Mafia III and the dangers of open-world games...

Was having a blast with the game for the first few hours. Great introduction, terrific production value, very good acting, engaging story and interesting characters. Skip to the end for tl;dr

The game is linear for the first two hours which ironically is its strongest point. It fell into the dangerous pitfall of open-world design. As soon as you're free to run around, that's when the game starts to be a generic and repetitive free-roaming game with lazy mission design.

This game had the potential to be great if it had kept its ambition in check and not attempt to be the billionth open-world game of this gen. Honestly most of them suck.

Exact same thing happened with Far Cry Primal which was linear for the first hour or so and got dull as soon as the open-world part came about.

Open-world progression cannot be focused. A story cannot be well-paced. The plot cannot be told in a compelling fashion. Characters can hardly be engaging or develop in an organic way. All the strengths of Mafia III are things that are made WORSE with an open-world, not better. It is one of many games lately that has fail prey to that kind of design.

Open-world games are almost as bad as FPS used to be in the early-mid 2000's.

Open-world design is a danger to:

- The story

- The characters

- The pacing

- Bugs

- Level design

Not saying it's impossible to mix the aforementioned aspects with an open-world design but it is far, far more difficult.

Sounds like they figured if they got you early and interested in the characters the disjointed way that stories are told in open world games like Far Cry wouldn't matter.

I'm a big believer that to make a high quality open-world video game you need follow the Rockstar model and invest something in the neighborhood of $100 million in a single game.

The quality difference between Grand Theft Auto/Red Dead and games like Watch Dogs is monstrous

I agree, the first few hours of Mafia 3 were great, now I am bored with it.

I also agree with this.

@Juub1990: I have a similar view on the game I wrote a review on it here:

http://www.gamespot.com/profile/blog/

There was more to do in Watchdogs then there was in GTA V...not counting bullshit like owning carwashes or whatever stupid shit.

What do you consider as "more to do"?

GTA's multiplayer compared to Watch Dogs is, well unfair -- GTA multiplayers is immense
the world itself houses much more than in Watch Dogs

If we are going to discuss ancillary things-to-do, then GTA contains a down-right ridiculous amount of, just, stuff. Stuff like adding movies and TV into the multiplayer free-roam -- something you don't need but it's still there.

This is why I'm so sick of open-world games... every game now has to be open-world, & a game being more linear is seen as some kind of negative. Mafia 3 would be a much better game I think if they just ditched all the usual boring, repetitive open-world nonsense and concentrated on a smaller, more detailed world with more interesting side missions. Like I said in another thread, at this stage I actually prefer Mafia 2... because at least it didn't have all the boring filler missions and just stuck to the core story missions mainly.

I just hope future games like Mass Effect: Andromeda don't go down a similar path.

I'm talking about the single player part. I really don't get into much multiplayer.

Are we talking content? I would consider Watch Dogs to have roughly as much content (single player wise) as Vice City had.

GTA V's campaign is stupid big, I'd say almost too big as the campaign, fairly often, just goes off the rails with ridiculousness. Plus the Watch Dogs campaign is just doing the same thing over and over and over again with boring characters.

I just remember there not being many side things to do or a very long single player side. at least not good stuff.

Watchdogs had a lot, decent side stuff.

Since when were FPS bad in the mid-early 2000's? PC and Xbox were doing just fine that department.

If anything the genre got worse once everyone tried mimicing CoD after Modern Warfare.

Aaaand yeah, most open world games have horrible pacing.

I thought linear movie s games suck. At least that what a lot of people keep saying on here. Mafia III has looked like Ubitrash for while now. Glad I don't fall for the flops.

Honestly after watching this video. i think hanger 13 should never allow to make any video game in future.

Mafia developers are now working on kingdom come deliverance.

I'm a few hours in and I'm loving the game I suppose open world games are not for everyone.

You have watched every video which shines a light on Mafia 3s faults and have truly formed an objective opinion about the game.

and have truly never once given a **** about this game, so don't act like watching that video changed ANYTHING about your opinion.

