Dan Vavra's original concept for Mafia 3

[cvv]

Vavra just revealed his original Mafia 3 was supposed to have two main heroes - a cop and a mafioso. It was set in late 1960s, around the time of the JFK assassination. As a cop you were supposed to investigate your own crimes that you perpetrated as the wiseguy. It sounds weird but he claims they figured it out and it worked.

So we could've had a hardcore conspiracy thriller about the mafia connection with the JFK hit job instead of this garbage. FML.

 

[ADL]

Lmao Dan just had published another long-ass interview about all kinds of nonsense and among other things he was asked what his unproduced Mafia 3 script was about. So apparently it also took place in the 60s and player played as both italian-american mafioso and a police officer who investigated the mob, JFK played some kind of role in it. He cannot publish it or go into detail because technically it is owned by Take2 and he is super pissed it wasn't made because he was proud of it and thought it was better than M1 or M2.

Goddamn that sucks. Hope after KCD2 wraps up that he'll do another game similar to Mafia. A first person immersive sim Mafia game in the style of Kingdom Come Deliverance would be pure

 

[Paul_cz]

 

[DalekFlay]

Goddamn that sucks. Hope after KCD2 wraps up that he'll do another game similar to Mafia. A first person immersive sim Mafia game in the style of Kingdom Come Deliverance would be pure

I'm sure I'll like Kingdom Come when I get around to it, but a medieval Poland sim doesn't get my dick hard. A 1930's gangster sim though? Be still my beatin' heart...

 

[AwesomeButton]

JFK was killed 1963, I think it was the end of November.

The good thing is Vavra can totally do his Mafia 3. No one has copyrighted the JFK assassination, and I'm quite sure Vavra can secure financing. The bad thing is that it will probably still end up being a linear "cinematic experience" with arcade shooting elements. This used to be good enough for me at the times of Mafia 2, but we live in a post RDR2 world.

 

[cvv]

JFK was killed 1963, I think it was the end of November.

The good thing is Vavra can totally do his Mafia 3. No one has copyrighted the JFK assassination, and I'm quite sure Vavra can secure financing. The bad thing is that it will probably still end up being a linear "cinematic experience" with arcade shooting elements. This used to be good enough for me at the times of Mafia 2, but we live in a post RDR2 world.

Damn, for some reason I thought JFK was whacked 1968.

Anyway Vavra explicitly said it was not about you killing JFK or anything like that. He didn't go into too much detail but my guess is the assassination was just a side thing, probably some banter talking about mob being involved or some such.

Also I'm p. sure whatever would Vavra do with any game it'd be always something new and original and unlike anything else on the market.

 

[Mark Richard]

As a cop you were supposed to investigate your own crimes that you perpetrated as the wiseguy. It sounds weird but he claims they figured it out and it worked.

The only comparison that springs to mind is Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy in which the player takes the role of both the murderer and police. Initially I was tempted to play the police badly because the suspect Lucas was innocent, but the game won't progress without evidence, and missable clues are covered by alternate clues to ensure the investigation has enough for an arrest. If Lucas messes up before that point, it's an instant game over. We don't even get the pleasure of watching him explain to a courtroom jury that a wizard committed the murder while the amused judge pretends to call Gandalf on an invisible telephone.

The main issue with playing both sides and investigating your own crimes would seem obvious - you'd be constantly fed repeating facts, things you already knew. Fahrenheit tries to get around this by either having Lucas leave clues he wasn't aware of, or through editing trickery. Furthermore, Lucas is trying to solve the same mystery, it's just that his involvement is personal. So the two perspectives work in tandem to provide players with new information.

Regardless of how Vavra approached things, I would've loved to see his Mafia 3.

 

[Ol' Willy]

As a cop you were supposed to investigate your own crimes that you perpetrated as the wiseguy.

And in the end you will realize that the cop and the mafioso are the same guy, only with dissociative identity disorder

 

[Alphons]

Here's video where he talks about his Mafia III.




Sadly he mentions that script isn't his anymore.

