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Darth_Navster

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Old Trouble in New Bordeaux: Thoughts on Mafia III

Welcome to New Bordeaux
Welcome to New Bordeaux

In the nearly ten years since its release, Grand Theft Auto IV to me remains one of the most daring big budget releases ever created. Centered around the struggles of the immigrant Niko Bellic as he seeks to escape his past and achieve the American dream, the game painted a rich portrait of how heavily a lifetime of violence can weigh down on one’s soul. With untold millions of dollars riding on the game’s success Rockstar could have easily doubled down on their successful PlayStation 2 era philosophy of making goofy wide open sandboxes, but instead insisted that their follow-up actually say something. Sadly, despite the acclaim that GTA IV garnered at its release, time has shown its influence to be limited. In the ensuing years open world games have gone on to focus on superpowers (Crackdown, inFamous), repeatable objectives (Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry), or general zaniness (Saints Row, Sunset Overdrive). While these games are by no means bad, none of them have scratched a similar itch to GTA IV. Even Rockstar appears to have moved away from it, following up their opus with the bonkers Grand Theft Auto V, a definite course correction back to the PS2 days.

I mention all this because I feel that Mafia III is the GTA IV successor that I’ve been waiting for all these years. Set in the 1968 New Orleans analog of New Bordeaux, the game tackles such heady themes as racial prejudice, the role of organized crime in communities, and the cost of violence on both the victim and the perpetrator. It’s a rebuke of America’s “shining city upon a hill” image through the eyes of a man who has never been given reason to see his country that way, and as a result it feels like the first open world game in a long while to actually say something.

The game’s story begins with protagonist Lincoln Clay returning to his hometown of New Bordeaux after a stint running special operations in Vietnam. Orphaned at a young age, Lincoln’s family has become the city’s black mob, led by the charismatic Sammy Robinson. Though he intends on heading out to California to start a new life, Lincoln is asked by Sammy to do one last favor to settle the debt he has with the city’s crime boss, Sal Marcano. That favor ends up being a daring robbery of the United States Mint, which Lincoln manages to pull off. Of course, this being a mob story, Sammy’s crew is betrayed and murdered by Marcano and Lincoln is left for dead. Thanks to a timely intervention by Lincoln’s surrogate father, priest James Ballard, his life is saved and he begins a campaign of revenge against the Marcano syndicate.

The facial animation in cut scenes is really quite impressive
The facial animation in cut scenes is really quite impressive

Mafia III is framed by a documentary set in the modern day. Focusing on Lincoln, the documentary is narrated by those who knew the modern day legend and those who remain in hot pursuit of the infamous criminal. This framing device provides an elegant way to get through exposition and establish a mythology around Lincoln, but it also allows for the game to comment on the morality of his actions. Though his quest for revenge is presented as justified, his desire to replace Sal Marcano as the city’s premier crime boss is murkier. The question remains with us throughout the game: will Lincoln’s dethroning of the admittedly repulsive Marcano really change anything?

Structurally, Mafia III’s gameplay is centered around territory control, and the crime rackets associated with said territory. The game operates on a pretty static loop in which Lincoln gets the dirt on a district’s crime boss, dismantles the boss’s operation such that they are forced out in the open, and then kills the boss and leaves the district to one of his lieutenants. Though this process can sound a little rote, the developers at Hangar 13 manage to add variety thanks to the individuality of each district. Taking over the union racket at the docks feels quite different from dismantling a PCP operation in a well-to-do suburb, for instance, and each crime boss comes with their own mini-story that act as a distraction from the overall plot. That’s not to say that taking down one racket after another in rapid succession won’t get repetitive at times, but there are enough side distractions in the open world along with some well-crafted set piece missions to ensure the loop doesn’t get too stale. Add to that a metagame where lieutenants can turn on you if they feel slighted in how the city is being carved up, and the process of taking over New Bordeaux feels sufficiently complex to sustain the campaign’s 20-30 hour runtime.

