Mafia 3 - What went wrong?

[Rumpy]

I recently finished playing Mafia III from start to finish, minus any DLCs. I thought it was a great looking game with a great looking world, even visually stunning at times. Seemed like a decent followup to the first two Mafia games. The setup itself I thought was pretty great. Taking down districts and having your own lieutenants sounded like a fun premise. But ultimately it all felt very hollow.

I had heard while reading a postmortem that the developers were trying to fix one of the criticisms of the second game of a big world with nothing to do, but ironically enough ended up doing the same thing, maybe even worse. I think from a storytelling standpoint, the game is fine and the cutscenes well done. The gameplay however, feels like a throwback to early Ubisoft openworld games like the first Assassin's Creed; A lot of repetitive random tasks to do before unlocking the next sector, etc. What it tasks you in doing via the storyline might sound different, but they're merely skinned to sound different while you're going through the same motions, rinse and repeat. So, in the end it has this disjointed feel of 'why am I doing this?"

In terms of story, I loved what they were doing and there were hints of brilliance hidden in there somewhere. Seeing Vito Scaletta again was a highlight, and I loved the interaction between the other lieutenants, but man, I wish they had done so much more with what they had. The gameplay systems relating to that all felt severely lacking. On the whole, I'm glad I played it, but still feel like I wanted more out of it.

Spoiler:

There is a scene near the end where Leo Galante from Mafia 2 appears. If anyone remembers, Vito and Joe at the end of Mafia 2 end up getting driven off in different directions. After doing Vito's personal missions, he tells Clay that Joe Barbaro, his best friend, had been killed. But Leo's driver in that one scene looks like none other than Joe, same coat and all, glancing directly at the camera.

[Daehawk]

I tried it 3 times and couldn't get into it. Loved the first 2 games and finished those. Maybe a 4th or 5th time is the charm one day...maybe. Since I lost my wife I may never touch it again.

[jztemple2]

I played all the way through the game (I never got the DLCs) and I enjoyed it, but I would agree that there was a lot of repetition to the missions. On the other hand, I've been playing The Division2 and there is a lot of repetition in the missions there as well. I completed M3 because I was looking forward to the payoff of the completed story and it didn't disappoint me. I think it is just the nature of the beast, many open world games tend to repeat the mission structure over and over because players don't seem to care all that much. And I think that's why the Fallout series (although not 76, which I haven't played) is such a standout, because the missions displayed more variety.

Again, in my opinion, I think if you are going to have repetitive mission structure, like Mafia 3 and TD2, there ought to be such an appeal in the locale of the mission that you don't mind that in terms of gameplay the mission plays out the same. TD2 has this in spades, some of the missions are in really cool places and even the fetch missions (the SHD cache unlocks) are interesting because of where you go on the map. It's been a while but I seem to recall that Mafia 3 did that too, although not as well.

[Rumpy]

I completed M3 because I was looking forward to the payoff of the completed story and it didn't disappoint me. I think it is just the nature of the beast, many open world games tend to repeat the mission structure over and over because players don't seem to care all that much. And I think that's why the Fallout series (although not 76, which I haven't played) is such a standout, because the missions displayed more variety.

Yeah, I thought Mafia 3's story was pretty good for what it was. It's just the gameplay stood very much in contrast to that. Interestingly enough, I didn't mind the repetition in Fallout 4 because in the end, it was all tied heavily into the stories they told.

Again, in my opinion, I think if you are going to have repetitive mission structure, like Mafia 3 and TD2, there ought to be such an appeal in the locale of the mission that you don't mind that in terms of gameplay the mission plays out the same. TD2 has this in spades, some of the missions are in really cool places and even the fetch missions (the SHD cache unlocks) are interesting because of where you go on the map. It's been a while but I seem to recall that Mafia 3 did that too, although not as well.

Oh absolutely. And it's a big reason for why I didn't mind it much in Fallout 4, because the locales themselves were interesting enough. The thing with Mafia 3 though is that there really isn't all that much there to begin with. You're in and out and you're done with the area and there isn't much incentive to go back after that part of the story is done. Taking over the different rackets is all the same in terms in terms of activities and the game doesn't make any effort to conceal their structure. To be honest, I felt the collectables were sprinkled around pretty randomly. There still wasn't quite enough to do in the world, and they never really took advantage of the witness system they built into the game.