'The driving system in Mafia is one of the features that has carried through. It's a part of Mafia's history Cox is proud of. The physics and car handling in particular felt realistic, ensuring some cars such as the Ford Model T were snail-like but others speedier, and heavy cars hitting lighter vehicles would do more damage. You escort her home, you get accosted by some thugs, you have a cinematic melee encounter with them, and she takes you home to tend to Angelo's wounds,' says Cox.Ĭomical shooting aside, the original Mafia was a technical marvel when it released in 2002. The route you take has been embellished with incidental events happening around the characters to bring the world to life. An early mission where you need to walk Tommy's girlfriend home safely has a new melee fighting system.
This attention to detail, and adding new context to events, stretches into missions which are being refreshed to include visual and gameplay refinements and new pacing. 'So we've enhanced the story, we've added new experiences that weren't there before.'
The banter we expect, a standard feature of open-world storytelling, a sophistication of modern gaming, wasn't in the original Mafia, but it is now. In the original game these were, ironically given the 1930s setting, completely silent. An example offered by Cox is the moments when we drive between missions.