Game Review: Mafia 3
Sage Advice: Don’t bury your best scene in the middle of unskippable credits
The Grand Theft Auto-inspired Mafia series churned out its third installment in 2016 after the somewhat maligned Mafia 2 came out in 2010. A new console generation would welcome Mafia 3’s storytelling focus with razor-sharp graphics and animations, but could 2K Games and development crew Hangar 13 craft a game and story well enough to excite and entertain?
The Mafia series biggest obstacle is the fact that The Godfather, Goodfellas, and many more mafia related films exist. There are many mafia stories rich with intrigue for Mafia 3 to be a story-intensive game is throwing itself into the deep end of the pool.
I respect that the creative director Haden Blackman, CEO of Hangar 13, would go ahead and build his Mafia 3 game around an African American lead in the diverse streets of Louisiana in the 1960s. It’s a bold move that would’ve paid off if the main character Lincoln Clay wasn’t so devoid of personality. The story devolved into being about a Rambo-like serial killer than a human being seeking revenge.
This is where the ironies begin to protrude themselves. Blackman, a LucasArts alumn, and lead writer, William Harms, are both white men. Most of Blackman’s writing experience is in the Star Wars and comics…
