“It ain’t like you’re qualified for anything else” – Mafia II

As Rockstar successfully expanded out its open world Grand Theft Auto formula to new settings, they were far from alone. Such was the boom for the genre around 2010 that even just taking someone else’s niche up and running with it could work. Over at 2K Czech, under the same ultimate ownership as Rockstar, that niche was the one already scoped out by EA’s The Godfather.

Mafia II is the game game with the serial numbers filed off. Set in the Italian mob in a fictionalised mid-century New York, its main character is called Vito, like Corleone, and even kind of looks like the protagonist from the other game. Which points to a longer chain of derivation, since Grand Theft Auto’s own obvious debt to the film of The Godfather was part of the reason a video game combination of the film and GTA was such a successful idea.

The first bad signs for the level of insight Mafia II can bring to this over-exposed part of society come early on, pretty much as soon as it heads to the city of Empire Bay after an intro where Vito is sent to war in Sicily. It contrasts the beauty of the city to the “shithole” apartment where his family are going through tough times. Then he says “‘The American dream’, it was more like a nightmare”. Even Max Payne might have looked at that one and thought “hmm, a little too on the nose”. Still, Mafia II broke some new ground in so far as it gained the Guinness record for most uses of the word “fuck” in a video game and includes official vintage pornography from Playboy for you to collect. Edgy.

Vito meets up with various dodgy friends who get him out of further war service and start him on the path of criminal activities. He steals cars through one of the smoother lockpicking mini-games I’ve played, drives around, does some simplified brawling and gets into gunfights. Those play out well enough but don’t match the mechanical complexity and satisfaction of The Godfather, never mind anything more recent. The game’s story gradually ratchets up to a familiar tale of warring ethnically-aligned gangs and cycles of violence.

Between that Mafia II provides a rather lovely looking city to drive around in some impressive old cars, but it’s not exactly filled with further activities to do. Its radio stations are pretty cool and I need to give it thanks for alerting me to the existence of Rusty Draper’s enjoyably preposterous “Held for Questioning” (“held, oh so close in my arms…”). Even that positive comes with a caveat, though, since the song is included despite being having been released later than any of the events in Mafia II’s narrative. That’s a level of attention to detail typical throughout a game which frequently has its awkwardly-pausing conversations carry on regardless of any party in said conversation walking away, getting their car crashed into, or being killed.

The point at which I went from merely thinking Mafia II was another mediocre-to-poor Grand Theft Auto clone to actively hating it came rather early. The game starts tracking Vito’s descent into the world of the mafia and, after setting up the debt that his family owes and the lavish lifestyle that his friend has bought with crime proceeds, it’s time to show the futility of the honest alternative. Vito follows his mother’s suggestion to go ask for work at the docks and gets offered $10 to move a bunch of crates onto a truck. At which point you get given control. X to pick up a crate, a slow walk, and X to load the crate into a predetermined position. A chance to really live out that deadening life, in the way that only interactive media can provide.

After you have moved one single crate, an impatient alert pops up reading “The door is open. Leave when you’ve had enough”. Vito soon says “I’m doing this for five fucking minutes, I already hate it”. All of which made me much more determined to keep moving the crates. It was a hefty pile, but it looked doable. Perhaps I would get an achievement once I’d done them all. That turned out to be way too optimistic. After a mere five crates, Vito says “I don’t need this chickenshit money!” and the game seizes control. No more moving crates. No leaving that up to the player.

Thanks to the helpful coincidence that the guy asking him to move crates knows Vito’s gangster friend, it’s then time for the criminal alternative to be presented. Hassle dock workers for their $10 protection money, and when you get up to $150 you’ll be done and get a share. Fifteen little tasks. Not so many as there were crates. The first guy gives in easily. The second takes a bit of pushing. And then, just three in, it all gets shortcutted too. One guy comes up to start a fistfight and after that everyone pays up at once. The developers, clearly concerned that the intimidation might be revealed from the player’s perspective to be just as dull and repetitive as the crates, put a big thumb on the scales.

The thing that makes its cheating of the player’s choices even worse is how out-of-character Vito’s big stand against work is, when for most of the game he’s a pushover that leans whichever way the wind blows. He goes within a couple of scenes from saying that being given a gun is neat to asking what’s up with carrying guns in a tone of concern, then drops that just as quickly. He swings from being desperate to avoid going back into the line of fire in World War II to wading into gang warfare with barely token resistance.

The Godfather made you go and every bit of a gangster’s busywork, making you live how shitty it was, both practically and morally. It turned the cumulative effect of that into something powerful. Mafia II lacks the confidence or vision for that. Its worst-of-both-worlds approach doesn’t just fail to use interactivity to further its narrative and themes, but has them undermine each other. The moving parts of its gameplay and narrative are all too visible, and the big pointless open world is emblematic. No game’s idea of an open world filled with freedom and choice is ever as straightforward as presented, but few go as far as Mafia II in leaving nothing there but a surface. Freedom, reduced to an aesthetic.