Tuesday 28 July 2015

MAFIA III pre-announced

Apparently, announcing that something is going to be announced is now a thing. 2K Games have confirmed that they will be announcing the existence of Mafia III with a trailer on 5 August. Which is weird, but okay (and at least it's not a trailer for a trailer, which is even more annoying).



Mafia III is, shockingly, the sequel to Mafia (2002) and Mafia II (2010), both developed by Illusion Softworks (now 2K Czech). Mafia was praised for its graphics - a massive step up from the then-contemporary Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City - and its highly memorable characters and storyline, as well as its measured pacing the clever way the city evolved between missions if long periods of time passed. Mafia II took place in a bigger city and of course was graphically more impressive, but its story was less compelling and its cast of characters altogether less memorable.

Mafia III has been developed primarily by Hanger 13, a new studio formed by veterans of LucasArts along with a couple of ex-Illusion staffmembers. 2K Czech is providing support, although a lot of the talent behind the first two games in the series have now left to form a new studio, Warhorse Studios, which is working on the medieval roleplaying game Deliverance: Kingdom Come.

Not much can be discerned about the game, but the cars and hairstyles in the only image released so far suggests that it will be set in the 1960s or 1970s. That makes sense given that the original game spanned much of the 1930s and the second was set in the early 1950s. It'll be interesting to see what Hanger 13 can come up with.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So what happens if they don't make the announcement that they've announced that they'll announce? Would that make the announcement of the announcement (which announced what it was that the announcement would announce) itself a de facto announcement of the thing the announced announcement would announce?

If they do make the announcement they've announced, will they then make a post-announcement announcement that they announced it? Otherwise, how will we know? Or was this the announcement and the announced announcement is really the post-announcement announcement of the announcement? I mean sure, the announcement SAYS that the next one is the real announcement, but then we all know announcements aren't always true! So maybe this one was the real announcement after all?

Incidentally, how did people know about this announcement of the announcement? Was it announced, and if so was it announced in advance or after the fact?