Mafia remasters (Alex was right)

Everytime I think of Mafia, I think of Alex explaining, during the game of the year deliberations, the way mafia 3 is told through the lens of the CIA agent testifying in congress. I can't remember, but it should have received best moment or sequence. It makes me chuckle and think back fondly on those games. I will replay Mafia 3 when the remaster comes out.

I can't imagine Mafia 3 ending up to be that different, unless they're going to "remaster" it by removing 50% of the side-missions which became tedious as hell around half-way through the game and by adding all the DLC into the game to make things more varied. Something like that would maybe get me to replay it one day.

Mafia 2 I never played more than the demo of, so I'm somewhat interested in giving that thing a go, depending on the reception.

First Mafia is one of my favorite experiences ever, even if I'm sure it'd be very rough to go back to now. But since they're straight-out remaking that thing and the screens they've already shown look real pretty, that is the one I'm most excited for.

@glots: Right there with you on Mafia 1. For me it was one of those rare experiences like the original Hitman where got the game on a whim and while it started a bit rough, I was absolutely in love with it by the time it finished. That first game has such a great, classic gangster story arc that two didn't really live up to and three was just it's own weird thing. I particularly loved the way cars and guns evolved as the years progressed in the game from the stocky boxes on thin tires to sleek convertibles.

I'm also most excited to see that first game again - as a humble brag..I beat that racing mission before they patched it, and it sucked.

Very curious about Mafia 1. Love that game. Mafia 2 is trash, one of the most disappointing games imo.

The first Mafia is incredible, it's janky and weird and difficult and old but it makes a real impression, it set out to do a lot of things and it did them, for better or worse :P, it reminds me of the first Witcher in that it sucks you in despite what many people might consider flaws, though not quite as janky as Geralt's first outing :P.
Its remaster/remake treatment concerns me, you can't really update any single part of the game without having to touch the whole thing, if you're making the graphics modern you'll have to update animation, if you're doing animation you'll have to update facial animation, voice acting? Story? Does the game lose some of its unique detail due to time or budget constraints?
I guess i shouldn't expect it to be an absolute slave to the original, after all there are certainly things that can be improved, gunplay, a cover system makes sense and is in line with the sequels, some of the level design can be a bit barren and some missions have you slowly jog over large distances, i just hope they don't lose some of the detail of its story and world.

I've only played Mafia 2 once but i liked it enough, it has a bummer ending which i guess makes it faithful to the genre it's based on, i wouldn't mind playing it again.

I only played Mafia 3 last year and i liked it a lot, looks fantastic on PC, i guess they'd just be doing some minor updates to support the higher tier of consoles, maybe fix a few bugs.

Is there a separate page on the wiki for the remaster of Mafia 1?

I mean sure Mafia 3 had an amazing opening and the way it told the story was great, but the actual game was... eh.

1 and 2 I'd definitely be down to replay though. Especially 1, one of my favorite story experiences ever.

I've never played the first one so I'm keen to check that out, especially after what folk have said here. I enjoyed 2 quite a bit but got really bored with all the icon collecting/side stuff in 3. The bits of story I got, I liked but way too much of the game got completely away from it.

I'm interested in the remaster of one. The Xbox version isn't great; I got to some point in a church and quit. It wasn't terrible, but I thought it felt archaic by the time I got to it. It was only a while back that I discovered, or remembered that the Xbox version was a stripped-back version of the PC version. I remember wanting to play two after playing through the demo a few times and couldn't because I wasn't working at the time of its release, but when I finally got to it, I found it hard to get through so I stopped. It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I finally got through it as it became a back compat title, and I didn't love it. I still never finished three, but I have it on PS4 (got it free from a buy two, get one free deal at Target a few months after its launch), then later when I got the Xbox One X I wanted to see how improved it was so I bought it on there. I think in ways, it's enjoyable, but it's just super repetitive and I don't think the story is compelling enough to push me all the way through. I don't think there's going to be much, if any improvement with three's 'remaster' unless it's also being put on next-gen, then it might be a match for PC's max settings with a higher fps. I could be wrong.

