Mafia III

As was the case with its predecessors, Mafia 3 wants to tell you a story of epic and grandiose proportions while also setting the game in an open game world environment not dissimilar in layout and scale to titles from the GTA and Saint’s Row franchises. Unlike them however, Mafia 3 doesn’t revel in wacky themes and satire, nor does it encourage sandbox gameplay. If anything it is most reminiscent of Ubisoft titles like Far Cry 3 and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate in terms of overall design.

The game is set in the fictional city of New Bordeaux, a location set in the American South and thematically inspired by New Orleans in the late 1960s. There are numerous references to real people and events from the era throughout the game and in some ways, Mafia 3 veers heavily into the realms of historical fiction while in other ways also making a concerted attempt to capture a cultural snapshot of the actual late 1960s.

The story is delivered in a framed narrative format, through documentary style interviews with the player character's associates, as filmed after the conclusion of the story. Each stage of the narrative is correspondingly fixed with cut scenes that act as parentheses for the delivery of that story. During game play itself, you play solely as Lincoln Clay. His backstory is that of a young black man who grew up in a New Bordeaux orphanage. When the orphanage closes down, Lincoln is taken in by local community leader, Sammy Robinson. Lincoln then joins the army, and becomes a special ops soldier; a trained and experienced killer in the Vietnam War. The war takes its toll on Lincoln's psyche but he remains centered through the connection he retains with the people that helped raise him. Their loss early on in the game therefore acts as the catalyst for an extended campaign of revenge co-planned by Lincoln’s former brother in arms in Vietnam (now CIA agent) John Donovan.

Playing Mafia 3 the video game is to actual Mafia events in 1960s New Orleans what watching a Boardwalk Empire box set is to actual Mafia events in 1920s Atlantic City. That is to say that several characters are loosely based on actual historical individuals but the story in Mafia 3 is predominantly a work of fiction and could not be called a true story.

For instance Sal Marcano, the mob boss of New Bordeaux is clearly based on Carlos Marcello, the actual head of the New Orleans crime family of the period. The overarching plot of Sal Marcano trying to pump all his ill-gotten money into casino develpment, and the tenuous associations with the assassination of JFK are also based on what Carlos Marcello actually did (and was alleged to have done).

Lincoln Clay is a protagonist of the Nathan Drake or John Marston mold. The likeable rogue, who has dry and witty things to say in between racking up a Rambo-level body count that ought to put him well beyond any potential for redemption in the context of a serious narrative. However, Mafia 3 tries, and to some extent succeeds in its aim to provide Lincoln with game play choices to enact such minor redemptions and to put karma points in his plus column but overall it was good to see that Hanger 13 didn’t take the disingenuous narrative step to give Lincoln the full mantle as heroic protagonist here given the nature of the game.

Let’s be frank, it's a massive murder simulator and no matter how good the protagonist's intent, the sustained killing going on can't be rationally thought of as righteous.

However, that doesn’t mean that tough issues can’t still be addressed and one the game does speak to well is the theme of the Vietnam War and the difficulties faced by returning Vets like Lincoln. I would argue that, if anything, Lincoln’s inability to adjust to post Vietnam life is the actual core narrative theme driving his vengeance story. It feels as if (like Lincoln Clay), John Donovan is similarly lost in his civilian life (as a CIA agent) and to him the idea of carrying out another military campaign with Lincoln makes more sense to him post-Vietnam than the desk job that would otherwise await him. Perhaps both are tragic victims of circumstance? Perhaps John is using Lincoln to forward his own investigative ends? Regardless, their dynamic is generally quite entertaining, well written, and among the strongest in the game.

Moving on to the gameplay itself; in-world combat and driving mechanics are semi-realistic and very reminiscent of GTA titles. Weapon handling is above average for an open world game but the breadth of the available weapon-set is narrow. To be fair though an argument could be made that this remains in keeping with the semi-realistic tone of the game as much as anything else. Maybe along similar lines there are no airplanes and no helicopters to fly (Lincoln isn’t a pilot). Weirdly however (and perhaps most notably), there are no motorbikes in the gameworld, and fast travel is also not an option.

Hanger 13 do want you to see and explore the world they’ve built here though, and with good reason too. It’s a game that really has some exceptionally stylish environments and set piece moments. The NPCs roaming this intriguing world are largely not available for conversation but have well written ambient dialogue and if hunting for collectibles is your thing you’ll hear a lot of it as you wander around. As for the collectibles themselves, there are several historically-themed types of these on offer, including actual Playboy magazines and album covers from the period.

After the expository narrative of the first few hours, the pattern for the rest of the game rapidly comes into focus. Mafia 3 is a narrative-heavy game that is driven forward by taking over mob territories one by one. To acquire the territories you first have to push out the existing mob lieutenants that are currently holding it. You draw them out by creating mayhem in their district (destroying their stuff and killing their sub-lieutenants mostly, but there are occasional ‘theft’ mission types also). Once you’ve killed an area’s boss you get to re-allocate it to one of three allied factions from whom you will then be able to extract a regular kickback payment. If you show particular favor in who you allocate to, then you’ll gain access to corresponding faction rep, and with greater rep, greater faction perks. Giving territory to one risks pissing off or losing altogether another faction. I felt that this was a great idea for a game play mechanic but also one that was slightly misconceived in that each faction’s lowest level perks were also their most useful to overall game play, so only the minimum playing of politics between factions was necessary to keep all factions on side, and thus retain access to each of their most useful perks.

Mafia 3 saves some of its best set piece missions for late game Capo take-downs, and to a slightly lesser extent the final mission itself. But it takes too long to get to these high points, and requires far too much busywork from the player throughout. The ‘pyramid of pyramids’ progression structure slows the narrative crescendo almost unforgivably in the final 10 hours (a sequence of missions that should take no more than half that time).

For all its quality then, Mafia 3 is a very hard game to recommend unequivocally. The tale it tells is worthy in terms of its epic scale and the characters within it are well realized, but overall Mafia 3 fundamentally does not respect your time as the player and is very badly paced in its middle and final thirds. The game play also doesn't come close to doing justice to the narrative scope, and what fun components there are to be found within it are to a large extent negated and made boring through excessive repetition.