I hope the cars in Mafia: The Old Country are slow enough to drive backwards

Me and the other mafia sickos would love to drive so unbelievably slow in The Old Country. We’re cackling with delight at the prospect of taking the reins of a horseless carriage in 1900s Sicily – a time when cars were an obscene, rickety toy for those with more money than sense. We’re rubbing our hands at the thought of taking corners like a bowling ball as the police pass us on foot. We’re itching to get our hands on the Fiat 6 HP, a race car that looks like an oversized baby carriage.

Why? Because this slightly perverse, backward quirk is part of Mafia’s DNA. You could argue that the series becomes more and more itself the further back in time it goes. The first game—an urban open-world game released at the height of GTA fever in 2002 and faithfully remade for the Definitive Edition a few years ago—began in the Prohibition era.

Low speed pursuit

Snowy streets of Empire Bay in Mafia 2: Definitive Edition — (Image credit: Hangar 13)

Where Vice City emulated the Ferrari Testarossa and big dune buggies of 80s Miami, Mafia leaned on the Gothic hearses and Cruella de Vil-mobiles of the era. The first mission, An Offer You Can’t Refuse, had you flipping two smart alecks out of the back of your cab – you apologized and muttered under your breath as you helplessly crashed into every other lamppost in a gently fictionalized Chicago.

This dedication to setting may sound absurd—funny, even. Why cruise at a top speed of 46 mph when you can perform stunt flips between skyscrapers on the streets of Los Santos? That steady pace, however, is a crucial part of the way Mafia grounds its action. Yes, you have to spend the second mission of the original game chauffeuring passengers to their destinations—taking care not to exceed the speed limit for fear of being pulled over by the police, in a farcical twist in Crazy Taxi. But if you didn’t, you’d never understand why protagonist Tommy is drawn to the dangerous, glamorous life of a gangster.

The Mafia games were never afraid to bore you to make a point. The sequel had you stacking boxes on the docks, tasting the bleak discontent of a life honestly lived before you were dragged into the world of the family. It’s an approach that added dynamic range to the story – as did the pianissimo A section of an overture, sung in a whisper, can give the orchestra space to swell into a powerful crescendo of brass and thundering cannons.

To be fair, we didn’t always understand what Illusion Softworks was aiming for in the 00s. Back then, open-world games were more brutal, and expectations were set by the chaotic toy box of GTA, which was packed with explosive distractions. When Mafia 2 came out, Eurogamer accused it of “destroying the myth that the Mafia is interesting at all.”

“It claims that the world of the Mafia is a hell of boredom, populated by aggressively stupid automatons,” site’s 4/10 rating concluded. “These drones wake up every morning, perform a series of repetitive tasks, and return home.”

Gangsters drinking in a bar in Mafia

(Image credit: Illusion Software)

That’s no dig at Eurogamer in particular, which was simply moving with the times. But it’s worth noting that Rockstar seemed to get it. While the developer regularly criticized Driver in its games, it never took aim at Mafia. Perhaps that’s simply because the two series shared a paymaster at Take-Two. But I’m willing to believe that the GTA studio understood that Illusion Softworks was doing something different and important.

Certainly, by the time Rockstar launched LA Noire, you could see close parallels between Team Bondi’s cop series and Mafia. Both games treated their open worlds like lush movie sets – not as an endless source of distraction, but as a textural tool that deepened your connection to the stories unfolding against their backdrop.

Today, in the wake of GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, there’s no doubt that Rockstar values the slower pace first introduced by the Mafia games. If you’ve ever found the joy of driving Lamar around Los Santos just to hear the tall man babble, you have Illusion Softworks to thank for establishing that urban, open-world tradition.

As Andy explained in his own vision of Mafia: The Old Countrythe series lost its way in its third iteration by tying the main story behind side activities that eventually became routine. But Hangar 13 president Nick Baynes has already said that The Old Country will return “to the roots of what fans love about the Mafia franchise,” with a “deeply linear narrative.” It’s a shift that, along with the old-fashioned setting of turn-of-the-century Sicily, promises to bring back the slow-burn confidence that once gave the series an indelible identity. That, and motor vehicles with the power of a headless whiner.

If you’re as excited as we are, here’s everything we know about it Mafia: The Old Country so far.