Mafia: Definitive Edition - remake of Mafia from Hangar 13

[J_C]

Everyone is welcome to make their own conclusions about what ending is more interesting.

Both final monologues are banal, Hollywood-grade pseudo-philosophising, that's my whole point. The original soliloquy isn't some Scorsese-grade deep wisdom about life, it was written by a 21 year old dude who just saw Goodfellas. So sorry, the idea that DE somehow destroyed the meaningfulness of the original is very entertaining to me. Just another example of blind nostalgia at works.

DE does a few things worse - i.e. it's a bit less realistic than OG, Vavra said so yesterday and I agree - but the writing is not one of them.

This is like saying that Planescape Torment and Dragon Age 2 are on the same level regarding their writing, just because neither of them are high literature.

 

[commie]

cvv is trolling to the shithouse here...sorry bro but you deserve the retardreds on this....You even say you enjoyed the missions...fucking hell, you didn't notice the lack of being able to do them your way, give yourself a little edge? Like blocking the door when smashing up cars to slow down the chase? Or shooting the tires of vehicles you know will be used to pursue you or try to escape before triggering the fight that leads to this? Or finding little extras like having conversations with random people on the street cause you went the non-standard way to the objective? This shit was fucking awesome back in the day and put in there knowing that most people wouldn't even notice but was still there.

I don't give a fuck about cover shootan and even GPS can be ignored but this dumbing down of missions and the ability to freeform the experience to an extent is fucking bullshit. Bigger bullshit that changing Tommy's character, face, the cutscenes, story....in the end they couldn't even leave the gameplay alone.

Fuck Hangar 13 and I hope they never do another Mafia game again.

 

[Mark Richard]

and then the final cutscene comes that just....made me really sad at how badly Haden Blackman rewrote and mangled the ending.

Ok now seriously, what was the original ending about, in your own words, and why it was great whereas the DE ending is terrible. No emotes, no ediness, just proper, prestigious Codex explanation.

The biggest difference isn't so much about the words, but the context surrounding them:

Spoiler

In the original Tommy has a startled look when the man pulls a gun, and he dies instantly. This is followed by a horrifying close-up of his lifeless face. The camera moves back to reveal him alone, his unattended garden hose still spraying absently. The classic 'crime doesn't pay' ending has been visually reinforced through these images. It's shocking and tragic.

In the remake Tommy smiles as the man pulls his gun, living long enough to give his family a tearful farewell. He dies surrounded by loved ones. It's beautiful and triumphant.

Naturally I think the original's gut-punch is far more fitting to the story. The remake does everything it can to soften the blow.

 

[Lemming42]

Spoiler

The way the ending treats Tommy is emblematic of the way that DE generally treats him - it gives him competence and agency, both things he lacks in the original while he bleeds to death alone on the lawn. DE changes Tommy to put him in control constantly - it's his plan to wreck the cars in Molotov Party (compared to the original where he was basically forced into it), he yells out orders to Paulie during Better Get Used To It (compared to the original where Paulie is in command), he's much less hesitant to become the driver in Fairplay, and so on. Even during the mid-to-late missions, where the original Tommy got a lot more control over the plot, DE Tommy's dialogue is just generally more confident and aggressive throughout. Plus there's stuff like the change to You Lucky Bastard:

- In the original Tommy and Paulie fuck it up repeatedly and eventually get completely taken off the case. Tommy is only sent along as insurance during the "real damn professional" scene.

- In DE, Tommy intentionally fucks the assassination up to save a civilian from being killed, and then rides a motorbike after Sergio like he's fucking Steve McQueen or something. All happens in one day (I think?) without Tommy ever getting taken off the case for incompetence.

It's weird, it's like the new writers thought people wouldn't want to play as a character like the original Tommy, who is much more often a victim of circumstance than anything else. The new combat moves don't help either, since out-of-shape cab driver Tommy can now do Dishonored takedowns on people.

He dies completely pathetically in the original, shot in the head with his face frozen into an expression of shocked terror, and bleeds out all alone as he reminisces on the fact that this is basically all his fault. In the new one he gets his big dramatic dying swan moment, surrounded by loved ones, where he's like YOU... ARE ALL SAFE NOW, and also reacts calmly to having a fucking shotgun pointed at his face, because he's just that cool.

