The Mafia series is renowned for compelling storytelling and three-dimensional characters, but have you ever stopped to think about how important its city settings have been to making it so believable?
“The city is a character in its own right," says Haden Blackman, studio head at Hangar 13 and creative director on Mafia III. “That was certainly established in Mafia II that Empire Bay is a character in its own right, so we wanted to bring that forward [in Mafia III]... [it] was really important to us.”
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It wasn’t just the case for Mafia II, either. In the original Mafia, the 1930s city of Lost Heaven was a combination of San Francisco and Chicago. Lost Heaven facilitated the rags-to-riches tale of Tommy Angelo during the Great Depression, which helped to position the protagonist as a sympathetic character, creating a compelling context for why he might want to join the Italian Mob.
For Mafia II, 1950s Empire Bay represented a mashup of Boston, Detroit, New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. Vito Scaletta, protagonist of Mafia II, is a thief-turned-soldier, who returns from World War II and has a con-man-to-made-man rise through the ranks of the Italian Mob during a heavily romanticised golden era of organised crime families.
For Lost Heaven and Empire Bay, the respective time periods of Mafia and its sequel were crucial in pushing the character of each city, both intrinsically linked to the real-world history of the United States of America at the time as well as the plight of the protagonists. This meshing of history and fiction in the Mafia series is what Blackman refers to as “historical pulp fiction.”
“It’s set in a real time in our world, essentially, so you reference real-world events but you’re telling your own story, and it’s still fiction, so you’re dealing with the salacious side of things,” he tells me.
Mafia and Mafia II featured Italian-American protagonists who were able to capitalise on their ethnicity by becoming part of the so-called family. In Mafia III, Lincoln Clay is a biracial orphan of African-American descent living in a fictionalised Southern United States city called New Bordeaux, which is based on 1968 New Orleans. There’s a lot that’s changed between Mafia II’s 1950 setting and the social upheaval surrounding the real-world history behind Mafia III’s New Bordeaux.
The streets of New Bordeaux at night.
The Big Easy looks incredible.
“There are a lot of changes,” says Bill Harms, lead writer on Mafia III. “If you go from what the world was in the ’50s to 1968, like, just that era of social upheaval, legal upheaval, the civil rights act, things like that. This is the very first inklings of [other] criminal elements [that] were going to change [the landscape]. In the ’40s, it was World War II, and then later on it was the Korean War, [then the] Vietnam [War]. 1968 is when all of those guys started coming home [from Vietnam] and going, ‘You know what? Maybe everything you’re seeing on the news isn’t jiving with what we saw,’ and that’s when you really started seeing protests and things like that.
“I wouldn’t say it’s the polar opposite, but it is significantly different for how society viewed a variety of things from war to rights for African-Americans, rights for women, and even the music. You hear Paint It Black from The [Rolling] Stones, that is a song of the ’60s, or what I consider one of the best songs ever written, Fortunate Son. That song would not have been written in 1952. In the ’60s, that song perfectly encapsulates what is going on in a lot of ways.”
Music is another big part of the Mafia franchise, and the rise of R&B, hard rock and psychedelic tunes during Mafia III’s time period helps to emphasise the darker shades of grey the game is exploring. The soundtrack also acts as a sometimes contrasting musical backdrop to the brutal violence that the player partakes in during particular action-heavy missions. Much like how Stanley Kubrick forever changed the mental imagery that accompanies once-innocent classic ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, Mafia III’s often subdued combat soundtrack provides a black-comedy contrast to the on-screen brutality.
Protagonist Lincoln Clay killing rival mobsters.
The sun's in my heart and I'm ready for love.
This kind of violence in gameplay is actually part and parcel with the time period in which Mafia III is set. “We wanted to show it is a violent time period,” says Blackman. “It’s a time period marked by one of the most destructive wars in our history, and it’s marked by high-profile assassinations and riots and conflict at home and abroad. Even in film and television, things were getting more violent in popular fiction. You’re only a handful of years away from things like Texas Chainsaw Massacre; all of that is building. We put all of that into the hopper, mentally and creatively, and let that come out.”
The ’60s was also a crucial time for the Italian Mob, as this was the time period when organised crime families started to rise from other cultures. “We know that by the late 1960s, the Italian Mafia was not only being challenged by the government and the public, but also other criminal groups,” says Blackman. “Setting the game in 1968 allows us to explore that part of the Mob’s history and recapture the term ‘Mafia’ to mean more than just the Italian Mob.”
For Mafia III, this challenge to the Italian Mob comes most notably from protagonist Lincoln Clay. As an orphan, his search for a different kind of family has gone through multiple crucibles: from state orphanage to crime family; from crime family to the fraternity of soldiery in the Vietnam War; then from war to a pursuit for bloody justice after the Italian Mob attacks his adoptive family. To aid in his vengeance, Clay’s flanked by three lieutenants – Vito Scaletta (yes, that Vito), Thomas Burke and Cassandra – who squabble in sibling-like fashion when it comes time for the player to divvy up a newly won hideout or a freshly conquered district.
From what I played, the implication is that favouring one or two of your lieutenants over another could lead to dire endgame consequences from within your organisation. Harms told me that neglected lieutenants will remember what you promised versus what you delivered and that will “play out”. As for threats outside of Clay’s new blood-drenched crime family, these stem from obvious places, such as rival gang members, to the less obvious historically confronting realities of being a person of African-American appearance living in the Southern United States.
“The behaviour of pedestrians and NPCs – certainly not everywhere throughout the game, but in large sections of it – there are places where if Lincoln looks out of place and seems out of place, people will react to that,” says Blackman. “There are places you can go that just being there is an offence and will elicit a police response. We aren’t so naïve to think that a single game could cure racism, but if we can get the player to think, ‘Why am I being treated differently here than in other parts of town?’ then I think we’ve done something worthwhile.”
Two African American characters being questioned by a policeman on the streets of New Bordeaux.
It was a tense time in American history.
It’s a landmark gameplay mechanic for the franchise, whereby the player will be treated as hostile just because of the colour of Clay’s skin. As a gameplay mechanic, it extends beyond the usual suspicious treatment that comes when a player enters a clearly flagged out-of-bounds area. As a narrative tool, it creates a powerful empathy between player and protagonist, bringing into question the notion of police and even civilian innocence when racist beliefs result in negative treatment, even when the player may not be doing anything illegal at the time.
As it stands, the first two Mafia games provided believable contexts for why the respective protagonists would want to join, then ultimately betray, the Italian Mob. For Mafia III, Hangar 13’s creation of a bloody tale of vengeance makes that context, initially, a bit more elusive, but ultimately delivers the goods by making Lincoln Clay the kind of underdog protagonist who is quite literally facing adversaries at almost every turn. By setting the game during a time of social upheaval with a protagonist who’s treated as a second-class citizen in a fictionalised take on New Orleans, Mafia III is positioned to create a play space that’s simultaneously hostile and engaging. And that, really, is the ideal location for a bloody revenge story.