Mafia III postmortem: How Hangar 13 made the critical decisions in the epic game’s design

Mafia III is a great example of the glory and the pain of game development. The ambitious title took years to make, with the initial effort focused on crafting the right character, place, and historical context for the tale about the newest “gifted anti-hero” in the Mafia series.

When the game came out in October, players complained about bugs and problems with gameplay. But they loved the story about Lincoln Clay, a mixed-race Vietnam veteran who goes after the Italian mob in a fictional version of New Orleans in 1968, during the height of racial and war tensions in the United States. I played the game all the way through, and had mixed emotions about the execution. The story was powerful and unflinching in its depiction of racism in the Deep South, but it was hard to like many aspects of the gameplay. I caught up with the team’s leaders for a postmortem.