 

[commie]

Spoiler

The way the ending treats Tommy is emblematic of the way that DE generally treats him - it gives him competence and agency, both things he lacks in the original while he bleeds to death alone on the lawn. DE changes Tommy to put him in control constantly - it's his plan to wreck the cars in Molotov Party (compared to the original where he was basically forced into it), he yells out orders to Paulie during Better Get Used To It (compared to the original where Paulie is in command), he's much less hesitant to become the driver in Fairplay, and so on. Even during the mid-to-late missions, where the original Tommy got a lot more control over the plot, DE Tommy's dialogue is just generally more confident and aggressive throughout. Plus there's stuff like the change to You Lucky Bastard:

- In the original Tommy and Paulie fuck it up repeatedly and eventually get completely taken off the case. Tommy is only sent along as insurance during the "real damn professional" scene.

- In DE, Tommy intentionally fucks the assassination up to save a civilian from being killed, and then rides a motorbike after Sergio like he's fucking Steve McQueen or something. All happens in one day (I think?) without Tommy ever getting taken off the case for incompetence.

It's weird, it's like the new writers thought people wouldn't want to play as a character like the original Tommy, who is much more often a victim of circumstance than anything else. The new combat moves don't help either, since out-of-shape cab driver Tommy can now do Dishonored takedowns on people.

He dies completely pathetically in the original, shot in the head with his face frozen into an expression of shocked terror, and bleeds out all alone as he reminisces on the fact that this is basically all his fault. In the new one he gets his big dramatic dying swan moment, surrounded by loved ones, where he's like YOU... ARE ALL SAFE NOW, and also reacts calmly to having a fucking shotgun pointed at his face, because he's just that cool.

Exactly. This is why the original was such a damn good, nuanced character. Original Tommy was also pragmatic, he mentioned during recollections that he didn't have a problem with killing per se, so again, he wasn't made to be a totally weepy 'poor good guy out of his depth' cliche. At the airport, you never knew 100% that he'd let Frank go despite being a 'nice' guy. In the new one, even if you never played the original, you just got the feeling that this version is the 'killer with a heart of gold' that would do the 'right' thing. Modern Tommy is just bog standard badass hero type, forgettable like countless other one dimensional characters.

 

[cvv]

cvv is trolling to the shithouse here...sorry bro but you deserve the retardreds on this....

Bullshit. 90% of what ya'll are dumping on ITT is pure bullshit. Everybody ITT already "knew" months before the launch the game will be terrible because that's what Codex does with most games and ALL big budget games, especially remakes since Codex is nostalgiafag metropolis of the world. People making shit up and seeing Jesuses in the clouds to rationalize their decision to hate this gaym.

Have you ever been on Codex bro? What's the last big budge game the hivemind praised? Maybe Witcher 3 and that's only because half the Codex is potato. So don't give me any of your "ur trolling" and "u deserve retarded". If the remake was made by Vavra himself and an army of demigod developers Codex would still find 100 and one reasons why it's the worst thing in the galaxy and why everybody associated with it must die of ass cancer. Give me a break.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Bullshit. 90% of what ya'll are dumping on ITT is pure bullshit. Everybody ITT already "knew" months before the launch the game will be terrible because that's what Codex does with most games and ALL big budget games, especially remakes since Codex is nostalgiafag metropolis of the world.

Have you ever been on Codex bro? What's the last big budge game the hivemind praised? Maybe Witcher 3 and that's only because half the Codex is potato. So don't give me any of your "ur trolling" and "u deserve retarded". If the remake was made by Vavra himself and an army of demigod developers Codex would still find 100 and one reasons why it's the worst thing in the galaxy and why everybody associated with it must die of ass cancer. Give me a break.

Your statements are the equivalent of shoving your fingers in both ears and going "lalalalalalalala".

 

[ADL]

I really dislike the final moments of the ending but I haven't seen anyone talk about the fact that in the original, Tommy leaves the country with his family immediately after the gallery shootout but in the remake, he seems to have just gone to meet the detective in the bar and hasn't spoken to his family since before leaving to go see Paulie.

