When Mafia 3 launches this year as the third entry in the open world crime saga, it will be one of the few games that features a non caucasian male protagonist- Lincoln Clay is in fact meant to be a person of mixed race, making Mafia 3 an unusually progressive game in an industry climate that struggles with adequate representation of minorities.
And yet the decision to have Lincoln be mixed race was not one arrived at after a lot of discussion- the team arrived at it naturally. Speaking to Gamespot, Hangar 13 Studio Head Haden Blackman discussed the creation process of Lincoln.
“We explored some other things, other ideas: people that are tangentially related to the mob that aren’t part of the mob, but maybe work with the mob, making them the main character. But, really, when we started talking about the time period, and everything that was going on in the country, and where we were located, because it’s the South, we thought that the most interesting thing would be to make Lincoln mixed race.
“It doesn’t really matter if he’s mixed race, because he looks black, so he’s treated as black. But then once we made the decision to do it, we never wavered. Throughout the whole organization, which has been awesome, nobody ever second guessed it, nobody ever said, ‘Ah, it’s kind of risky, maybe we shouldn’t do it,'” Blackman told GameSpot.
As I said above, it is an unusually progressive move, and one which is greatly appreciated. Mafia 3 launches on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC on October 7.
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