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Why did Mafia 3 fail

Mister Apoc

Demigod of Troll Threads
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it had some of the best acting, cutscene direction, stories etc.

yet overall it failed, what were the main reasons?
 

Blam

Member
Plain and simple the gameplay got really fucking repetitive. With same mission, mission, chase, secure, boss. It sucks because it's a really good game.
 
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Mister Apoc

Demigod of Troll Threads
Plain and simple the gameplay got really fucking repetitive. With same mission, mission, chase, secure, boss.
but i honestly think the game had superior story direction than even Red Dead Redemption

yet Red Dead Redemption has a higher score, and greater legacy (is this rockstar bias or something else)?
 

Blam

Member
but i honestly think the game had superior story direction than even Red Dead Redemption

yet Red Dead Redemption has a higher score, and greater legacy (is this rockstar bias or something else)?

I mean the story in RDR is sorta eh it's just gameplay that really drives the game.

Oh the story in Mafia 3 was amazing. I loved it.
 

camelCase

Member
but i honestly think the game had superior story direction than even Red Dead Redemption

yet Red Dead Redemption has a higher score, and greater legacy (is this rockstar bias or something else)?

Yeah but these aren't the kind of things that prevent a game of these production values from succeeding. Numerous open-worlders have awful combat and repetitive yayayaya but I sincerely doubt the johnnies in gamestop are turning their nose up for that reason. The game just looks like a generic GTA knockoff.

I think their decision to make the MC black was good but I feel like they didn't do enough with it. There were hamfisted attempts at showing racism in the time period but if that were more a central tenant of the game, people would go crazy for that. BP was received very well b/c it had a well done and entertaining review of "race politics" or whatever you'd call it.
 

Mister Apoc

Demigod of Troll Threads
Yeah but these aren't the kind of things that prevent a game of these production values from succeeding. Numerous open-worlders have awful combat and repetitive yayayaya but I sincerely doubt the johnnies in gamestop are turning their nose up for that reason. The game just looks like a generic GTA knockoff.

I think their decision to make the MC black was good but I feel like they didn't do enough with it. There were hamfisted attempts at showing racism in the time period but if that were more a central tenant of the game, people would go crazy for that. BP was received very well b/c it had a well done and entertaining review of "race politics" or whatever you'd call it.
so what made red dead have a higher score than and legacy?
 
I always kinda thought critics avoided giving it the praise it deserved because of the ugly details of the time period it takes place in. Call me crazy but it makes sense to me that modern day game reviewers would avoid giving such a racially charged game glowing reviews. Regardless of Lincoln absolutely decimating everyone white, black, Hispanic etc in his path.

I’ll never understand the hate. Is it repetitious? Sure I guess. But so is 95% of every other open world out there. The gunplay is fantastic and with the addition of the bullet time makes it even better.

If you want variety within its world, get the DLC. It’s all fucking good.

It also has one of the best licensed and original soundtracks ever.

Yes this was in my top 5 for 2016

If only they could’ve done the closing credits to Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child.”

Fuckin Nolan North as the Grand Dragon of the local KKK. Surprised no one melted their shit over that 🤣

“Drake chose a white supramicst role! REEEEEEEEEEEE”
 
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camelCase

Member
so what made red dead have a higher score than and legacy?
I don't know what legacy is , but becase people liked Red Dead lol. It's wild west GTA it's hard to screw that up, and it was destined to be a success from the moment they marketed it as a game set in the west made by R*, Mafia series doesn't really have that security blanket. I barely remember playing Mafia 2 even though I think I enjoyed it a lot.
 
I don't know what legacy is , but becase people liked Red Dead lol. It's wild west GTA it's hard to screw that up, and it was destined to be a success from the moment they marketed it as a game set in the west made by R*, Mafia series doesn't really have that security blanket. I barely remember playing Mafia 2 even though I think I enjoyed it a lot.

Mafia 2 is fantastic.

Doesn’t get the credit it deserves at all. Especially the prison sequence. Then you get released and it’s the 50s and the licensed soundtrack is updated 😲
 

camelCase

Member
I always kinda thought critics avoided giving it the praise it deserved because of the ugly details of the time period it takes place in. Call me crazy but it makes sense to me that modern day game reviewers would avoid giving such a racially charged game glowing reviews. Regardless of Lincoln absolutely decimating everyone white, black, Hispanic etc in his path.

