I think Mafia III is going to be the first game I attempt to do an actual "review" of (I've posted a few on this site in the past but I'm considering a very comprehensive breakdown of why this game works and why it doesn't) and I have to say that one thing that sticks out most is the artificial nature of everything going on in the mid-game. All these goons with names and backstories and rackets don't actually matter to me, and essentially are just guys I can't kill with bullets and refuse to kill with a knife because I'll earn more money longterm if they live.
Meanwhile, I'm the de facto head of the black mob (a mob we're led to believe definitely existed in this world prior to the end of the prologue) and yet I'm still taking orders from a guy while he cuts carrots in the visitor center of his local boardwalk minutes after I walked into an abandoned house with him and two other people and told them all I'd murder them single handedly if they didn't listen to what I had to say. There's no evidence that I'm representing anyone other than myself, and as such the game often makes me feel no different than a Michael De Santa trying to please everyone around me so they'll just get off my back and let me be at peace with myself.
I picture a game with a version of the Nemesis system (Shadow of Mordor), where I pit my underlings against theirs while I got to the gym, run scams on cars and other seemingly minor activities, only to suddenly be faced with "2/3 of your guys are dead, this guy wants access to your docks and what are you gonna do it about, huh?" and spring into action. But on an even simpler level, why can't I offer rackets to my black friends from back in the day? Am I really playing the one black guy in 1968 "New Bordeaux" that had three black friends and two of them were murdered during my homecoming party?
This is a thing that's actually helped make the storytelling of Vice City standout more over time, because you were given bigger and bigger problems as you became more and more powerful, yet there was also a hint of Tommy Vercetti that felt the job could only be done right if he was the one to do it. Still, in 2004 terms you definitely had the feeling you were a mob boss getting your hands dirty only because you were bored, or felt you had to, not because you were told to. San Andreas backed this power fantasy up further but not only having you call goons in, but actively having them join you off the streets if you pulled over and honked the horn.
Two years after Shadow of Mordor and a decade+ after those two open world crime pinnacles, Mafia III often acts as if it learned nothing. Here's my list of ongoing pros/cons and a couple anecdotes I'd like to flesh out in a full write-up once I've seen the game through (I imagine I'm at about the 50% point):
pros:
weight, impact, movement
motion capture, voice acting, writing
unique setting
soundtrack
cool playboy interviews (beatles, rich white men)
revenge porn
cons:
gates on driveways are stupid
rehash combat arenas
loot lust
directionless midgame
half-baked systems (police, henchmen, A.I.)
crazy lighting system
lack of open world logic
stunted mobility
health damage in car crashes
stand-still side mission conversations (Nikki Burke vs. Father James/weed guy)
cutscenes pre-rendered
lack of black mob (there's the Haitian mob, but where are all your friends from before the war?)
lack of radio diversity
car flips, character tossed out (appaears to have been patched?)
orange car delivieries
repetitive interiors
moments after stealing my one and only car that had people in it, I felt as though I’d discovered how empty this game truly was at its core.
finished mission, got in a car, engine didn’t start and couldn’t drive, got out and a person popped into car, couldn’t enter other cars or order a vehicle because the game thought I was still in a car, closed the application hoping that would fix things and lost 1-2 hours of progress
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