Mafia 1 was one of the first games I downloaded through torrents when I got my first game-pc because I still remembered Greg Cassavins raving review :P I probably only got to play it a couple years after release but was still blown away by it, its one of the few pc games ive ever bothered to finish....maybe the only one now that I think about it...ah no! I did also finish a couple lucas arts adventure games like day of the tentacle.

Played and finished 2 on ps3, liked it a bunch too. I honestly wish more games would just be linear but also set in an open world like that game. I dont need a million busywork activities all over the map. But I can understand how when it comes to spending development resources that is not efficient AT ALL.

havent played 3, honestly pretty curious.

I don't have any positive memories of Mafia (1). I think it did a lot of things ... but most of them badly: bad AI, bad combat mechanics, mission-critical bugs, terrible physics, etc. To some extent a product of its time of-course, but I don't recall having similar issues (or as many) with most of the other games I played in the same time-period. I just remember it as a big mess that made me rage-quit far too many times. As with the Shenmue remasters, the Mafia (1) remaster will mainly be for those looking for nostalgia, it won't make the game better and more playable.

Mafia 2 was great, and still is great (it still plays well): it was a considerably more polished game, had great atmosphere and character-building, a good narrative. A stellar improvement over the first game.

The negative critique at the time mostly centered around the gameworld not being as interactive as in the GTA games, which for a dumb reason became the anticipated standard of open-world design. Too many gamers then, and now, think that having an open-world environment means you have to fill it with pointless and shallow stuff, that are fun for 5 or 10 minutes. To me the purpose of an open-world is to support the narrative, to make the protagonist's world look and feel more alive and dynamic, in comparison to the static nature of a fully linear game.

Mafia 3 tried to be too much like GTA, which was a mistake: lots of pointless mini-missions, inserted just for the sake of it. I never liked that stuff in my GTA games, nor do I like them in a Mafia game. The main missions reminded me of Shadow of Mordor with its rinse and repeat structure. They had an interesting concept but failed to implement it into lasting gameplay enjoyment.

The first game I would not be interested in playing. Mafia 2, I would definitely play again. Mafia 3, I'm not sure.

If this was a remake and not a remaster, I'd be willing to give #1 and #3 another chance.

The first Godfather game was pretty good too, foolowed the first film almost to a key. I never got around to playing the second one. I do miss some good gangster games.

The first Mafia left a huge impression on me back when it came out (it's been 18 years now BTW). Very excited to play the remaster. Never got around to playing Mafia 2 and Mafia 3 was a pretty fun adventure if a little repetitive.

From what I've just read, 2+3 are being remastered, and 1 is being remade.

I was 10 when I finished Mafia 1, and even then I understood what an interesting and ambitious thing it was. The flaws were as blatant as its positives -- it's a very stiff game, and arguably way too derivitive of cinema -- but it was a neat game, and felt more like a simulation than the cartoony joy of GTA.

2 was much more its own thing. More fun and less imitational of the Godfather. 3 even more so, even if it's perhaps the least compelling of the trilogy. The revenge is compelling, in its own brutish way, but the gameplay was just kinda...there. The music and setting are amazing, though. My fave of the three in that regard.

I'm happy the first two are getting some new love from their creators, but I've no actual interest. I've become sick to the stomach of artsy gangster stories and rags-to-undeserved riches nonsense; sick of creative people handling scummy, vicious worlds with grace and displaying their characters like flawed gems. I'm Italian myself, I just think it's utterly eye-roll worthy the older I get. Whenever I re-watch Scarface or Goodfellas or whatever else, I'm reminded of underage kings, or that 9-year-old mafioso in South Park. I'd rather explore something new than re-tread old games that were re-treading older movies which were-re-treading even older artistic interpretations of self-appointed monsters.

I don't think anyone glorifies it or anything that would make me sound like a pathetic tabloid headline, but they certainly make them beautiful, often balletic in their drama, and overinflate them with gravitas. In 2020, I find it laughable.

I remember being fascinated by Mafia III and it shortcomings, I really wanted to do some kind of deep dive breakdown of it but I'm not sure I ever did....? I probably have a long post about it in my archive here, but I remember I'd taken at least 15 videos I planned to cut up and showcase a lot of different funny weird and plain bad things from that game.

