The Mafia online game franchise is commonly in contrast to the Grand Theft Auto video games. The rivalry started when the primary Mafia sport got here out in 2002, only a 12 months after GTA 3. Quick ahead practically 1 / 4 of a century and, within the run up to the discharge of final 12 months’s Mafia: The Outdated Nation, GTA reared its head as soon as once more. For a time, it regarded like The Outdated Nation may find yourself popping out inside the neighborhood of the behemoth that’s GTA 6. The Outdated Nation’s builders had to clarify the purpose of distinction, why these comparisons had been unfair, and handle expectations. Ultimately, Mafia dodged a bullet with GTA 6’s identify on it; to have been a fly on the wall when Hangar 13 president Nick Baynes came upon Rockstar’s sport had been pushed from fall 2025 to Could 2026.
However are these comparisons to GTA completely unfair? And does GTA ever issue into Hangar 13’s decision-making on Mafia? By no means, Baynes informed me as a part of a sweeping oral historical past of the Mafia franchise.
“I believe that genuinely on the studio, we have got our personal path,” Baynes mentioned. “It genuinely by no means ever comes up in dialog as a touchpoint or steering our technique or something like that. I believe clearly there’s quite a lot of tales about that sport on the market proper now as a result of one thing’s popping out later this 12 months! However yeah, genuinely, I believe it is an web factor. It isn’t one thing the studio seems at. So I believe I am afraid there’s not a wealthy vein of solutions to offer you for that.”
Baynes is eager to dismiss comparisons to GTA and, particularly, GTA 6 (he gained’t even identify the sport, as if it had been the business equal of Lord Voldemort), however the fact is the comparisons proceed. You see them pop up once in a while on social media and subreddits. However nearly each time, precise followers of the Mafia video games will step in to say that Mafia is nothing like GTA. Properly, they’re tales about crime and so they have weapons and automobiles.
The Mafia video games are linear, story-driven affairs that revolve round gritty drama. GTA is a sandbox of mayhem as a lot as it’s about story. Mafia is extra Goodfellas, whereas GTA is a parody of Americana. And the scope of every franchise is completely completely different. The Mafia video games have suffered at any time when they’ve tried to go greater and current a extra conventional open world for gamers to discover. They’re, for my part, higher off as The Outdated Nation was: inside scope, tight, and a enjoyable trip you could possibly full inside an inexpensive period of time. Writer 2K did properly to promote The Outdated Nation for $50 at launch. It’s the excellent $50 sport.
GTA — and GTA 6 — is just not that in any respect. It’s an $80 that some say is definitely this era’s first $100 title due to the content material locked behind its dearer Final Version. It’s a sport Rockstar and guardian firm Take-Two hope will preserve followers going for over a decade. Greater and past any affordable scope appear completely affordable for GTA 6. In reality, they’re promoting factors.
That is one thing I spoke to Baynes and Mafia: The Outdated Nation sport director Alex Cox about final 12 months, and Cox summed up the variations between the 2 franchises completely. “They’re completely different video games, and truly extra so over time,” he defined. “Definitely in the event you observe each GTA and Mafia since 2000-ish, 2002 when GTA 3 and Mafia got here out, they had been mechanically very comparable video games. However Mafia’s at all times had a bit extra give attention to its linear narrative versus the sandbox experiences, which Rockstar does business tremendous very best quality. Truly Mafia over time has turn out to be more and more extra in regards to the linear story, and so I do not suppose the video games are essentially that comparable apart from they’ve a shared theme.”
It sounds to me like Hangar 13 will proceed to make Mafia video games, based mostly on what Baynes informed me throughout our wider interview (there’s lots in there I hope Mafia followers will discover fascinating!). Every thing Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has mentioned about The Outdated Nation suggests he considers it a hit. So, Mafia 5 might be a factor, however this time it is going to come out with GTA 6 already having been out for possibly a 12 months or two. Some will examine the 2, I’m certain. However Mafia and its builders will proceed on their very own path.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You possibly can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.