 

[cvv]

Sadly he mentions that script isn't his anymore.

It was never his. He wrote it while being employed by 2K so it's always been a 2K property.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Damn, for some reason I thought JFK was whacked 1968.

You were probably thinking of his brother RFK, who was killed in some shady circumstances as well.

 

[sser]

As a cop you were supposed to investigate your own crimes that you perpetrated as the wiseguy. It sounds weird but he claims they figured it out and it worked.

The only comparison that springs to mind is Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy in which the player takes the role of both the murderer and police. Initially I was tempted to play the police badly because the suspect Lucas was innocent, but the game won't progress without evidence, and missable clues are covered by alternate clues to ensure the investigation has enough for an arrest. If Lucas messes up before that point, it's an instant game over. We don't even get the pleasure of watching him explain to a courtroom jury that a wizard committed the murder while the amused judge pretends to call Gandalf on an invisible telephone.

The main issue with playing both sides and investigating your own crimes would seem obvious - you'd be constantly fed repeating facts, things you already knew. Fahrenheit tries to get around this by either having Lucas leave clues he wasn't aware of, or through editing trickery. Furthermore, Lucas is trying to solve the same mystery, it's just that his involvement is personal. So the two perspectives work in tandem to provide players with new information.

Regardless of how Vavra approached things, I would've loved to see his Mafia 3.

From a technical standpoint, it's a very complicated thing to do with writing as it is very easy to slip into redundant territories like you mentioned. The main thing is to surround the two protagonists with enough secondary characters/details that the two protagonists must in some way depend upon a variety of characters who may or may not help them; good cop depending on moles, the criminal having links to the police department, politicians, things of that era, to better differentiate their stories -- I'm assuming the JFK stuff spiced it a lot as well as an over-arcing theme. Overall, probably something like The Departed, but the big difference is a movie like that can in essence display both characters at the same time, whereas a game is necessarily dependent on one at a time. I can see why a studio might pass over on it for being too complex.

 

[cvv]

Damn, for some reason I thought JFK was whacked 1968.

You were probably thinking of his brother RFK, who was killed in some shady circumstances as well.

Lemme guess, he accidentally cut his head off while brushing his hair.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Imagine Age of Decadence-like RPG where you play as two characters from opposing sides and have to deal with the consequences stemming from the decisions of the other character... Damn

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Lemme guess, he accidentally cut his head off while brushing his hair.

Also assassinated while attempting to run for the Democratic presidential nomination for the 1968 election.
Shot by a lone gunman, who may or may not have been setup.

 

[Grunker]

Vavra just revealed his original Mafia 3 was supposed to have two main heroes - a cop and a mafioso. It was set in late 1960s, around the time of the JFK assassination. As a cop you were supposed to investigate your own crimes that you perpetrated as the wiseguy. It sounds weird but he claims they figured it out and it worked.

As others have pointed out, they do this in Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy. The entire first half of the game is about that. The game is a mess and especially the latter half is utter trash, but this concept in itself is why the game despite being interactive movie-crap for the most part is actually kind of interesting at first. They make it work by you choosing the perps actions and what to hide, but two things make solving the case interesting:

1) You don't always know where you hid stuff even if you chose to hide something, meaning you still have to look for it as police
2) You often miss something, and then you get this funny "oh, I missed this" when you find it as the police

There's also a scene where you play both sides of an interrogation :D

Again, Fahrenheit is pretty shit, but this concept on its own was very interesting. A whole game built around it with no supernatural shit would be incredibly cool, I think.

 

[Grunker]

The main tricky thing is balancing incentives. I think maybe something like Sleeping Dog's system where you have different upgrade paths depending on your playstyle could work. Do good as police - unlock this tree. Do good as perp - unlock the other one. Do decently as both, get a mix. Besides having C&C of course.

 

[SlamDunk]

 

[Jarpie]

Isn't Mafia 2 notorious for having a lot of cuts? I think they cut out bunch of missions in middle of the game and just showed them as montage?