There's some great variety in the city's many districts
There's some great variety in the city's many districts

What feels particularly special about the racket takeover loops is how they escalate. Mafia III makes clear that not all crimes are equal, and so Lincoln’s takeover of the poor districts’ marijuana and moonshine rackets don’t make the same impact as his going after the politician blackmail racket downtown. Furthermore, as Lincoln’s activities attract more and more attention by the city at large, the game begins to consider the greater implications of what a black man committing acts of violence would look like to a largely prejudiced white populace. For example, an ongoing subplot involves a white homeowner who murdered two black travelers seeking help at his doorstep. Though the facts of the case strongly suggests a racist murdering black people in cold blood, the accused is able to weasel out of a conviction by suggesting that he thought that they were the same criminals as Lincoln.

Unsurprisingly, the issue of racial prejudice comes up often in Mafia III. Lincoln, being a biracial man in the southern United States in 1968, faces an uphill battle against the bigotry of his time and place. The N-word is used liberally, and mostly not in the re-appropriated style of the African-American community. But further to that, the institutional racism of New Bordeaux is reflected in the game’s systems. Lincoln cannot walk into whites-only businesses without being chastised to leave or getting law enforcement called on him. Additionally, police presence in black districts is practically non-existent, whereas the harsh eye of the law is laser focused on Lincoln when he goes through white areas of the city. What makes these systems work is that they don’t just make a commentary on racism, they also compliment the game’s escalating difficulty as Lincoln is given less leeway as he takes his campaign to the richest and whitest neighborhoods in the story’s latter half.

Beyond making implicit gestures to racism in its world and mechanics, the game will also make explicit statements in the form of missions. One particularly memorable late-game racket involves a KKK analog that at first appears to be making money from racist literature and merchandise. On the surface this makes sense as the racket’s leader, Remy Duvall, is a well known radio personality who throughout the game has been spewing out white supremacist diatribes over the airwaves. However, Lincoln soon uncovers that the group’s surface activities hide a human trafficking ring centered around re-establishing pre-Civil War slavery of black people. This revelation shocks Lincoln, and by extension shocked me. To see a racket that seemed to exist simply to feed such appalling bigotry made me angry, and I began to savor the opportunity to take down Duvall and his cohorts. Soon enough, I had freed enough would-be slaves that the group staged a rally to come after Lincoln. While I previously tried to take down racket bosses stealthily, I wanted to go loud for this one. I equipped a grenade launcher and proceeded to rain death upon untold numbers of white hooded assholes. After a very cathartic showdown, Duvall had been taken down. Lincoln, an artist whose medium is brutality, fittingly chose to string up Duvall on a cross and burn him to death. Boy did that mission feel good.

White supremacists? More like dead supremacists!
White supremacists? More like dead supremacists!

But of course, Lincoln’s statement was made irrelevant almost immediately. New Bordeaux’s white citizenry was appalled to see their native sons slaughtered so savagely, and an upstanding community leader like Remy Duvall murdered in such a profane manner. They did not see this as an act committed by the individual Lincoln Clay, but rather yet another lashing out of the degenerate black community. The shockwaves were so large that the city’s police chief declared a race war in New Bordeaux, leaving a vulnerable populace at the mercy of an angry and violent majority. It was at this moment that I began to realize that Lincoln’s actions carried the weight of his race in the eyes of whites who cared not to differentiate one black man from another, and that revelation made me realize the undercurrent of futility throughout the game.

Mafia III feels most like a successor to GTA IV in its focus on futility. Like Niko Bellic wondering if he can ever break the cycle of violence, those around Lincoln express doubt if he can ever walk away from his criminality. Father James acts as the game’s moral center, advising Lincoln to put the past behind him and build a new life free from harming others. But the call for revenge is too strong for our protagonist, and his campaign brings with it collateral damage that affects untold numbers of New Bordeaux residents. While Lincoln himself brushes this off as the unintended consequences of his righteous quest, the game does not let him off so easy. Lincoln Clay is not a good man, it seems to say, but he is not so unique in such a wicked city.

There’s a conviction to Mafia III that elevates what should be a standard open world crime game to something greater. It’s certainly a game with flaws, including a world relatively barren of side content and a myriad of technical and stability issues. But Lincoln Clay’s story was so compelling from beginning to end that I couldn’t help but see it through. It’s a nuanced narrative that paints a portrait of a complicated man in a complicated situation, and I’m still unpacking what it all means. Mafia III may not give me wacky superpowers to play with or goofy emergent gameplay, but what it does give me is an open world that attempts to say something. I just hope that I don’t have to wait another decade to see something similar.

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