Celebrating the release of Mafia: The Old Country, developer Hangar 13 has announced a collaboration with historian Professor John Dickie to create a video comparing the game with the real-world equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia. Dickie, whose specialty lies in the history of the Sicilian Mafia, breaks down Mafia: The Old Country when compared to real-life history by taking on specific scenes from the game.
“It looks great. I mean, when I see the outdoor scenes, it looks like some of the flatter coastal areas around Palermo, that really is the cradle of of the mafia,” said Dickie, who is known for his work in writing and publishing the book Cosa Nostra which explores the history of the Sicilian Mafia. “You’ve always got the mountains in the background and this flatter coastal plain. That’s really where the mafia emerged.”
Dickie also goes on to talk about the various regions of Sicily, like the farmsteads and the houses of the wealthy aristocracy, which would ultimately serve as the main location where the Sicilian Mafia would emerge in real life. When it comes to mafias claiming specific domains, Dickie also mentions the sulfur mine mafia being a real thing.
“It was one of the key industries in Sicily,” he said. “And it was a brutal, brutal industry. Everybody was exploiting everybody else in each layer… You can see the research that has gone into the look of this, because there’s a Sicilian artist who did a famous picture of the child labour that was used in the sulfur mines.”
Mafia: The Old Country also got a launch trailer earlier today, giving us some context for the setting and story with narration by former indentured labourer turned Torrisi family member Enzo Favara. Leading up to its release, Hangar 13 had confirmed that the game would offer Performance and Quality modes on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. While the studio hadn’t provided too many details about these modes, it did mention that the Performance mode would run Mafia: The Old Country at an average frame rate of 60.
Hangar 13 hasn’t confirmed what kinds of modes and performance options will be available on the weaker Xbox Series S, but it is easy to assume that the console will only have a Performance mode, targeting 1080p and stable frame rates.
As for PC gamers, the studio had revealed the minimum and recommended hardware to run the game earlier this month. It had also given separate details about the kind of hardware that will be needed to run Mafia: The Old Country at its Epic preset. This hardware assumes that the player will be playing on a 4K monitor, and the preset involves using DLSS or FSR to internally render the game at 2880×1620 which can then be upscaled.
Mafia: The Old Country also supports quite a few features on the PS5 Pro, including variable refresh rates, as well as higher dynamic resolution owing to the more powerful hardware and existence of PSSR in the PS5 Pro.
For more details about Mafia: The Old Country, check out our review.
