Mafia III: One Year Later

Mafia III has generated a lot of strong reactions in the year since it's release, with many comments focused on its buggy initial release to its film-quality cutscenes and beefy, immensely satisfying gunplay while the game as a whole seems to have slipped into the back of peoples' minds while developer Hangar 13 plugged away for a year, releasing a major DLC expansion every couple of months until finally calling it after July's offering, Sign of The Times. While I think all of the DLC is worth the entry price, I don't think I'm going to cover how it all shook out in the same way that I talked about the base game, especially as Noah Caldwell-Gervais just put out another solid video going over exactly that and I'm still figuring out how what I think about all of it. If I had to give a quick hits list, I would say Stones Unturned is my favorite and the overall most well-done despite it throwing the "grounded exploration of racism" vibe of the base game out with the bathwater, out of the Sears Tower.

Faster, Baby! and Sign of The Times both have problems with their relation to the tone of the base game as well, but Stones Unturned felt much more committed to a singular tonal experience and consequently a bit more compelling to follow. Yes, that experience was naked Predator worship but the DLC's island setting was stunning and the focus on linear combat arenas, plus the new toys gifted to Lincoln along the way made the experience more than just passable. To me the cracks showed more visibly in the other 2 DLC packs as they failed to mesh their gameplay with their tones - the pairing of stunt driving a la The Dukes of Hazzard with violent rural bigotry in Faster, Baby! is about as natural a duo as you can imagine and Sign of The Times' earnest and very affecting portrait of a person who was psychologically ruined by a freaky cult features slo-mo gun battles in nightclubs with knife wielding Manson sisters who cruise around in funny car hearses with motherfucking Addams Family spiderweb grills. Also, there are "psychedelic" drug trip sequences because why not. So maybe Stones Unturned is my favorite because it just picked 1 thing and did it well without stretching itself out over a thinner, more repetitive sequence of missions like the other DLCs.

Past the DLCs and their individual experiences, though, I wanted to talk about an aspect of the Mafia III package that I haven't seen as many people mention as I would have figured: its presentation, from graphics to UI, and music choices in both its licensed soundtrack and original soundtrack. Because this game has some of the strongest presentation and sense of style that I have experience in quite a while.

Presentation

Lighting

Since Mafia III does not have a photo mode its difficult to produce screenshots that really do the lighting system at work here justice, but I've spent some time trying anyway and so have some other auteurs. Take a look:

No screenshots of the pre-rendered scenes, because that is cheating. Everyone has already mentioned how utterly amazing they look, and I am in complete agreement. I've played through Mafia III 3 times at this point and still find myself glued to the screen whenever a scene is playing, no matter how trivial. They're all executed with such style and pathos (as is the writing), and the performances are rendered so powerfully, particularly by Alex Hernandez, who plays Lincoln Clay, although truthfully the whole cast of characters is wonderfully portrayed.

Anyway, the lighting. You can probably tell by the daytime shots above that there is a noticeable amount of blur present, and while it isn't something everyone enjoys I feel like it fits the cinematic nature of the game. When you choose to open the main menu with a countdown reel and frame the whole narrative as a years-later documentary it tracks that the resulting images will be a bit more film-like than life-like, and while the overexposed sunlight can be a bit frustrating when it blocks out the road during the sunrise, it is more than when worth it when you find yourself in the bayou at a quiet moment as the wind breezes through the trees and the warm orange Louisiana light seeps through the canopy. Nighttime is where the lighting truly shines, though, as billboards and neon signage cut through the darkness and the rich interior illumination of bars, clubs, and even modest homes lend a real sense of place to the environments of New Bourdeaux. It's also the best time to enjoy the many minute details that dot the game's world and objects that contribute significantly to immersion, mostly related to the cars. Such as:

- The reflection of lights on car exteriors is fantastic at this time. Reflections also bounce of chrome bumpers and trim with equal fidelity, unlike during the day when they just look off.
- Headlights and taillights turn on & off slowly as the bulbs heat up/cool off instead of the instantaneous on/off of modern halogen lights.
- Car bodies shift noticeably when people get in and out, as well as when you turn the wheels while the car is stationary.
- Exhaust pipes start rattling once the car is started and fumes are only visible issuing from the pipe when the car is actually revving.
- A handful of cars in the game are customizable and feature different Mad Max-sized blowers that can be installed. Some of these are visible jutting through the hood a la the Black On Black's famous Weiand supercharger while some have custom hood scoops modeled specifically for that ride. Another little thing, but a nice touch all the same.

There are also a couple of more simulation-ish mechanics supposedly functional in the game code that were either removed during development such as the need to manage your car's fuel gauge and occasionally top up, and methods for the engine to track tire traction by factoring in different treads and fuel levels (!). Whether or not it was a good decision to remove these pieces is not the point of this piece, but even as Mafia III stands today it is obvious that a huge amount of work went into the design, modeling, and texturing of the cars in this game and in my mind it really stand out as great stuff. The Mafia series has always been a period piece and American cars a huge part of the time and place that is part of all of the games in this series, and Mafia III impresses in that area.



