Don’t Compare Mafia: The Old Country to GTA 6, Dev Says — They’re Not as Similar as You’d Think

ign.com:

It seems remarkable that Mafia: The Old Country and Grand Theft Auto 6 may end up releasing within a few months of each other, more remarkable still that they’re both owned by the same parent company. Both games are about crime, murder, and getting up to no good, and while one is set in 1900s Sicily and the other a fictional representation of Miami, you’d be forgiven for thinking the developers of Mafia: The Old Country would prefer a bit more breathing room from the behemoth that is GTA 6.

But in an interview with IGN ahead of Mafia: The Old Country’s trailer reveal at The Game Awards 2024, game director Alex Cox and Hangar 13 president Nick Baynes dismissed those concerns, and even distanced their game from comparisons to GTA 6. GTA 6, of course, is set to offer perhaps the most advanced open world ever created. Mafia: The Old Country, on the other hand, shouldn’t be considered an open-world game at all.

Rather, the pair insisted, Mafia: The Old Country is more like Mafia 1 and 2 than it is the open-world Mafia 3. It is a “linear, narrative-driven” game, a “focused package” that offers a “cinematic experience.” You might find yourself driving around an authentic representation of 1900s Sicily in Mafia: The Old Country, or even riding around on horseback a bit like that other Rockstar game, but the similarities stop there.

Read on to find out why Hangar 13 opted to go back in time rather than forward, the steps the developer took to make sure its version of 1900s Sicily is just right, and the threat of GTA 6 pretty much stomping all over it.

IGN: Can you tell me a bit about Enzo?

Alex Cox: Yeah, sure. The trailer's themed around Enzo's initiation. He's being initiated into the Torrisi crime family. The Don, the guy that's cutting his lip, is the crime boss and he’s the guy who Enzo answers to in the game. Enzo starts in a very humble way. He starts his story in the Sicilian sulfur mines. They were a hidden history I suppose to some extent for people. But there was this