'Mafia 4' Won't Be Set In America, Says Insider

It feels like only a few days ago that we heard that a new, fourth Mafia game was in development at Hangar 13’s Brighton-based studio. Because it was. Now, we’ve heard a little more about the game, being developed in Unreal Engine 5 rather than its makers’ bespoke in-house engine. Specifically, we’ve heard about where it’s going to be set.

As reported at DualShockers, XboxEra host Shpeshal Nick is claiming that the probably-won’t-be-called-this-but-let’s-go-with-it Mafia 4 is to be set in Italy, not the US. Which is a fair enough suggestion given we’re fairly sure this new game will be a prequel, set before the events of the original Mafia of 2002, which based its action in the fictional city of Lost Heaven, Illinois in the 1930s. The game featured the Salieris as one of two warring crime families, and Nick thinks that Mafia 4 will tell the story of how Don Salieri rose to power in Sicily before moving his operation to the States.

TheGameSpoof rounds up further information offered by Nick on a recent episode of the XboxEra podcast, including that the next Mafia game won’t be as sprawling and as non-linear as 2016’s Mafia III, making it more like Mafia II where the open world wasn’t that open at all. Nick adds that this is all “rumours and mumblings”, “never 100%”, and says he’s never played a Mafia game so doesn’t know the relevance of the crime family to the story; but he claims a contact of his, “this person”, has given him the information on the Don Salieri plotline and the Sicily setting. Time wise, think the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th rather than the 1930s. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how on the money this all is.

Mafia: Definitive Edition, which collected the three games together in one set, released in September 2020 and represents a very convenient way to catch up with these titles ahead of the fourth’s arrival (well, its official reveal). We reviewed the remake of the first game over here, if you want to read our take on Hanger 13’s excellent work there. Alternatively, watch the video review above.