now that i think about it...many people are speculating that these 4 are all protagonists
but remember mafia 2 artwork had 4 characters, and we all know only vito was protagonist
so mafia 3 protagonist could just be the tall guy on the second to left..what do you guys think?
do you expect 1 protagonist or multiple protagonists like gta 5
Lots of artwork has multiple characters. The Mafia 2 one was the protagonist walking ahead of the rest, so he is marked as the main character. No one person seems distinct in the Mafia 3 artwork. There is the tallest guy that sort of stands out. The person in the foreground also stands out, and you could make the argument that he is the protagonist and the others are crime bosses.
To me the immediate conclusion to draw is that it's CO-OP of some sort. Multiple protagonists in the way GTA V handles them really balloons at more than three characters. Instead of 6 'connections' (each character's connection with the other two characters) there would be double that (12, each character's connection to the other three characters). That seems like a complicated narrative to try to weave, and because of that I think it's more likely that to be a cooperative game where each player controls a single protagonist.