The longstanding Mafia franchise is one of the most influential and recognizable series to come from Hangar 13 and 2K Games, with the IP captivating fans with three mainline releases over the course of 20-plus years. As the name suggests, the franchise is centered primarily around gritty and grounded portrayals of the rise of organized crime families as far back as the 1930s, with immense inspiration being taken from the real-world Sicilian Mafia, or Cosa Nostra.
Mafia laid its narrative foundations within a 1930s setting, with each subsequent mainline game showcasing the unique and wildly different subsequent eras of this form of criminality, all the way up to the late 1960s. While the open and immersive gameworlds of the Mafia franchise have huge value in and of themselves, it is the detailed and captivating narrative that is woven between its releases that has really helped the franchise flourish over the years. With the upcoming Mafia: The Old Country taking the series’ timeline even further into the past, prospective players may want to know about the wider Mafia story so far.
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Mafia: The Old Country Trailer Sets Up the Story
The Mafia: The Old Country trailer highlighted during The Game Awards 2024 sets up the story, its protagonist, and their crime family.
The Complete Mafia Story As Things Stand
Mafia‘s story began in the 1930s with the franchise’s debut title in 2002, in the fictional city of Lost Haven, which takes huge inspiration from real-world East Coast cities such as Chicago and New York. Set during the prohibition, Mafia‘s story centers heavily on the boom in organized crime during this era of American history, with the game’s protagonist, Tommy Angelo, trading in his job as a taxi driver to work for the Salieri crime family.
This first title explores the concepts of morality and power as Tommy climbs the ranks of the family alongside his new friends and partners, Paulie and Sam. Tommy’s work for the family quickly escalates to extreme violence, going as far as political assassinations, with the Salieri family becoming more chaotic and sporadic as the prohibition era ends and money needs to be made through other means. After constant deception from the higher-ups of the family, Tommy and Paulie rob a bank without the family’s blessing, leading to Paulie’s death. It is heavily implied that Sam killed Paulie, with Sam going on to betray Tommy, forcing Mafia 1‘s protagonist into a paranoid life of witness protection after testifying against the Salieri family.
Mafia 2 Continues the Franchise’s Story with a Heartbreaking Twist
Mafia 2 continues this story between the years of 1945 and 1951 in the nearby city of Empire Bay, with iconic franchise protagonist Vito Scaletta being introduced to the series. As an Italian immigrant who served in the Second World War, Vito quickly falls into the world of organized crime as a young man returning from the conflict, with his best friend Joe Barbaro having already created in-roads with the city’s major mafia families.
Vito is arrested after a crime spree to pay off his late father’s debt to a loan shark, being released from prison in 1951 and becoming a made man for the Falcone family alongside Joe. A brief stint of this new luxurious lifestyle is cut short as the weight of Vito’s violent life catches up with him and his family, with Joe and Vito entering the narcotics trade and causing a bloody war between the major mafia families and the Chinese Triads.
Now saddled with a new loan shark debt over an eye-watering drug deal gone-wrong, Vito and Joe once again turn to murder-for-hire, with the pair famously tracking down and assassinating Mafia 1‘s Tommy Angelo in his old age due to his acts as a government informant. Surrounded by enemies on all sides and with his safe-haven status as a made man deteriorating, Vito is faced with an ultimatum to carry out one last hit to save himself from being killed, taking on Don Carlo Falcone in an explosive shootout. With Falcone dead, Vito is reluctantly spared by the new face of the mafia underworld, Leo Galante, although this same courtesy is not extended to Joe, with Mafia 2‘s ending being a huge cliffhanger surrounding Joe’s potential fate.
Mafia 3 Offered a New Perspective On Organized Crime
Mafia 3 took a bold new direction for the franchise, being set in the very late 1960s in New Bordeux, a city modeled very closely on New Orleans. The 2016 title introduced a new protagonist, Lincoln Clay, to the franchise, a Vietnam veteran whose pathway into organized crime is quite similar to Vito’s two decades prior. Lincoln’s surrogate father is the leader of the “Black Mob,” which is embroiled in a conflict with the Haitian Mob, forcing Lincoln to step in and kill the Haitian leader.
This draws the attention of Sal Marcano, head of the Italian mob, who hires Lincoln for a highly complex heist to steal gold from the Federal Reserve. Immediately after the successful operation, the Marcano family turns on Lincoln and his family, killing them all while leaving Lincoln for dead. Having miraculously survived and now with an unending thirst for vengeance, Lincoln operates closely with rogue CIA handler John Donovan to work directly alongside other crime syndicates who have Sal Marcano as a common enemy.
These three factions/figures include the new Haitian mob, the Irish mob, and Mafia 2‘s Vito Scaletta, who was moved to Marcano’s family as a part of the aforementioned deal in Mafia 2‘s finale, but is also betrayed by Marcano. Lincoln then dedicates his life to dismantling the Marcano family using these new assets, eventually killing Sal and having to choose which of his tentative allies to install in the power vacuum that this creates. While Mafia 3 possesses multiple endings, the one in which Lincoln sides with Vito shows that Joe survived the events of Mafia 2, now being a driver for Leo Galante. The next major update to Mafia‘s story is set to come with the 2025 release of The Old Country, which will be set in the early 1900s in Sicily, showcasing the earliest roots of the franchise’s mafia organizations while offering another fascinating real-world dive into the roots of organized crime.