I think the political landscape makes people more likely to take extremist stances on the game but that's a good thing as we've it bolster the sales of Deliverance. People want to see these boundaries pushed in the medium and the reviewers should be able to write a review framing it in that context if they don't want to push buttons.

Mafia 2 is fantastic.

Doesn’t get the credit it deserves at all. Especially the prison sequence. Then you get released and it’s the 50s and the licensed soundtrack is updated 😲

Oh yeah. The hits of Louis Prima are all I remember, haha.
 
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Roufianos

Member
Because it's one of the worst designed AAA games this gen. 90% of the content is padding and busy work.

They should have stuck to the Mafia II model which consisted of tightly hand crafted story missions that actually felt significant.
 

Blood Inc.

Neo Member
Take-Two said it 2K's fastest selling game so it was not a complete failure.

Note: Take-Two owns both R* and 2K.
 
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I think the political landscape makes people more likely to take extremist stances on the game but that's a good thing as we've it bolster the sales of Deliverance. People want to see these boundaries pushed in the medium and the reviewers should be able to write a review framing it in that context if they don't want to push buttons.

I totally agree man. Thanks for making the thread. I’m now redownloading it so i can play it a third time and get the Platinum.
 
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Because it's one of the worst designed AAA games this gen. 90% of the content is padding and busy work.

They should have stuck to the Mafia II model which consisted of tightly hand crafted story missions that actually felt significant.

Never got tired of the “busywork” because the shooting was extremely satisfying and the story was so damn good.
 

camelCase

Member
Never got tired of the “busywork” because the shooting was extremely satisfying and the story was so damn good.

I don't think knocking the game for its busywork is really fair because that's something that no game in this genre really gets right. What even is the gold standard? GTA where the mission structure just as derivative?
 
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Mister Apoc

Demigod of Troll Threads
I don't think knocking the game for its busywork is really fair because that's something that no game in this genre really gets right. What even is the gold standard? GTA where the mission structure just as derivative?
GTA V had much more creative missions than the vast majority of open world crime games to be honest
 

Isa

Gold Member
I appreciated the decent story and acting, but the gameplay felt rough to me. Not necessarily bad, just in need of polish. I enjoyed going out of my way to get the collectables, and my girl helped me with most of them, she loves the ol' Playboy mags haha. But the thing I remember actually getting me upset were the random difficulty spikes with A.I. that would swarm like a hivemind. Whereas R*'s games tend to feel like the open-world game design is more lenient to player agency, there are several ways to solve a mission against tough odds. I love RDR and Revolver for the setting and story, Mafia 3 was alright but carries a depressing air about it. That's just me though.
 

Denton

Member
The main reason were the brutal bugs, 30fps cap and resulting terrible reputation of the game that poisoned the well from the outset. Second main reason is the patterned mission structure that is extremely samey.

I waited for the patches and enjoyed the shit out of it. Year later, I replayed the whole thing with all DLCs and enjoyed it even more. It is fantastic game, but person really has to enjoy the core mechanics of driving, stealth and shooting in order to be able to overlook the repetitive mission structure.

DLCs were completely unique though and absolutely great, even if a bit on the shorter side.

It is sad that Hangar 13 has been butchered, there was potential for a sequel that would fix the flaws of this one.

Mafia 1 is still the best masterpiece of the series though.
 
I didn’t even know it sold poorly.

I got it for my son but didn’t play it myself because it had that “been there done that” feel gameplay wise.

I also seem to recall people saying it was buggy when it first came out and I didn’t want to deal with that.
 

TimFL

Member
I lost all interest when they announced that it had nothing to do with Vitos story (I know that he is in this). I was looking forward to finally getting a twist on the Mafia story after Mafia 2, having picked the morally wrong path getting your friend killed but in return you now run a family and are the new target. I despise "you start from nothing, work your way up" stories but everyone always resorts to them. It would've been a nice twist to start in a mansion as Vito in M3 and then either end as a corpse in a river or with even more power by the time M3 is over.

But no, they had to go for the "I come from nothing" angle again and this time do a whole 180° and go for non-italian Mafias which surely made them lose a bit of their fanbase also (I grew up with the Godfather trilogy playing once a year, Mafias = italian Mafias for me). The E3 arcade vehicle gameplay dilemma didn't help either, that looked ridiculous... plus that horrible performance on launch day (a friend of mine said it runs like crap on PS4 and never touched it again).

Will most likely pick it up for $5 with all its DLC on Steam or PSN in a few years to test the waters, most reviews bashed it for being repetition hell though and that's my Kryptonite in open world games.
 
