8 Ways Mafia 3 Proves The Past Is Best For Video Games
5. It Grants New Narrative Opportunities
The past is an ugly thing, and not something to be embraced tactlessly and with little reverence for the historical significance of certain eras. Hangar 13 understood this better than most (though that's not to say certain historical elements were under represented), and we can see that quite clearly in Mafia's story.
Anyone who's anyone should know that sixties America was a climactic period in the nation's history, one defined as much by its social and scientific achievements as it was by horrific policies of segregation, notorious demagogues like George Wallace, and the country's disastrous war in Vietnam.
1968 (the year of Mafia III's setting) came to epitomise the ostensibly nascent instability of the decade, kicking off with the Tet Offensive and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and then ending with a vitriolic presidential election that saw the election of Richard Nixon and the apparent stagnation of the great liberal revival of the decade. It came to represent the death of the 'sixties' as we know it and, much like the violence that was so synonymous with that year, Lincoln Clay's descent into revenge offers a stark analogue to the events of the decade. It's sombre ending is only confirmation of that fact.
Mafia's third entry is making waves across various outlets for its story, and quite rightly too. Non-linear narratives are rarely ever broached by the medium, let alone in a docu-drama fashion, but it works so damn well.
The best part? Without setting the game in the past, none of this would've been possible. Probably.