The Virtual Life – Mafia III Is A Necessary Game

What does it mean for a game to be necessary? Does that mean it’s a fantastic staple of its genre and that it shouldn’t be missed? Or could it mean that this particular game has something innovative about it, some mechanic or feature, that will become a gaming staple – like Kill Switch’s cover mechanic – in the future? What does it mean when I say that Mafia III, a game that has received mixed response from critics due to a plethora of issues (glitches, agonizingly repetitious gameplay, storytelling padding, so on and so forth) is “necessary?”

Mafia III is the latest in a long line of open-world sandbox games that cast you as an anti-hero in a fictional city based on a real location. Like most of its ilk, Mafia III borrows liberally from the concepts of player freedom laid down by Grand Theft Auto III all those years ago but, like Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption, tries to funnel players down an intricate story about betrayal, revenge, and the failure of America to fulfill its reputation as a land of promise. Mafia III, for better AND for worse, ends up being the most tightly focused of any of these games narratively, clinging to the cathartic hatred that fuels the story and refusing to let go.

Our protagonist Lincoln Clay is a black Vietnam vet who returns to New Bordeaux, an analog for New Orleans, for one last meet up with his adoptive family before he sets off in search of his own destiny somewhere. Instead, he’s roped into one final job, a bank heist, to try and help his folks try and get out from under the Italian mob’s thumb. After the heist is done, the mob, being the mob, betrays Clay’s family, killing them all and burning their bar down to the ground. Lincoln is shot in the head and left for dead but manages to recover with the help of the family priest and a convenient CIA operative pal. From there, it’s all about slowly sticking it to the mob and paying them back for their betrayal with bullets and fire, taking power away from them district by district so mob boss Sal Marcone can watch his empire fall by the wayside before Clay puts a bullet in his head.

Laid out like that it sounds like the Wikipedia summary for any revenge-driven story set in a game. However, what sets Mafia III apart is that it’s constantly grappling with racism in ways that are as fascinating as they are horrifying. If you enter a store owned by a white man, there’s a good chance he’ll tell you to leave or even threaten you. Every time a police car drives by you, you get a little blue indicator that lets you know that you’re being watched. There’s even a feature where police are slower to respond to crimes if you commit them in poor black neighborhoods as opposed to rich white ones.

The game is clearly dedicated to capturing the intensity of racial tensions and the sheer awfulness of being a minority during this period in a way that isn’t usually present in games because, well, for many, games are supposed to be fun. Even our grimmest titles are usually built on the satisfying rhythms of a well-placed headshot or violent tactical option. Make no mistake: this is still somewhat the case here. As Lincoln Clay, you’ll stab, shoot, and murder your way through the entire storyline, but the difference is that Mafia III is obsessed not just with violence but the context that this this violence happens in. Clay is a man who is actively pushed to the fringes of society and is looked down upon because of the color of his skin. He’s someone who’s used to even the most mundane interactions with white people being laced with danger and uncertainty, with these people often looking for how they can use him rather than seeing him as a person.

In his review for (my former stomping grounds) Paste, author Terrence Wiggins talks a bit about why the story and Lincoln are so compelling even though they’re wrapped up in the cliché get-back-at-em plots we’ve come to know:

Let’s get this straight: Lincoln Clay is not a good person. He’s violent, selfish, and stubborn. He cares not whether his actions have fallout for those surrounding him. He wants revenge. And this game does not shy away from violence. Not just acts committed by the main character but acts committed by anyone. There’s an area of the game where you’re hunting down Southern Union members, which is connected to the Klan, for capturing black people and selling them into slavery. You’ll run into white gang members beating black people in the street. And Lincoln can and will kill them all. And it’s all cathartic because we live in a time where a powerful man is allowed to run for the highest public office on the ideals of the enemies you face in this game, ideals that should be forgotten detritus from our shameful past.

Wiggins’ focus on the election, as in our real life election that is occurring right now in 2016, is important because it reveals something essential about Mafia III: it is by nature a brutal political work. Sure, the game is concerned with the summer of 1968 and the violent racial tensions inherent in the era but those tensions have not gone away. They have shifted over the years, perhaps, appeared in different, myriad forms but racism remains in all its dangerous hideousness. Travon Martin’s shooting, Ferguson, and The Black Lives Matter campaign all bear testament to this and Mafia III cannot escape its connection to those events. However, unlike other AAA games that deal with racism or police corruption (like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or Battlefield Hardline for instance) that have been released during the past several years, it doesn’t seem like Mafia wants to escape that connection as much as it wants acknowledge it as a real, inescapable thing that exists in our day-to-day lives.

Mafia III then exists in an uncomfortable, dissonant space that’s probably all too familiar for AAA video games. There’s bravery here and nuance and even humanity in the way it tackles tough subject matter, but it’s also a video game about a man who kills a room filled with people and then drives halfway across town to kill another room of people so he can finally get to the real room where the guy he actually wants to brutally murder is. In a way, this is thematically appropriate, with one character at the beginning of the game warning Clay about the bloody “one-way road” that he’s going down when he decides to avenge his dead family. At this point he has a one track mind: kill kill kill until everyone who hurt you and your family is dead. And the game emulates that obsession without ever deviating from it once: nearly every mission you play is about you killing a room filled with people in an attempt to eventually sate Lincoln’s lust for revenge. There are no side activities really; instead, Mafia III is committed to its themes and stories—to a fault.

While a straightforward revenge story fueled by cathartic racial retribution would probably make for a spellbinding novel or film, it’s a much more difficult proposition when your video game is 30 hours long and you’re trying to tell that story. In a great interview with Vice, Mafia III's senior writer Charles Webb talks a bit about the struggle to balance the gaminess of Mafia III with its themes and trying to be authentic to the setting:

Vice:

It sounds like there's almost a notion of vérité. You're leaning into this idea that crime actually hurts people—that even when gangs arise naturally from communities, it can be the communities that suffer. How do you make New Bordeaux feel lived in enough to make it actually feel vulnerable, like it can suffer?

Webb:

It's tricky to pin down. So much of it was elaborating on what the criminal rackets in the city are, showing how they work, and showing how they hurt the community.

You mentioned before that the game was rooted in pulp, and that's something we really want to respect. We want Mafia III to be... I guess "fun" is the best word here—you don't want to constantly feel like you're going through a civics lesson about the impact of crime on communities.

But we do want you to understand that people get hurt. That there is a human cost. In prostitution, for example, often with organized crime–run operations, there wasn't independence offered to sex workers. It was someone saying, "You have to do this." With drugs, it wasn't just small time dealers; it was part of this massive machine of money making that made sure people got hooked and stayed hooked.

That's something we try to reflect.

Ultimately, it’s a hard line to walk and one that the game does with mixed success. However, I think in years to come we’ll look back on Mafia III as important because of its attempts to tackle such a heavy topic as violent racism in a time where Black Lives Matter and critiques of police violence, particularly against minorities, are inescapable subjects. For the medium to evolve and to stay relevant and meaningful artistically, we need games of all kinds – indie, AAA, etc. – to evoke contemporary issues that pervade our culture. I call Mafia III a necessary game because I hope that it will inspire future developers to tackle difficult subjects with as much vigor and passion as Hanger 13 has done with its debut release.

Mafia III might not be the most handsome or most entertaining game that’s been released this year but it’s certainly the boldest and hopefully one we’ll be talking about for years to come.