It all comes down to artistic direction and design: there is nothing in the game trailers and footage that made want to play this game so much it looked bland and unoriginal. And the dumbest part is: my reaction might have been due only to those trailers/footages that made me uninterested.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
I lost all interest when they announced that it had nothing to do with Vitos story (I know that he is in this). I was looking forward to finally getting a twist on the Mafia story after Mafia 2, having picked the morally wrong path getting your friend killed but in return you now run a family and are the new target. I despise "you start from nothing, work your way up" stories but everyone always resorts to them. It would've been a nice twist to start in a mansion as Vito in M3 and then either end as a corpse in a river or with even more power by the time M3 is over.

But no, they had to go for the "I come from nothing" angle again and this time do a whole 180° and go for non-italian Mafias which surely made them lose a bit of their fanbase also (I grew up with the Godfather trilogy playing once a year, Mafias = italian Mafias for me). The E3 arcade vehicle gameplay dilemma didn't help either, that looked ridiculous... plus that horrible performance on launch day (a friend of mine said it runs like crap on PS4 and never touched it again).

Will most likely pick it up for $5 with all its DLC on Steam or PSN in a few years to test the waters, most reviews bashed it for being repetition hell though and that's my Kryptonite in open world games.
I agree. I enjoyed playing as Vito and everything in his life. In the game you get use to his background, his time in the military, etc. It's like LA Noir (I wasn't expecting what happened). It would have been weird to see someone else. Even in Infamous they tried changing Cole and then went back after all the backlash.

Mafia 3 sounded good, but it wasn't same vibe I had with Mafia II. There wasn't anything bad about it, it just felt too far away from what we had. Maybe I just need to get it and just say goodbye to Vito :/
 
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I lost all interest when they announced that it had nothing to do with Vitos story (I know that he is in this). I was looking forward to finally getting a twist on the Mafia story after Mafia 2, having picked the morally wrong path getting your friend killed but in return you now run a family and are the new target. I despise "you start from nothing, work your way up" stories but everyone always resorts to them. It would've been a nice twist to start in a mansion as Vito in M3 and then either end as a corpse in a river or with even more power by the time M3 is over.

But no, they had to go for the "I come from nothing" angle again and this time do a whole 180° and go for non-italian Mafias which surely made them lose a bit of their fanbase also (I grew up with the Godfather trilogy playing once a year, Mafias = italian Mafias for me). The E3 arcade vehicle gameplay dilemma didn't help either, that looked ridiculous... plus that horrible performance on launch day (a friend of mine said it runs like crap on PS4 and never touched it again).

Will most likely pick it up for $5 with all its DLC on Steam or PSN in a few years to test the waters, most reviews bashed it for being repetition hell though and that's my Kryptonite in open world games.
did you try playing the demo? It's on steam
 

Droxcy

Member
I just got into it because of the Humble Bundle. Gameplay wise it's okay, story is decent, driving is gross, shooting is good. Just missions are pretty repetitive.
 

RavageX

Member
I just wish the game had varied up missions a bit and had some diversions.

Story was quite good, time period was perfect. I loved it overall.
 

Cato

Banned
I never played this game, so I can not expand on what I think of the game itself.

I can explain why I never tried it though. I usually buy a lot of games, often for just putting on a shelf for playing at some later time.
I mostly like these kind of games so I was expecting to buy it.

I lost all interest for this game after seeing reviews of it on youtube and never ended up buyng it.
What killed my interest was youtube reviews. I recall how many of them just banged on how incredibly repetitive
the game was. For each area, do the exact same sequence of mission until you beat the area boss and then move on
to the next area, where you do the exact same missions again.

Youtube killed my interest for this game.
 
The actual murder missions when you’re going after the head honchos are all different and awesome.

My favorite one is when you disguise yourself as a waiter at this rich person gathering, then dose the champagne with MKUltra grade LSD. You go out to have a smoke with your coworkers, then come back to everyone and their mother tripping balls. You then use that opportunity to go upstairs and kill the target. Very Hitman-esque.

So good.
 
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Ridcully

Member
I think it did better than expected for an entry in a struggling franchise. It shipped 5 million or so. I can't find figures for the sell-through, though.
 

LordPezix

Member
It seemed like outside a very few small things, there was really nothing to do besides go through the missions. I was expecting more from the open world but it fell flat on its face for me. The story was amazing but the game-play just didn't hold it up enough for it to matter.
 
