Playing Mafia 2 again after ten years reminded me why PS3/Xbox 360 era was the best
When I first grew out of reading children/teenage novels, I’d love to go to the bookstore to hunt for anything interesting I could read. And 9 out of 10 times, I’d end up putting a thick 800–1500 pager into the basket, thinking how much bang for the buck I’m getting with this deal. However, the more I read such heavy tomes, the more I realized that they have more fluff and less substance.
By the time I was in college, I bought the tiniest of books, say Clockwork Orange or 1984. They were filled with so much more content than the 1000 pagers. In fact they didn’t lose their intensity from start to finish, keeping us engaged till the grand finale.
So why did I explain about my reading habits as a teenager, when I’m here to talk about Mafia 2, and the PS3 and Xbox 360 era of gaming? Well consider it like a metaphor of how the gaming industry has moved from the earlier linear pathways and rich storytelling, to the current gens fascination with barren open worlds.
Mafia 2 was a game that came out ten years from now. At the time, it was criticized for its lack of content when compared to other open world games like GTA IV or the Saints Row series. It was beaten up for how it was designed, to be a linear game in an open world. However, playing it ten years from its launch, after all the unnecessary crap seen in the current gen, including Mafia 3, I would say Mafia 2 is quite brilliant.
I keep coming back to Mafia 2 again and again. This was my third playthrough, the first two were during the last gen. I loved the game last two times for its setting and story. Yes, the game is a bee’s nest full of the oldest mafia/crime drama film cliches that we have seen again and again. However, the over all story, and the setting of the half a century old American city setting is just beautifully rendered.
The protagonist comes back from the war, takes a walk from the main street to his dingy family apartment while the tune “Let it snow” plays in the back. The Christmas-sy feel of it all is soon shattered when the loan sharks arrive and harass his sister, who he pays back with his fists. Here begins the tale of a good guy turned bad in desperation for money, to give his family the common luxuries of life.
This game could have very well had an open world set up with missions and side quests. However, it avoids all the usual sandbox tropes and keeps the tension going. Little by little, he takes up bigger more riskier jobs, earns more money and trust of the “Family”.
While the story moves at a brisk pace, there are a few instances that are quite repetitive, but rather than becoming boring, they make you feel more at home, make you compelled that this isn’t some game, but more like a vacation into a history that you were never born to witness. Everyday in the morning you dress up and walk out of your building, past the dank and dingy corridors, while neighbors quarrel over loud music, or the cleaning lady barks at you for no reason, showing how lonely she really is.
Another important fact of the daily routine of leaving your home, is that it shows how the protagonist becomes wealthier over time as he takes up tougher jobs for the Family, and well, down to his eventual decline. He starts off crashing with his friend, who gives him a small couch in the kitchen. From here, he gets his own apartment in a small building, then moves to his own lavish house, only to end up around the end in a small blue-collar workers dorm, which is not much better than a shack!
What really drove the game home for me, was the collectibles. Which other game has posters of nude women, that too Playboy posters (!) as collectibles? You hunt for them not only to collect them all, but to also look at these beautiful women from decades past. This is the perfect collectible for a game aimed at adult men.
The pacing in Mafia 2 was thus all out terrific. Plus, compare it to the recent Mafia 3, which was panned, and you will see that there are many positives in the older iteration. Mafia 3 was made by another dev, Hangar 13. They decided to make the game open world, with many quests and side missions. However, these missions were extremely repetitive, with no real challenge or deviations among these side encounters. The result was that they really detracted from an otherwise excellent and deep character driven revenge plot.
Basically there were many hollow points in Mafia 3, where the intensity dies out because of how the game is structured. In Mafia 2 meanwhile, the plot was air tight. The game only lasts 12 hours, but its some of the best 12 hours of my life. I went back for a second playthrough as soon as I was done with the first to be with those memorable characters and to be a part of that world again.
Also, thanks to its how linear the game was, the devs were able to take risks with the story’s timeline, and succeed. The game first starts in Italy, where our protagonist is fighting against Mussolini’s men in the early forties. The game then shifts to mid-forties during an especially harsh winter, before going to jail for six years and reappearing in the early 1950s. This was only possible with a tightly packed narrative, which eventually made more sense to a gamer who would be looking for a compelling story, rather than a longer game.
This has been a general problem of the PS4 Xbox One era, or the current generation of games. Even while having tons of content, they really fail to be immersive and lived in. While everyone wants to make their game a free roaming one, they forget that they lack the proficiency to create an engaging world quite like Rockstar. The devs would have had no exposure to open world games and yet they would try their best to make one, failing miserably.
Case in point — Assassins Creed Origins and Odyssey. These games have padded themselves up as though they work for the bomb diffusion squad. There is just a 10 hour game hidden inside a massive 40–50 hour playthrough.
The recent Last of Us 2 was among the very few titles this generation which has justified its 30 hour campaign. It remains linear (for most part), and adds more weapons and enemies to the mix as the game stretches on. The encounter varieties with the demons and the humans also change, never making you realize that you have been playing the game for so long. The latest God of War too, made me feel this way, engaging yet doesn’t waste time.
One game that really succeeds in the open world system is the Yakuza series. The game has slapstick written all over it, but before you know it, it gets incredibly serious on you. The game takes the side quest mechanism on a comedic route, almost breaking the fourth wall to make you realize that while there is a memorable story here, its all part of a video game with some goofy side quests and people. This self aware quality of the game makes it worthwhile. However, there are some free roaming sandbox titles that just break the immersion by making them open world. This has become the biggest issue as the map sizes expand.
I hope that the next gen goes back to an era when Mafia 2 like games were common. Where enforced linearity was not necessarily seen as a negative in games. Let’s take the current gen as a test subject for turning games into huge sandbox worlds. And, let’s just say that this test failed and we shouldn’t continue to delve further into it, even though the hardware capabilities encourage such games! We should encourage hybrids like Last of Us 2 and God of War. Or straight up linear ones, that increase enjoyment, storytelling impact, and reduce downtime! Hope the move to the next gen is not at our own detriment.
