Mafia III puts you on the path to revenge starting 7 October
Open-world series marks a big shift for its current-gen debut
Rockstar Games takes its sweet time with Grand Theft Auto games these days, so if you’re looking for a fresh open-world crime spree this year, you’ll probably have to look elsewhere. Luckily, GTA publisher Take-Two has another option ahead.
Mafia III will arrive on 7 October, the publisher’s 2K Games label announced today, with PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC versions arriving just in time for the holidays. It’s been six years since Mafia II and a staggering 14 years since the original entry, so you’d be forgiven for forgetting the particulars – or that the franchise even exists.
Luckily, it doesn’t sound like you need to know anything going into this new entry. Unlike the previous games, which dropped you into the midst of Italian mob wars in the 1930s and 1940s, Mafia III shakes up the setting, timeframe, storyline, and characters to give us a different kind of mafioso tale.
As announced last year, Mafia III puts you in the boots of Lincoln Clay, a Vietnam War veteran who returns to New Bordeaux (a fictional New Orleans) in 1968 and gets caught up in the black mob – which is promptly wiped out by that familiar Italian mafia. Clay survives and rebuilds his faction, and makes it his mission to eradicate the city of those rival criminals once and for all.
Watch the new trailer above for a glimpse at what to expect. Interestingly, the PlayStation.Blog has a hands-on report up today that talks about the game’s "no failure but death" design. That is, you won’t botch a mission for not completing it in some exact, prescribed way: so long as Clay is alive, you can steal another car, find another weapon, and keep pushing on with your task.
Mafia III isn’t out until October, but 2K already has a trio of versions available for pre-order. In addition to the standard release, there will be a Deluxe Edition that bundles in the season pass of post-release add-on content. And then a Collector’s Edition will include all sorts of additional goodies, including the vinyl soundtrack, an art book and prints, and more.
And if you pre-order any version of Mafia III, you’ll receive a "Family Kick-Back" digital perk, which adds three exclusive vehicle and weapon gifts to your game when it releases.
Read More › The 30 most anticipated games of 2016
Andrew Hayward
Freelance Writer 