Audio

Like all period pieces, the visual side of things is only one piece of the puzzle. Creating and utilizing a suitable stable of sound effects and tracks is essential for building and maintaining the atmosphere Hangar 13 was trying to create here, and Mafia III is probably more successful in this realm than the visual aspect of its presentation - at least, I've heard a lot more people praising the soundtrack and included licensed songs than the graphics outside of the custscenes, and probably for good reason. The combination of original music and licensed tunes is so strong and well-used in this game I have a hard time of thinking of other examples that do a similarly good job. Like Grand Theft Auto, Mafia III's are never really mentioned or commented on by the game itself, unless you count the collectible album covers in the latter which seems like a stretch. The original pieces recorded specifically to fill out the game's aural space remind me of Red Dead Redemption in how they so excellently match the tone and feel of the game's themes while elevating the minutia of the experience like loading screens, small repetitive bits of combat, etc. Then there is a third group of pieces that could probably fall under the "Original Soundtrack" heading as they are found solely out in the open world as the "b-sides" of Mafia III, popping out from stereos, leaking audibly out of houses, and filling the jazz clubs found in the game's version of the French Quarter.

The influence of popular music in Mafia III cannot be overstated. Between the softly plucked notes of the OST accompanying the concept-art loading screens and menus and the naturalistic beauty of the title screen featuring Jimi Hendrix's iconic cover of "All Along The Watchtower" swirling all around, even the more technical "game-y" elements aren't permitted to deviate from the atmosphere Jesse Harlin and Jim Bonney's rich score have woven. Normally the main menu of a video game is the least immersive piece of it, affixed with a grid of options for tweaking controls and deleting old save files, but Mafia III's main menu has none of that: two simple options - continue, and new game. The PC version has a bit of a cop-out in the form of a splash screen menu that comes up before the game properly launches allowing you to tweak settings but it's clear that even the under-the-hood maintenance of difficulty settings and different resolutions are intended to be just as much a part of the Mafia III experience as the actual gameplay. The title screen's heavily stylized nature reminds me of similarly pathos-drenched titles like those of Frictional Games, notably the gut-twisting dirge of Amnesia: The Dark Descent  and the harsh glitch-horror aesthetic of Soma; Red Dead Redemption remains the closest point of comparison in terms of atmosphere and sound design to Mafia III in my mind.

Original Soundtrack & Other Assorted Noises

The original soundtrack is a rich stew of delta blues, swamp rock, and quietly plucked acoustic mood pieces that accentuate combat and cutscenes, never actually playing while the player is just roaming around, which is an interesting choice. If you're in a car then it obviously makes more sense to just listen to the radio but if you're pounding the pavements you are left with the raw sounds of the city to occupy your ears - cars fading into and out of earshot, the idle conversations of NPCs around you, and snippets of muffled songs faintly heard playing from within houses and buildings. While the conversations between NPCs are generally pretty funny and decent enough at selling the period (discussing that goofy new show Star Trek or remarking on L. Ron Hubbard's fantastic new book), the sequestering of the OST tunes into combat arenas and discrete story moments is maybe more common than I am aware of, as I have not played any open world games besides the Far Cry series and Mad Max in the last couple of years and both of those games weave their music into their minute-to-minute gameplay which I assume is the default way of implementing soundtracks. I would be curious to see if GTA V does this as well?

The rest of the music you'll hear outside of licensed material is more ephemeral - random jazz tunes and other forms of semi-elevator music not really significant enough to be included as part of the OST proper apparently. Just like Red Dead Redemption with it's saloon piano pieces! I haven't been able to find any credits for these tracks so I'm not sure who to give credit to for them, but they are another square in Mafia III's atmospheric quilt ranging from free jazz to instrumental slot-fillers on the radio to commercial jingles and more.

Licensed Songs and Radio Programs

Here we get to the real meat n' potatoes of Mafia III's audio - 100+ tracks ranging from set-in-stone classics (Rolling Stones, Jimi, Aretha Franklin) to long forgotten standards (CCR, Sam and Dave) down to (as someone who was not alive in the 60's) some fairly deep cuts, in particular "Needles and Pins" by The Searchers which is just bizarrely funny to me as a longtime Megadeth fan . That "100+" number seems a little high to me as someone with 120 hours in the game, because I experienced a lot of repeats on the radio during my time with Mafia III but whatever. This is the part of Mafia III people mention the most besides the cutscenes and for good reason, because it is incredibly impressive how well the soundtrack fits this game. You could write a whole essay on the relationship between the game and just Credence Clearwater Revival's music as it fits the game so well it's almost scary. Fuck, maybe I will because blasting through the bayou in a knockoff Ford Torino with "Born On The Bayou" piping in through the speakers is way way way more enjoyable and thematically on point than you would think it is reading it on a screen. Of course if you aren't a fan of AOR than you probably won't be spending too much time with the dial cranked but if you were willing to try the game at all I think you self-selected for enough of a tolerance of vaguely cinematic historical stuff that you will either grin and bear it or find something else to enjoy with the game.

Anyway, the final piece of the auditory puzzle I wanted to mention is the nature of the radio programs in Mafia III because they are a bit different than the ones you have heard in GTA and Saint's Row. There are only two actual "shows" in the whole game (three if you count the news bulletins that chime in about the latest interchangeable Sopranos extra that you rapidly ventilated and sprinkle in references to topical news events), one being a kind of revolutionary BLM type after hours rant (delivered by the golden-voice goodness of Dave Fennoy) and the other a landed-gentry polite racism talk show. What is most interesting to me about these smaller chunks of the radio content is how easy they are to miss, because as far as I am aware none of them are mandatory even though they are queued up to coincide with particular story beats, and they are surprisingly lengthy, coming to a total of about an hour of runtime throughout the game's narrative. If you aren't interested in buying the game just for the opportunity to listen to the in-game radio you can check out one of the shows here .