Mafia turns 20: Why the series needs to look back to go forward

digitaltrends.com:

The Mafia video game series turns 20 today. Open-world crime game series like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row often have a wacky, satirical tone. Mafia, on the other hand, takes more inspiration from The Godfather to craft open-world adventures that are part linear gangster stories and part criminal simulators. It’s a Grand Theft Auto-like series that spans multiple developers, countries, and console generations. After over 33 hours of playtime across every game in the series, I’ve come away surprised at just how different each game in this series is from the others and been impressed that this franchise managed to last this long.

In 2020, 2K and Hanger 13 released Mafia: Trilogy, which included Mafia: Definitive Edition (a remake of the first game), Mafia II: Definitive Edition (an HD remaster of the second game), and Mafia 3: Complete Edition (a version of the 2016 game with all DLC included). As all three games are on PlayStation Plus Extra, I played through them when I signed up for the new subscription service in July. With a fourth game reportedly on the horizon, I wanted to see why this series survived lots of hardship and what a fourth Mafia game would need to do to be successful.

Many games and series like Mafia have come and gone in the 20 years since it was released, but Mafia endured and constantly evolved with three games that are quite different from each other. While analyzing each Mafia game exposes some notable but different flaws with each title, combining the best aspects of all three games could make the reportedly in development Mafia IV an amazing experience.

Illusion Softworks released Mafia in 2002 after four years of development. It’s what put this series on the map with an experience that feels