As promised, 2K Games released the first trailer today for Mafia III at the Gamescom expo in Germany. The accompanying announcement also includes plenty of details about the storyline, which takes place in New Orleans in 1968. And you know its 1968 because most of the action in the trailer is scored to “House of the Rising Sun.”
Rather than follow a foot soldier’s rise in La Cosa Nostra, Mafia III flips the player’s perspective and follows Lincoln Clay, “a disenfranchised Vietnam veteran” who is at war with the Sicilian Mob.
Mafia III follows the story of Lincoln Clay, a disenfranchised Vietnam veteran, returning from combat and looking for a home and a place to belong. Orphaned as a child, Lincoln at last achieves a semblance of family with the city’s black mob, finding the surrogate father and brother he has longed for. But when Lincoln’s new family is betrayed and slaughtered by the Italian mob, he becomes fixated on revenge and wages a brutal war against the Italians, disrupting the balance of power in the seedy underworld of New Orleans. As the story progresses, Lincoln allies himself with other criminals and builds an empire and a new family of his own that transforms the city.
As Clay, players will be able to “choose their [own] path” when building their crime syndicate. And their revenge can be exacted through “cunning, stalking, and deception” or through “overwhelming force and firepower.” If the trailer is to be believed, players will even be able to feed rivals to crocodiles.
“The Mafia franchise is known for its immersive sense of time and place, and for presenting compelling stories about life within organized crime,” said Haden Blackman, the game’s Creative Director. “In Mafia III, we are introducing players to an unexpected new anti-hero and an iconic city to explore, all within a hard-boiled drama set during one of the most turbulent years in American history.”
Mafia III is in development at Hangar 13 and will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One sometime in 2016.
