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Our second episode of the Mafia II podcast focuses on the franchise as a whole, talking about both past and present Mafia games. Denby Grace and Jack Scalici join me again to give us a closer look at the history of Mafia, and more insight into what we can expect for the upcoming release.
ELIZABETH TOBEY: Welcome to the second episode of the Mafia II podcast. I’m Elizabeth Tobey, community manager here at 2K, and today I’m here with Denby [Grace], Producer, and Jack Scalici, the Director of Production here at 2K games. Today we’re going to be talking about Mafia, both past and present for the game.
So to start off, Mafia II is a sequel, but for those who are new to the franchise, can you give us a quick summary of what this game is all about?
DENBY GRACE: Fundamentally, the game is in the crime action genre. Created[?] with the first game, its big strong point is its mature storytelling and its engrossing cinematic experience that we aim to give players. We want to give players a feeling of what is it like to play as a character in a big mob crime family? Take a look at any popular media such as Sopranoes, Goodfellas, the Departed, things like that. All of this is good touch reference for where the game is going. Other sorts of things to talk about the game: it’s an authentic period setting game, set in the 40s and 50s, which we think is a really unique experience for players to enjoy. No other real game’s gone down that road yet, and we’re really excited to be bringing that to players. I don’t know, what do you think, Jack, anything to add there?
JACK SCALICI:: I really agree, especially with the period the game is set with, that it’s just so unique because America was changing at that point, it was World War II, and then it was Post-World War II in the 1950s. There’s an explosion of technology and American culture. So, not only does the player grow from just being an everyday guy to eventually a ‘Made Man,’ but America changes right alongside him, so it’s really a unique experience.
ELIZABETH TOBEY: As a sequel, Mafia II has some pretty big shoes to fill. When you started planning out this game, what did you want to carry over from the first? What did you want to explore? What did you want to change? And, in answering this question, how about you guys talk a little bit about Mafia I for those who maybe didn’t play it, or don’t know too much, or haven’t played it in a long time.
JACK SCALICI: Ok, Denby, you want to take this one, since you worked on the game?
DENBY GRACE: Yeah, sure. So, first of all I start by explaining that when Mafia I was being published by, I think Gathering was the label it was originally published under, I was actually working at Take-Two Europe as a video games tester, so I experienced Mafia I firsthand from a QA perspective. So, it’s really interesting for me to be a little bit further up the chain and have a bigger influence on maybe how shaping the second game goes. But, my memory of Mafia I is very fond and maybe a little bit hazy, I guess, now. The game did really well back in 2002 when it launched, was mainly because it was doing something really interesting and really different with the storytelling. It really struck a chord with fans how it went down the route of a really serious mature experience, where maybe a lot of other games in the past had gone down the route of parodying popular media, rather than actually trying to take itself too seriously. It did it with genre-defining cinematics, and stuff like that. Again, that’s something that we still want to do in Mafia II, absolutely, it’s one of the things that really is the staple for this game.
As well of that, I think the thing that did really well for Mafia I was the period setting was very interesting for people. There’s not been anything else really set in the 20s in America. Everything else in that period is either World War I or World War II game, and I think that in itself is quite an interesting sort of different unique angle for people to look at.
When thinking about things that we wanted to change, when we sort of first looked into planning is, I guess one thing was we wanted to create a whole new story and new experience for players to play without having to reference back to Mafia I. If people remember the story that accurately, pretty much everyone died, so there was no continuation of the story in Mafia I. So, we immediately started with a whole new story, a whole new setting, a whole new period setting for Mafia II. We looked at what would be interesting and we drew on a lot of reference when looking at the game. I know Dan Vávre, the lead writer of the project, he reference a lot of actual written media and stuff like that for inspiration, I think. I don’t think anything, we’re not recreating anything specific, we’re just drawing on stuff for reference