Not even a phone call telling his wife to get the family out of the house. Fucking ridiculous. I guess that's my biggest complaint about this remake, they expanded on shit that didn't matter, meanwhile it's worse in the places that do.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Spoiler

Gaem

Spoiler

es

Spoiler

And btw:
definitive
(dɪˈfɪnɪtɪv)
adj
1. serving to decide or settle finally; conclusive
2. (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) most reliable, complete, or authoritative: the definitive reading of a text.
3. serving to define or outline

So when new fans are interested to play the Mafia series, they're gonna see this absolute shit title of "the definitive edition" and think that it's just the same as the game from 2002, if they even know it exists.
F00ck th1s R3MaK3.

 

[Alexios]

Garbage, just like 1, 2, and 3.

 

[Carrion]

And dumping on the cover system is just pure nostalgiafaggotry, I hate this stupid mindset so much. Just shitting on something because it's new. It's like saying CGA was better than EGA and EGA better than VGA. Mafia OG didn't have a cover system because it didn't exist yet. Afaik the first example of a cover system in this type of game (3rd person, camera over the shoulder) was introduced in the first Uncharted and that was 5 years later. I'm p. sure if it existed earlier and Illusion Softworks saw it they'd definitely put it in the game. After all Mafia 2 already has a cover system.

Can't speak for anyone else, but I hated the cover system already in Mafia 2. In fact, it was the only reason it took me years to even properly check the game out. Haven't liked cover systems in any other game either. Would Illusion Softworks have included it if they made Mafia in 2020? Probably yes, since it's pretty much in every third-person shooter now, just like there's a quest compass in every RPG. It just tells you that the decline is real.

Your post reminds me of a Fallout 3 fan trying to convince people how FO1 surely would've had first-person real-time combat if it wasn't hampered by the technical limitations of the time.

 

[DalekFlay]

Your post reminds me of a Fallout 3 fan trying to convince people how FO1 surely would've had first-person real-time combat if it wasn't hampered by the technical limitations of the time.

I mean... it's quite likely it would have. Whether modern gaming styles are decline or not, they are the modern gameplay styles.

 

[Paul_cz]

Can't speak for anyone else, but I hated the cover system already in Mafia 2. In fact, it was the only reason it took me years to even properly check the game out. Haven't liked cover systems in any other game either. Would Illusion Softworks have included it if they made Mafia in 2020? Probably yes, since it's pretty much in every third-person shooter now, just like there's a quest compass in every RPG. It just tells you that the decline is real.

If I remember what was said in the stream correctly, Vávra dislikes cover systems and didn't want to have it in M2 and I doubt he would have it in a potential shooter game if Warhorse were making one today.

 

[JDR13]

What is it exactly about the cover system that triggers people so much? I'm genuinely curious. I haven't played the game yet myself.

Also, is it possible to toggle off that obnoxious objective marker or at least make it dynamic in some way?

 

[Paul_cz]

What is it exactly about the cover system that triggers people so much? I'm genuinely curious. I haven't played the game yet myself.

Also, is it possible to toggle off that obnoxious objective marker or at least make it dynamic in some way?

No, that marker is there, always, on every difficulty, cannot be disabled in any way, and yes it is exactly as moronic and intrusive as it seems.
But developers do intend to provide more HUD customization options via patch, so I have no doubt it will be possible to disable it soon.

Regarding cover system, personally, while I don't utterly hate it, I dislike it because it makes combat more passive and simplified, and turns combat into a kind of glorified whack-a-mole. It was particularly egregious in this remake on the classic difficulty (hardest) I played at, when anytime I left cover I got killed almost instantly, so you just gotta be in this sticky cover all the time and pop heads (admittedly I played with gamepad which makes combat much more difficult by its nature of slower and imprecise aiming; enemies are bullet sponges who can take 5 rounds in the chest, although they die on single headshot).

 

[J_C]

What is it exactly about the cover system that triggers people so much? I'm genuinely curious. I haven't played the game yet myself.

My problem with the cover system is that it makes the combat more passive. You just wait in the cover until the enemies ran out of ammo, you just pop out, fire a few rounds then get back to cover. Rinse and repeat.

In the original you could crouch so you could still use cover, but you were not sticking to it. You could strafe left and right, position yourself as you wanted, and if you wanted to leave cover you just stand up, roll away or something. With sticky cover, it is much more difficult.

 

[DalekFlay]

Yeah, unless your shooter has more to it than pure shooting... Crysis's cloak for example... then you want to be able to move and dodge as part of the gameplay. If you're just sitting in one spot popamoling, and there's no deeper mechanics, then it gets super boring super fast.

