Mafia: The Old Country release date shrinks to summer 2025


Open world fuhgeddaboudit simulator Mafia: The Old Country will release in summer 2025, according to a Youtube trailer that has leaked on social media ahead of tonight’s Game Awards. The trailer also treats us to a few snippets of the game’s story scenes, shoot-outs and punch-ups. We get to see wise guys swinging knives, riding horses and glowering silently at sun-baked Sicilian countryside.



It’s all set to the sorrowful strains of Madama Butterfly. I was going to comment that Madama Butterfly takes place in Japan and as such, is a bizarre soundtrack for an Italian gangster game, but of course, the opera was composed by Puccini. See, this is the kind of high-quality research I can pack in when I get the details two hours in advance of the Game Awards, rather than writing trailers up like I am trying to catch bullets fired out of an actual Tommy gun.


Tommy guns feature in previous Mafia games, but they hadn’t been invented at the time of Mafia: The Old Country’s story. It’s a prequel to the first three games, “set in the brutal underworld of 1900s Sicily”. Expect “authentic realism and rich storytelling”. Personally, I don’t think you’re allowed to be both authentic and realistic. It goes against nature. I’ll allow it, though, because I enjoyed Mafia 3 for all its flaws. That game had the most incredible review bugs, but it had a lot of style. Being set in 1960s New Orleans definitely helped.


The Old Country is the work of Hangar 13, who are both the studio behind Mafia 3 and staffed by people who worked on Mafia 1 and 2. You might like to revisit last year’s announcement trailer. There will probably be a fuller version of the leaked trailer at GeoffFest later tonight. I’ll post it here when it lands.

Mafia: The Old Country settling on summer 2025 theoretically gives it a little headstart on 2K Games stablemate GTA 6, which parent company Take-Two Interactive are “highly confident” will launch in the autumn. Needless to say, it wouldn’t go well for Mafia if the two rocked up side by side.


The Geoffening has begun! Catch all the latest Game Awards announcements on our Game Awards 2024 hub page. You can also get the news hot from our liveblog.

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