I lost interest once I found out that it would be made by a different developer and had almost nothing to do with the first two games. Keeping the "Mafia" series name made no sense for a variety of reasons.
 

Halo0629

Member
For me the repetitiveness was exhausting, ai was pretty dumb, world was lifeless, bland, gloomy, and too depressing that I just eventually stopped playing it and never went back. The game was fun at first but it just got to exhausting for me.
 
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Valdega

Member
hjsbfvksjhybvdate_thm.jpg


it had some of the best acting, cutscene direction, stories etc.

yet overall it failed, what were the main reasons?

Failed in what respect? Critically? Commercially? Commercially, I think it actually did pretty well. Not as well as GTA, obviously, but well by Mafia standards. Critically, the game was criticized for being too formulaic. The previous games were criticized for not utilizing the open-world in any meaningful way. Mafia 3 addresses that but goes too far. The series has always been story-driven and M3 deviates from that by offering a bunch of missions that don't advance the story in any way. As such, these missions are seen as filler, even if they're well-designed.

If M3 had made the "filler" missions optional, the game would have been much better received.

I lost interest once I found out that it would be made by a different developer and had almost nothing to do with the first two games. Keeping the "Mafia" series name made no sense for a variety of reasons.

Eh, that's a pretty flimsy argument. Mafia 2 didn't really have anything to do with Mafia 1. Different characters, different time period, different setting. The only connection was a brief cameo appearance of the protagonist from the first game. In that respect, Mafia 3 actually has a much stronger connection to its predecessor. Vito, the protagonist of Mafia 2, plays a fairly prominent role in Mafia 3. And the name "mafia" is still perfectly applicable. Mafia 3 deals with the black mafia, Italian mafia and Irish mafia. It is still very much a game about organized crime in America.

What you really meant to say is that you lost interest in Mafia 3 because you play as an African American instead of an Italian American.
 
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camelCase

Member
GTA V had much more creative missions than the vast majority of open world crime games to be honest

The heists were creative, I'll give you that but everything in that game is really just drive from one place to another (the game's strength) and then kill a bunch of people, or chase them, or escort them. There were rare cases where the missions were very planned like the LifeInvader infiltration and a few others, but that doesn't have nearly the weight in my mind that the overwhelming majority of samey chase and shoot missions that make up like 95% of the series.
 
Failed in what respect? Critically? Commercially? Commercially, I think it actually did pretty well. Not as well as GTA, obviously, but well by Mafia standards. Critically, the game was criticized for being too formulaic. The previous games were criticized for not utilizing the open-world in any meaningful way. Mafia 3 addresses that but goes too far. The series has always been story-driven and M3 deviates from that by offering a bunch of missions that don't advance the story in any way. As such, these missions are seen as filler, even if they're well-designed.

If M3 had made the "filler" missions optional, the game would have been much better received.

Take-Two said it 2K's fastest selling game so it was not a complete failure.

Note: Take-Two owns both R* and 2K.

Indeed, Mafia III did not "fail." It performed fine.

This topic is a textbook example of the logical fallacy known as begging the question. This is further highlighted by the OP's omission of explaining why they think it failed.


Edit: Furthermore,


$TTWO's Mafia III sold 503K at Oct 2016 NPD USA Retail Software (310K on PS4 and 193K on XBO).+122% higher than Mafia II's 2010 debut (227K)
 
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120v

Member
outside of GTA i don't think the genre has quite the draw it did ten or so years ago. kind of why watch dogs 2 didn't particularly set the world afire
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
I thoroughly enjoyed it. A lot of the missions were similar, but figuring out how to move through a location and get to the objective never got old for me. I picked it up during the Xbox sale in November and I played it constantly for a month. Lincoln Clay was an interesting protagonist and the setting was great.

I understand that some people don't like the genre, but I thought it was a solid game.
 

hollams

Gold Member
I liked the game as well and wished that the characters in GTA games controlled like Lincoln Clay. The movement felt great while GTA is sluggish.
 
I don't think knocking the game for its busywork is really fair because that's something that no game in this genre really gets right. What even is the gold standard? GTA where the mission structure just as derivative?
What, not even old school GTA was that bad... You'd get odd variety like RC missions or such.