That said the reasons to play Mafia 1 and 2 were never the combat, so it maybe doesn't matter much.

 

[cvv]

 

[Ol' Willy]

What is it exactly about the cover system that triggers people so much?

1) It's all scripted. Cover-based shooters have objects coded as "stick-able", where you can toggle cover. This severely limits the amount of possible covers, limiting your ways to be creative. For comparison, I remember using a fucking lamp-pole as a cover in Stalker games - it's very narrow, but it's better than nothing.
2) Notice how most of the cover-based shooters have quite small "arenas" where you can fight people. It's mostly corridors and rooms and open areas are quite rare.
3) Lack of precise positioning. Sticking has its own animations, and usually you can't properly position your character, while in free-form games you can always position yourself as you fancy.
4) Very often, while you in sticky cover your character is invincible - that is, as long as you are not flanked or reared. This promotes slow and careful popamole playstyle. First Kane and Lynch as an example of the opposite, when you still can get hurt if your body parts are sticking out.
5) Flowing from the previous, it was very annoying to be hit in the leg and not being able to move that leg out of the harms way.
6) AI in cover-based shooters acts accordingly, usually quite dumbed down, watering it down to "wait for enemy to pop out, whack".
7) Games with extremely accurate blind-fire (GTA 4, for example) dumb down gameplay even more, when you can pop enemies without the risk of getting shot.
8) Slowing down: you move in, stick to the cover, shoot some people, move only when it's completely safe. It's way slower to change cover in sticky-based games.
9) Sticky-based control problems: didn't "unstick" when needed, didn't stick when needed, etc. Very annoying.
10) No dodge if enemies use projectile based weapons, no strafe/circle strafe either.
11) Sticky-based shooters are the plague of console age. It's not a secret that a gamepad will never match keyboard+mouse in terms of shooter controls, and sticky-based systems are made to solve this problem, equalizing both input methods.

 

[cretin]

What is it exactly about the cover system that triggers people so much? I'm genuinely curious. I haven't played the game yet myself.

Also, is it possible to toggle off that obnoxious objective marker or at least make it dynamic in some way?

cover systems are the most redundant thing ever in terms of gameplay. Classical movement already has a built in "cover system" - you physically move your character behind objects that will provide protection from enemy fire. Not only is this sufficient, its actually superior to "sticky cover" systems because it gives the player choice as to exactly how, where and when to do these things.

 

[Wunderbar]

Tomb Raider 2013 had a good cover system, Lara just naturally hid behind cover during firefights if you were close enough and it never felt sticky.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Tomb Raider 2013 had a good cover system, Lara just naturally hid behind cover during firefights if you were close enough and it never felt sticky.

It's basically the same principle but instead of hitting a button to stick to cover you just press forward towards an object and it does it automatically. After that it's the same as any other stick to cover system with the points enumerated above by Ol'Willy.

 

[JDR13]

Tomb Raider 2013 had a good cover system, Lara just naturally hid behind cover during firefights if you were close enough and it never felt sticky.

It's basically the same principle but instead of hitting a button to stick to cover you just press forward towards an object and it does it automatically. After that it's the same as any other stick to cover system with the points enumerated above by Ol'Willy.

I think his point is simply that cover systems don't have to be sticky. It's just a shame that most of them are.

 

[cvv]

Tomb Raider 2013 had a good cover system, Lara just naturally hid behind cover during firefights if you were close enough and it never felt sticky.

Yep, same for the new Deus Exes and a couple of other games. Plus staying put wasn't an option, mobs were constantly trying to flank you or smoke you out. If a cover system is done well it's way more fun and immersive than playing a realistic game like Mafia in an arkadey Doom style. Unfortunately the system in DE is not even as good as in Mafia 2.

 

[Mark Richard]

Tomb Raider 2013 had a good cover system, Lara just naturally hid behind cover during firefights if you were close enough and it never felt sticky.

The sticky cover system popularized by the first Gears of War was surpassed in 2008 by Army of Two, which took the next logical step as characters automatically used surroundings as cover based on their positioning. Taking cover felt natural and didn't restrict free movement. I surmise that it's still not a widespread feature because programming environmental awareness takes more effort than having the player superglue themselves to a wall to play a 3D version of Space Invaders.