I'm glad you are not in charge of a gaming company (if you were I'd say the closest to you is Bobby Kottick)

Every single open world game like Mafia 3 is filled with bugs like that. In fact my experience with Skyrim was the exact same as that video: bug after bug after bug after bug....

Yet, what you don't seem to realise is that this video here is a compilation. It's gameplay from many different videos, edited together to make a funny video.

Hangar 13 should never be allowed to make games again ? Puh-lease

You've never even played a video game from them and you should be the one who decides that ?

Jesus Christ, do you even know how high on your horse you sound ?

I bet you you don't.

Because Im a fan of Mafia and they ruined everthing i love about Mafia. why cant i complain?

they should have made this as new IP but they want to sell so they tacked Mafia name.

@R3FURBISHED: Absolutely agree. No other studio comes close to emulating R*'s quality.

Illusion software already did when they released Mafia 1 in 2002. and no rockstar game come close to it.

You have every right to complain.

But you should make your complaints worthwhile and substantial.

Because taking a humouristic video from crowbcat, WITHOUT PLAYING THE GAME YOURSELF, then concluding "hangar 13 should never make games", comes over as insanely arrogant, bro.

That's because you know what's up.

Yup^^

Didn't say they were bad. There were just too many of them. Everybody was coming out with their own FPS. Prey, Pariah, Area 51, Fear, DOOM 3, Swat 4 and loads of others.

Today every damn game wants to be open-world even games which traditionally were not open-world. TW3, Metal Gear Solid 5, Zelda Breath of the Wild and the usual Just Cause, GTA, Saints Row, Watch_Dogs, Mad Max etc.

@R4gn4r0k: I respect your opinion my friend.

Mafia 3 would've been fantastic as a linear game, probably would've been the best cinematic shooter this gen so far. Its story hooked on to me much more than trash like Uncharted 4 and Quantum Break.

TC, do you have any examples from when you were enjoying it to when you were not, and could elaborate on how the structuring became detrimental when it moved from linear to more open-world?

Would be interesting to read.

I wish it were linear but then they can't justify the 60 dollar price tag for most.

The game completely loses its focus. Goes from story-driven narrative introducing new characters and great dialogue to shitty cutscenes and forgettable dialogues. The missions get repetitive, there is almost none of the cinematic quality seen in the first few hours. The plot also comes to a complete standstill and you gotta complete a bunch of boring rackets(that are fun at first) to make it move forward which completely kills an otherwise great pacing.

After the criticism it's predecessor received, with gamers expectations (who probably largely never played the original) being that of Grand Theft Auto and similar ilk, it seemed a forgone conclusion any potential sequel would become derivative, casting away whatever vestment of uniqueness it had.

I feel sorry for developers. Last gen, many (PC) gamers were saying open world was beast because the 7th gen consoles couldn't handle them well. That's why most console games were of the linear variety.

Now that the 8th gen consoles are capable enough, all of a sudden open world games are out of favor.

On a similar note, GTA V was trumped up for the longest time when it was console-only. Now that it's on PC, it's meh and so on.

What I see here are various factions scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for "ammo" to use.

WTF are you on? GTA V has been top 5 in Steam sales for over a year.

There were plenty of open-world games like gen too.

I find it bizarre that so many open world games have strictly linear missions. The best ones allow you to complete a mission in almost any way you want. Say what you will about Far Cry 3, but at least the story missions usually had more than one way to get the job done (there are exceptions, yeah yeah I know).

Like, what's the point of having an open world where you let the player do what they want if you're going to reign them in during the missions themselves? Do developers really think gamers will have too much fun with that? One of the worst offenders of this is, ironically, GTAV, which would often force you to switch to a specific character (and it often worked against whatever their special skill was, too... ie, in a heist, Franklin would be the driver while Michael would be the shooter... like, what?). It's such an oxymoronic and redundant way of designing a game.