GTA V has some of the strongest gameplay variety of any third-person open world game though. Every few missions, you'd be have either something traditional with a new mechanic (e.g. driving but you need to drive below Jimmy catch him) or just traditional mechanic variety (e.g. instead of just regular shooting, using the high-tech sniper scope to take out a jet; or instead of just cars and bikes, using a submersible or flying a jumbo jet -- all add pretty large variety and aren't really derivative of any other TPS) or an entirely new mechanic (e.g. rappelling down a building; using police surveillance cameras; hacking computers; cutting an iron gate with a cutting torch; pouring gas throughout a house or using a mop to clean floors; torture o.0). Plus the heists, which make up pretty much a good fifth or so of the total missions. With missions like Three's Company, Caida Libre, Minor Turbulence, V is pretty much the new gold standard for mission variety and mission production values ...

Don't really see how those are anywhere as derivative as M3, nor which other TPS has so much more [good, polished] variety that V would not just be relatively average but "derivative."
 

D3SCHA1N

Member
I really enjoyed Mafia, but if you can't tell within 5 minutes of playing it why RDR was more well received then you'll never understand. Mafia III was janky as hell...
 

wipeout364

Member
I was initially kind of turned off that the main protagonist wasn’t Italian in a game called Mafia . I enjoyed the first two Mafia games but I have to say Lincoln Clay was a great protagonist and the voice actor was excellent. I really enjoyed the story and the supporting characters. I know it had some repetitive aspects to it but I find all the games in this genre have that.
Mafia 2 and 3 were great but this series is always sort of B tier which is fine but I would never have expected a game in this series to push 10 million units. Did 2K say they were disappointed with sales?

Red Dead has that scene where you are entering Mexico with the music playing. It’s touches like that that elevate RDR to legendary status which a game like Mafia could never attain. Rockstar, like Blizzard and Valve have essentially endless time and money to make whatever they want ,with as high a quality level as they want.
 

Valdega

Member
What, not even old school GTA was that bad... You'd get odd variety like RC missions or such.

GTA V has some of the strongest gameplay variety of any third-person open world game though. Every few missions, you'd be have either something traditional with a new mechanic (e.g. driving but you need to drive below Jimmy catch him) or just traditional mechanic variety (e.g. instead of just regular shooting, using the high-tech sniper scope to take out a jet; or instead of just cars and bikes, using a submersible or flying a jumbo jet -- all add pretty large variety and aren't really derivative of any other TPS) or an entirely new mechanic (e.g. rappelling down a building; using police surveillance cameras; hacking computers; cutting an iron gate with a cutting torch; pouring gas throughout a house or using a mop to clean floors; torture o.0). Plus the heists, which make up pretty much a good fifth or so of the total missions. With missions like Three's Company, Caida Libre, Minor Turbulence, V is pretty much the new gold standard for mission variety and mission production values ...

Don't really see how those are anywhere as derivative as M3, nor which other TPS has so much more [good, polished] variety that V would not just be relatively average but "derivative."

From what I've played of the GTA games (starting with the 2D original and ending with the latest entry), most of the missions just boil down to driving from point A to point B and sometimes shooting people along the way or at the destination. The difference between GTA and other open-world games is that GTA provides a narrative for almost every mission. That makes all the difference (see Witcher 3 for further proof of that). You can make a formulaic and repetitive game and as long as you wrap the content within a compelling narrative, people will be happy. Mafia 3 didn't give most of its missions any story and that made much of its content feel like filler, even though it was mechanically sound.
 
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What you really meant to say is that you lost interest in Mafia 3 because you play as an African American instead of an Italian American.

It's like titleling a game Narcos or The Cartel and have it be about Yakuza, or Russian mobsters. It made no sense to keep the title.

Mafia was a game about the Italian mafia in the US. You're soft as hell for trying to get all resetera on me.
 
If the gameplay wasn't so fucking repetitive it would have been a game of the year contender for me. Problem is, it made a better YouTube "movie" than an actual game.
 

Valdega

Member
It's like titleling a game Narcos or The Cartel and have it be about Yakuza, or Russian mobsters. It made no sense to keep the title.

Mafia was a game about the Italian mafia in the US. You're soft as hell for trying to get all resetera on me.

Mafia is still about the Italian mafia in the U.S. The enemy faction is the Italian mafia. One of the friendly factions is also Italian mafia. Mafia 3 just added the black mafia and Irish mafia to the mix because it made sense within the game's time period and location.
 

Shifty

Member
What you really meant to say is that you lost interest in Mafia 3 because you play as an African American instead of an Italian American.

Your points were actually pretty good until you tried to strawman it up and put words in someone else's mouth in an attempt to undermine their argument.
 
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