [with Elektra])… so the narrative basis of the game is really important to him. That was incorruptible in his mind.”
And rightly so – by putting Clayton, a biracial protagonist, at the centre of a game set in the Sixties in southern America, Blackman has chosen to tackle some serious themes that most games tend to sidestep. “Narratively, we didn’t just want to do the same thing again,” explains Wilson when we asked him about why Hangar 13 chose this new setting, this new central cast. “We wanted to tell a new story and give it a new twist, so that’s why we chose the Sixties setting – at that time of American history, there were all these new mob influences and all these new factions that were struggling for power. That’s amore interesting time period, and that gave us slightly more narrative options to study.”
Directly and maturely addressing the subject of race in games is still in its infancy – there have been precious few actual titles that pick apart and explore the subject matter with the agency and narrative weight of serious interactive fiction. We’ve seen metaphors for race-related issues touched upon (Mass Effect, X-Men, Final Fantasy), but never the actual real-world interpretations. Considering how the Mafia games are known for how ‘raw’ they can be – how they unflinchingly tackle everything from violence to, say, strict traffic rules – we’re confident that Mafia III ’s approach to racism (to being an active victim of racism) is going to be pretty on-theknuckle. After all, the game is set in 1968 – not only have you got the sexual revolution rippling through the cities of America, you’ve also got national social reform, the Vietnam War and protests, and – of course – it was the year Martin Luther King was shot and killed.
“We’re not shying away from the racial issues of the time,” says Wilson. “We have the advantage of being a narratively-based game at our core, so we have plenty of time – through whatever measure; world, storytelling, one-on-one interactions – to tell the story. We made sure to get that right – there’s a lot of research into [how the racial tensions] at the time worked, and we’re keenly aware we can’t mishandle that. But at the same time, we wanted to tell this story at this time, about this character in this city… so to have everything friendly and nice in this game? That would have been a real disservice.”
We actually think that Mafia III might deliver on a promise that genre rival GTA V fell flat on – delivering a real, actual story. We’re not going to criticise the writing of Rockstar’s magnum opus – it was functional and totally suited to game’s overall tone – but we’re relying on Mafia to give something a little more substantial, something where we don’t abhor all the characters in the game, something where the story has more to say than an attack on the culture that supports it.
“This will sound weird, but we had a very specific vision about what we wanted to do, and we’re not a ‘focus group’ type studio – there’s not a single point we’ve looked at anyone else’s work and said ‘So, what’s everyone else doing?’” admits Wilson, bluntly. “We’re very much focused on our own work, our own thing. What you’ve not seen from the demos so far is that strong narrative – that linear narrative – that’s still very much part of the game.”
The way the game’s story is built operates on two vital keystones: characters and modular narrative elements. There is an expansive cast of characters that can each offer you special ‘services’; from contacts in the police department that can keep the heat off your tail, to more aggressive gangsters that can lend you extra firepower.
“The way you get these ‘services’ is by rewarding the family with territories, so you have decisions about what you want to build in your arsenal, and to build what you want, you’re going to have to manage the frictions between your characters – the way in which they will interact and respond to you is massively going to depend on how you’ve treated them.” So, unlike the relationships you forge and ‘maintain’ in GTA, the way you decide to divvy out the goods and treat your partners in Mafia will actually impact the story.
“The narrative itself is quite organic; it’s not a left/right branch, things builds over time. If you start neglecting one character, you’re going to start having problems with that character and that’s going to have consequences down the line. The other aspect is that each character has different tolerances for what you go out and do in the open world: some characters are much more resistant to you, say, killing cops. But the character that has the ‘call off the cops’ service, for example, is going to start tightening up what he’s willing to give you or removing that option altogether after a while. There’s all of these different ways the supporting characters come into play.”
There’s no on-screen gauge or bar to show you where your relationship with the supporting cast stands, instead Hangar 13 is relying on its proprietary engine (upgraded from Mafia II ’s) to show you how upset your family is with you. The engine has been specifically tuned for this generation, meaning intimate details on character models can be used to express disdain or disgust at you, and the verbal tells they’ll let off will also indicate their state of mind. “You’ll start to get a feel for how upset they’re getting, and managing that friction becomes really important. You can designate one hideout in an area to one character, multiple hideouts in an area to another character, and once you’ve liberated the whole district, give the district itself to another character. That’s going to potentially upset the apple cart, but you’d get three better rewards for it. You’ve always got to manage that balance.”
It seems everyone in New Orleans is motivated by self-preservation and selfinterest: you, as the head of this upcoming family, want to make sure your newly acquired rackets are being adequately managed. The missions aren’t easy in Mafia III, either: we played a level where we had to invade an enemy faction’s jazz club and take down a high-ranking mobster. Without the aid of our comrades, we’d have been bleeding out long before the mission was over; their skills are that valuable. But each of your underlings wants something for themselves too and loyalty, it seems, doesn’t come cheap…
“These characters [you’ll meet] have all existed in the city, they’re used to how things have been, but they were all very subservient to [the previous mob boss], so they’re only joining you because they feel like they’ve got the opportunity to get in on a bigger slice of the pie.” A little back story here: Clayton’s return from ‘Nam saw him come back to a city where his family – rulers of the criminal underworld at the time – have been ousted by the Italian mafia. You’re on a quest to avenge them, but also take the city back into your own hands.
“In the 20 or so years since the previous game, [Mafia II protagonist] Vito has ended up [in New Orleans] and he’s really not in the best of places – and he wants a bigger slice of the pie again, so he’s in it for selfish reasons, and that makes the whole game rest on these really uneasy alliances.” Everything seems to knit together rather wonderfully in Mafia III ; the narrative side of things seems more involved than just a lazy script underpinning the whole game, the action and the physics behind it all feel more complete than sandbox-‘em-up rival Saints Row, and the character development seems more in line with gumshoe fiction and noir-style graphic narratives than it does with other videogames. To us, that’s what makes this one of the more exciting games to keep an eye on in 2016 and what has made Mafia stand out in recent years.