Mafia: Definitive Edition is a fascinating relic to play in 2020. Though maintaining its aged structure, a shiny new veneer helps ease players into a unique mobster game that was obscured by time.
Mafia: Definitive Edition is plucked from time.
In ways, it is a time capsule, preserving a vision that first came to be in 2002. Yet as a remake, it acts as a more digestible, refined way to fall back into a classic or allow newcomers to experience it for the first time.
Tommy Angelo, Mafia‘s anti-hero, is the typical scrappy rogue that graced a number of games around the Grand Theft Auto 3 era. Players have another man who starts near the bottom and through perseverance and deadly force manages to become the guy developers hope you’ll root for. In 2002, a game featuring guns, bloodbaths, open worlds, and driving were not rare. In the years since, they are even more commonplace.
Mafia‘s ability to rise above the clutter no doubt came from its reliance on the tropes we came to love in gangster movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas. I’ll admit that I have never played a Mafia game before now, likely as a result of being primarily a Nintendo person during the time. But honestly, I can see the appeal the game had for players almost twenty years ago.
Told through a series of flashbacks as Tommy recounts his whirlwind life of crime, Mafia excels at placing players into a piece of fiction comfortably nestled in the history of 1930s Prohibition. Set in the fictional Illinois city of Lost Heaven, Tommy finds himself embroiled in a feud between the Salieri and Morello crime families. By being in the wrong place at the wrong time Tommy soon gets swept up in “the life” and switches his taxi cab for a Tommy Gun.
Watching Tommy recount his life to a police investigator provides a looming curiosity over everything that precedes it. Why is he talking to the cops? What crimes has he committed? Is Tommy an informant? Curious players may find this swirl of questions a valuable thread to follow during a familiar mobster story.
Though Mafia doesn’t offer anything new in terms of its core story, the narrative is a fascinating piece of interaction fiction. Organized crime is frequently used in gaming but often relegated to side quests or occurring in the modern day. By taking players all the way back into the 1930s, original developer Illusion Softworks (which is now Hangar 13) crafted a world packed with attention to detail even when using the tropes of the genre. Lost Heaven is covered in period-specific set dressing. Car radios will spout out news or information relative to the time. Cars chug along with weight and purpose. Guns fire with old, deadly cracks. As the years progress in Tommy’s story, players will even notice the content of Lost Heaven transform in small ways.
Mafia: Definitive Edition also retains many of the interesting quirks the game introduced. Players may notice that Lost Heaven isn’t exactly an open world throughout the entire game. Like in the original, Mafia: Definitive Edition‘s story pushes players through chapters that contain missions specific to certain sections of the world. The goal is to guide players from Point A to Point B in the narrative and then move on. Missions consist of shooting, fisticuffs, driving, shakedowns, and typical mob activities. The sharp transitions from scene to scene can be a bit jarring but for 2002 and 2020, it’s an interesting way to unfold a story.
Because I have no experience with the original Mafia, I can’t really speak to the way Hangar 13 expanded upon the story or how different the new voice cast sounds. That being said, it’s quite obvious a lot of care went into rebuilding Mafia from the ground up and doing the work to not completely alter the fabric of the original. Lost Heaven is a remarkable setting, reminding me of L.A. Noire in terms of setting the tone for a period of time. I understand that some of the driving and gameplay has been adjusted to make it more palatable for modern audiences.
Police in Mafia feel different from just about anything in this era and decades ago. Players who don’t mind the rules of the road may find themselves paying minor fines, making the world a bit more believable. Of course, Tommy unleashing hell on the citizens of Lost Heaven will result in a typical shootout. To counter the somewhat linear nature of the narrative, Mafia: Definitive Edition combines the Free Ride and Free Ride Extreme modes of Mafia into one package. Players wishing to explore the entirety of Lost Heaven can dive into Free Ride without restriction of story and less distractions. Players seeking the cars and missions of Free Ride Extreme will have to seek them out in the world, providing a good deal of extra content for those wanting to dive deeper into the world. Four difficulties are on offer with the “classic” difficulty giving players a true challenge akin to the original Mafia and that era of gaming.
Appreciating the modern flourishes of Mafia: Definitive Edition is easy but it also makes the dated aspects of the game stick out a lot more. Gunfights may unfold with chaos and melee clashes can be particularly brutal, yet that doesn’t take away from the stilted AI and character animations that rear their ugly heads. Often, Mafia: Definitive Edition looks the part but doesn’t often play like it. Shooting can feel old and the stealth sections feel even older. In 18 years, games have come a long way.
Let’s face it, Mafia is a relic. But Mafia: Definitive Edition has taken this relic and given it enough care that it doesn’t become lost in time. Players who first went on this journey of crime in 2002 may get misty-eyed when reliving the escapades of Tommy Angelo and his found family. The new audience who wants to see what all the fuss is about may get caught up on the more ancient aspects of Mafia but won’t be able to ignore the game’s unparalleled atmosphere. Bundled with the remastered version of Mafia II and the complete Mafia III, Mafia: Definitive Edition stands incredibly strong and may rekindle new interest in the series in its quest to find some path forward.
