- Yakuza in South Korea offers new crime stories, with potential for action in ports and American army bases.
- Tijuana’s mix of Mexican cartels and American crime families creates a setting for drugs and guns, mutual destruction.
- Human trafficking in Bucharest allows for trade of various products, valuing information, ports for pick-ups and deliveries.
The Mafia franchise debuted with a single game in 2002 that took place in the fictional location of Paradise City, which was understood to represent the city of Chicago. Since then, this trend of using fictional settings based on real places has continued to include various cities in both the United States and other, more exotic locations.
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The Mafia franchise has a story that spans decades, with each game offering connected characters that embody several iconic eras of the United States.
The most newest installment in the franchise is the upcoming 2025 game, Mafia: the Old Country, which uses the city of San Celeste in Sicily as its setting. This is also a fictional place that the series has used before to pad its already rich narrative lore, and as the series continues, plenty of other locations have just as much potential.
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Pusan, South Korea
The Yakuza And The Black Market
- Connections to the Chinese hash market and “garage sales” on American army bases.
A Mafia-based story about the Yakuza has a lot of potential, but the problem here is that Tokyo has already hosted so many crime-related games and there’s already a whole other gaming series dedicated to the Yakuza and their stories. However, the Yakuza has a strong presence in several northeastern Asian countries, and South Korea is only a short ferry ride away.
Pusan is a port city that hosts a bustling trade industry with plenty for a wise guy to do, but it’s not only Western guns or Chinese hash that fills up the black market. Seoul is only a few hours away if the action needs to move to an even bigger city. There’s also a network of American army bases selling exotic, hard-to-find items like cheddar cheese and peanut butter, which might be a lighter kind of trafficking, but not in any less demand.
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Tijuana, Mexico
The Cartels And The Fentanyl Trade
- Between the guns and drugs, it’s mutually assured destruction.
Here’s a setting that might be too real depending on the storyline. Although things have improved in Tijuana, it still has a reputation for hosting various organized crime elements from both sides of the border, and it’s not only the Mexican cartels that want a piece of the action. American crime families and their gang connections want in as well.
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Another angle this location could take is some kind of connection to travel. The mafia might be hooking up with a local cartel or the coyotes, but there are also legions of vulnerable tourists with money in their pockets looking for drugs, booze, or other nefarious adventures. Kidnapping and extortion also have a lot of potential for those more discerning criminals who have patience for some planning in addition to their robbing.
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Belfast, Northern Ireland
Running Guns With The IRA
- War always makes money, even if it’s a revolutionary one.
Another possible location for this same kind of storyline could be Boston, a notorious port connection for supplies headed to Ireland to fund what many consider to be a legitimate revolutionary movement. There are others, however, who recognize the bombings and riots in Belfast as terrorism, and for those running weapons or information on the black market, all sides are fair game.
The connection with the church is one that certain characters from the Mafia series would find familiar, especially those who have spent any time in San Celeste. The power of Catholicism as an institution that also has criminal ties is a common thread between two otherwise very different cultures, but it could provide a way to introduce existing franchise characters into a new and different entry.
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Victorian London, England
The Corruption Of Industry
- So much money, so little oversight.
The ruthless captains of industry that drove the Industrial Revolution enjoyed a time of unprecedented freedom and wealth in the late 1800s. This was a time when machines and automation were speeding up production but labor and workers’ rights laws weren’t in place, so organized crime was able to take advantage of the power of the rich and the desperation of the poor.
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So much of the debauchery that defined this period in human history took place in London, featuring a dizzying mix of luxury and poverty that also had a global reach through various imperial connections. There was even a thriving Little Italy in London at this time, in case a returning character was missing the family. A Mafia game would feel right at home in the same city that gave the world Oliver Twist, the Bank of England, and Jack the Ripper.
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Bucharest, Romania
The Contemporary Human Trafficking HQ
- Contemporary lore puts Eastern Europe in the kidnapping crosshairs.
Romania’s location straddles Europe and Asia, touching on several different countries along with water access via the Baltic Sea, and even when it was a Roman province in ancient times, it was recognized as a trade and trafficking hotspot. It’s a dubious honor that continues today, and even though recent news focuses on the human slave trade, there’s a lot more to buy and sell in Bucharest.
Moving sensitive goods across the country would be the main focus of this game, using either ports or roads for pickups and deliveries, and organizing protection for clients and payment options. This is a region of the world where information is just as valuable as people, weapons, or drugs, with plenty of people from Russia, Ukraine, and Hungary willing to buy it.
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Vancouver, British Columbia
The Real Home Of The Triads
- The true Golden Triangle.
The area of southeastern Asia where most of the world’s drugs come from is nicknamed the Golden Triangle, but almost everything produced in that region comes to North American shores via the port of Vancouver. That’s not just because of international gangs like the Yakuza, but also due to local organized crime groups like the Hell’s Angels. Add in the local property values and there’s not only a lot of money involved but plenty of places to launder it.
This is a location that’s all about logistics given the amount of players involved and the amount of product they move, and when and how they do it. Every kind of ground-based transport has a connection here, even people crossing the border on foot or by bike, so an ambitious Mafia don could certainly find a way to carve out their own piece of the Pacific Northwest.