• Linear movie games suck. Taking away too much player agency. While having little-to-none of the directing of a summer action flick. And I cant stand summer action flicks.
• Linear games like Mario or Doom are great, because they have the strengths of linearity without having 0 player agency.
• Linear Sandboxes are also great, games like thief and deus ex, utterly excel in player agency, and while they may not be quite as tight as mario. They have far superior emergant gameplay. Allowing for greater player freedom, creativity and reward players for thinking outside the box.
• Open world trash is well... trash. When its only strength is to provide an illusion of freedom, you know its fucked. The directing and pacing is usually as bad as open sandbox games (see below), the only narrative they can generally do right is the form of storytelling through the environment (see Dark Souls). When you have an open world and all the content is linear. You are not exactly taking advantage of your open world. This is why I am so interested in Zelda. It looks to be open world and not a true sandbox, but at the same time, the solutions are very open from what I have seen. It might actually take advantage of its open world nature.
• Open Sandboxes are great, while they have absolutely no directing, it doesnt matter, you are the director of your own experience. No other style comes even close when it comes to player agency. MineCraft is so popular for a reason, and Dwarf Fortress has continously been ranked one of the best games of all time for a reason as well.

@ghosts4ever: In what way?

far better story, characters, shooting, driving, missions. come on. Mafia 1 craps all over GTA franchise. even Mafia 2 is better than GTA.

This is the problem I think... devs/publishers feel that they have to make the game more open-world and and fill it with all these boring filler missions to justify the $60 price tag ($100 in Aus). Like mentioned earlier, this game would've been so much better if it was more linear and just focused on the main story missions. That's what is great about this game. If they made M3 a 10 hour game with an awesome story (like it seems to have), I'd pay close to, if not the full, price tag.

This! Original Mafia was so far ahead of anything Rockstar has done. It's a shame that Mafia 3 is turned into a GTA clone. F**k 2K.

2k is working under take 2 which is parent company of rockstar. they wanteed to make Mafia inferior to GTA and they success.

sad but true in this day and age. still boggles my mind that watch dogs was delayed by several months after gta v's release and was still by orders of magnitude so ridiculously inferior to gta v in just about every respect when it did eventually hit the shelves

Game devs need to learn how to place these concepts. Forcing a game into being open world just for the sake of it is stupid. Furthermore, loading these maps with a lot of fetch quests, unoriginal side missions and the like makes it worse.

That why I think the Witcher 3 was a game changer. All the quests are excellent, all the side quests have real characters, and the narratives of each quest, even things you simply stumble upon in the world, are crafted with care. Compare that to the Assassins Creed series, which I am still a fan of. Since AC3, 60 percent of the missions are tail missions. This seems like straight padding.

As I've said, hopefully W3 raised the bar enough to the point where all these copy paste devs like Ubi will take notice, and apply far more care to their stories and games.

@ghosts4ever: I think everyone is entitled to their opinion but no game has this much attention to detail, maybe GTA IV or older GTAs but R* is simply the best developer out there right now. It's ridiculous how Mafia, Saints Row and other GTA clones aren't even in the same league.

https://youtu.be/MmIgFtLa00Y

I loved their every game, even Max Payne 3 was the most satisfying third person shooter. Hell, I even liked their table tennis game.

@zeeshanhaider: You sound mad because the GTA games (since 3D) have never been available on PC since day one. That has more to do with personal issues than quality of the games.

Mafia III and gamers' refusal to heed the warning signs that a game will be disappointing. I saw this flop coming months ago and could not understand the hype. Same for No Man's Sky now people are calling Sean Murray a crook.

Glad you guys tried this piece of junk before me, now I don't have to. Probably wouldn't anyway, but it's good to know it sucks.

The original Mafia was not a GTA clone and so far ahead of anything GTA has accomplished. It was so much better that it's not even funny. The attention to detail n the original Mafia put even San Andreas and sometimes even GTA 4 to shame.

LOL, even GameSpot who likes crap think the game sucks. 6/10