One thing I remember specifically being really weird was the amount of time Lincoln would spend in conversation with another character but the camera and animation of the characters would both be so dry and lifeless, sometimes it felt like a PS2 game. It was a real shame all the ways that game fell short because it was full of unique ideas (for video games) story wise, had some neat if extremely video gamey tactics aspects to it I wish they'd spent more time squeezing nuance out of and the guns were mostly really, really good.

Actually, one other thing that comes to mind is how bad one of the game's bigger set piece missions was, the one where you break up a rally (there's more to it, but if you've played the game you don't need specifics to know the one) that if you get too clever or fail the logic of it seems to break and it's just no fun trying to get through at that point. If you ever had the enemy spawn logic break in the final levels of The Last of Us after a death, it had that similar kind of "well what even is the point then?" feel to it.

I remember really liking the way the story was told in 3. The character models looked really good and the performances were all top notch.

But the actual game was boring as hell. The way the enemy AI worked was just dumb. It was a never-ending repeat of "Hey, we're missing someone! We'd better send another person, totally alone, to the area he went missing. Hey, we're missing someone! We'd better send another person, totally alone, to the area he went missing. Hey, we're missing someone . . ."

I also distinctly remember thinking that they wasted their licensing efforts on the wrong stuff. Sure, they got a cool soundtrack, but somehow didn't get any of the cars. The main character drives what is clearly meant to be a Ford Torino GT, but it's called something else. I'm sure it would have been real hard to get licenses from all the car manufacturers, but in a game that wants to revel in the 60s, which is more important to get permission to use- the awesome cars, or some skeevy Playboy covers?

I really liked Mafia 2; excited to play that one again.

100% this. It wasn't very original, but it was a well told story, and didn't make the mistake of populating the world with a bunch of unnecessary filler that would have got in the way of that.

The game was repetitive. Luckily for me, the repetitive tasks were enjoyable. Mafia III is great.

Trash is a bit harsh it was a competent game, but one i did not connect with at all. But it has its fans for sure, probably more then the firs tone. But as for me personally like you i loved the first one way more, just found it more engaging. It also came out in a time where open world games didn't have too much junk in them.

I found Mafia 3 to have a very good story way better then 2. But that game felt too big for its own good.

Mafia 1 was one of my favorites as a kid, I still have the prima guide. 2 was still good imo and the mission that calls back to the first game really floored me (won't spoil it). 3 was fun but they should have trimmed half of it, and I didn't like how they introduced a bunch of interesting characters at the beginning and then only used them for the intro. Lincoln was cool but they didn't flesh him out much.

Regardless would pay for this even just to play Mafia 1 again, gonna be such a nostalgia trip. I get what you're saying though @brunothethird I'm not Italian but I'm sure some of the stories/dialogue won't age well lol

I'm really looking forward to Mafia 1 it is one of the best open world games. I also liked its story where a simple texi driver get sucked into their mess.

Just came on to say that, yes, they didn't do anything to Mafia 3 in terms of upgrades, but for those that have the game and didn't buy any of the DLC, it is free. You get the Definitive Edition (notice, that's it's not 'remaster') for free if you already have Mafia 3. That just means you get all the DLC. I also wanted to say, maybe it's due to having played a bunch of other games since I've played three, but am I wrong in saying that the game looks worse than it did?

The antialiasing is bad (when looking at power lines), the textures seem lower, and some previously eliminated bugs are back, as well as what seems like a lower resolution. Not to mention, the HDR is (albeit always has been) bad, but it seems even worse now. Not sure what's going on, but it looks mediocre now when originally I thought it looked pretty decent aside from the HDR and some weird lighting in general. I am playing on the Xbox One X.

Anyways, I already uninstalled it as I don't plan on playing it, but I was shocked at how bad it looked. That said, it still sounds great and plays fine. From what I saw, Mafia 2 Remaster doesn't look like it's worth getting unless you played it on Xbox 360/PS3, really enjoyed it, and didn't get the DLC.