Mafia 4 should have a retro ’90s setting inspired by The Sopranos

Mafia 4 ought to use a retro ’90s and early ’00s aesthetic as impressed by TV hit The Sopranos – identical to GTA: Vice Metropolis and its 1986-style Miami labored for Rockstar and Grand Theft Auto again in 2002.

The Mafia collection has already labored by means of the staples of the gangster style, starting with the Prohibition period Thirties within the unique recreation, by means of the post-war opportunism of the Fifties in Mafia 2, and the fashionable, freewheeling Nineteen Sixties in Mafia 3. For the now-confirmed Mafia 4, the plain selection can be the Seventies. Utilizing movies like The French Connection, Imply Streets, and Serpico, developer Hangar 13 have a stable visible foundation for a wet, gray New York Metropolis that would function the best backdrop for the following Mafia recreation. Cruising round in a chunky muscle automotive, carrying a wing-collar go well with and aviators, it’s simple to think about your self taking part in by means of a narrative concerning the mob’s descent into drug dealing and in-fighting.

However that’s the plain selection, and a visible fashion that’s already been touched on by video games like Driver, and the – admittedly forgotten – 2006 crime sim Made Man. Particularly taking a look at horror video games proper now, there’s a rising fascination with the Nineteen Nineties. Sport-makers like Puppet Combo have carved a major area of interest with PS1-style blocky graphics and world design, and although I’m loath to confess it lest I crumble into mud at my keyboard, the ’90s have been now lengthy sufficient in the past to be thought of authentically retro. When GTA: Vice Metropolis launched in 2002, its 1986 model of a fictionalised Miami was retro by a mere 16 years. 1995, in the meantime, was 27 years in the past. If Mafia desires to remain hooked up to the previous, there’s no hurt in setting Mafia 4 through the period of Spice Ladies, Tamagotchis, and dial-up web.

It’s one of many issues that makes The Sopranos so visually distinctive. These cumbersome cellphones, Reebok tracksuits, and trendy BMW M5s make David Chase’s definitive TV opus stand out even immediately. It’s one thing we haven’t seen in videogames earlier than, and it might pave the way in which for a really completely different mob story. Quite than following the Cosa Nostra by means of its numerous heydays, both within the days of prohibition, or the peak of its political energy within the ’50s, inserting Mafia 4 within the Nineteen Nineties would allow us to expertise the mafia’s autumn years and gradual decline.

I’m reminded of the sombre, impending doom that suffuses each Grand Theft Auto 4 and Purple Lifeless Redemption 2, this sense that you simply’re – to paraphrase Tony Soprano throughout his first assembly with Dr. Melfi – coming into one thing “on the finish”. Like Mafia 3 subverted expectations by having you combat towards moderately than alongside the mob, in a narrative charged by the racial politics of the American deep south, a ’90s-set Mafia 4 might flip the tables on the everyday rags-to-riches dynamic of an open-world recreation.

And consider the music. Radiohead. Nirvana. Tupac. Future’s Little one. Mafia 4 might have a jukebox soundtrack to rival Vice Metropolis. The substances are all there, and I’m critically hoping 2K doesn’t fall again on one thing extra anticipated and rote, just like the ’70s and even ’80s, simply because they’ve an arguably extra confirmed observe document. Mafia 4 within the ’90s might be an open-world gangster recreation like we haven’t seen earlier than, a journey to the underside, the place we see the period of Mafia impunity come to an finish, moderately than the by-now acquainted rise-to-power narrative that the style typically delivers. Given how the collection was reinvented for Mafia 3, I need to see that very same drive for originality permeate a sequel.

Whereas it has been formally confirmed, Mafia 4 is seemingly nonetheless a few years away, and “Mafia 4” continues to be, in reality, a provisional title. Whlie we await extra info, we advocate you take a look at among the finest sandbox video games and finest crime video games on PC. There’s additionally the – apparently impending – arrival of GTA 6, so make certain to check out every thing we all know concerning the GTA 6 launch date, info, and hypothesis, as Rockstar supposedly gears up for a return to Vice Metropolis.