STACK #144 Oct 2016

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GAMES FEATURE

elements in the game.,” explains Harms. “There’s a documentary called Spies of Mississippi that's about state governments in the south trying to infiltrate the civil rights movement. “There’s also a civil rights leader named James Baldwin, who was in the SAS (Special Air Service), but he made a documentary called Take This Hammer , where he walks around San Francisco and interviews African-Americans about their lives. "Another source of information about the time period came from an interview with Jim Brown, a football player who played for the Cleveland Browns; he appeared in Playboy magazine in 1968 in which he talks about his experiences as an African-American at that time." Mafia III features nine different districts across a huge gameplay area, and each has been developed so the criminal rackets fit tonally with the part of town in which they operate. “One of the things that was really important to us was narratively tying the open world to Lincoln’s larger mission of destroying the Italian mob,” says Harms. “We spent a lot of time creating that underlying narrative structure for the criminal rackets, and then marrying that with open world gameplay, allowing players to attack them in any order that they want.” And what about that soundtrack? Not only were the ‘60s a time of prodigious social and political change, but the evolution of music was both rapid and boundless. This was taken into account when creating the sensational soundtrack for the game. “A while back our audio director, Matt Bauer, asked everyone at Hangar 13 to pull together a wish list of songs they would like to see in the game, which he compiled,” Harms tells STACK . “In terms of the licenced songs in the cinematics, this was largely a group decision. We’d sit in Matt’s office for hours at a time, laying songs over the cinematics to test what tonally made sense or helped energise the scene. We’re very happy with the result.”

Rules Mob Mafia III is here, ladies and gentlemen.We spoke with lead writer Bill Harms. Words Paul Jones

H ere at STACK HQ, we from the annals of mafia history, stories of organised crime will always appeal to an audience. This month, 2K’s Mafia franchise returns with its third installment, and ever since the game was revealed back in June, interest has been steadily building with each new trailer. The late 1960s is the backdrop for Mafia III, which is set in New Bordeaux – a fictional recreation of New Orleans. “New Orleans has a very long history of Italian mafia, and that was obviously very appealing to us,” recounts lead writer Bill Harms. “The first organised crime in New Orleans happened after love a good mobster tale. Whether fictional or drawn

into making Clay a character who evokes the specific time and place where the game is set,” Harms says. “His background as a highly trained special forces Vietnam veteran definitely plays in to how he, from a military point of view, executes his campaign against the Italian mafia." For research, Harms cites crime flicks Goodfellas, The Godfather, We took all the things people know and love about New Orleans and tweaked them documentary Cocaine Cowboys to reference non-fictional criminals. “In terms of the specific research, we did a lot of research around the era and civil rights so we accurately portray these The Town and A Prophet as primary sources, as well as

the American Civil War (1861-65); the army couldn’t control the docks so they hired a Sicilian gangster to do that, and basically ever since then there’s been organised crime there. “We call New Bordeaux our 'version' of New Orleans because we had to make adjustments to the city for gameplay reasons. The real New Orleans is pretty flat, for example, and we wanted more variety in terms of the city’s geography. The roads are also narrow, which isn’t conducive to hauling ass around the city in a super-fast muscle car. So we took all of the things people know and love about New Orleans and tweaked them to support our vision of how the game should look and play.” Returning Vietnam vet Lincoln Clay is the protagonist, who joins an African-American organised crime gang. When the mob is attacked by the Italian mafia, Clay is a man out for revenge. “We really put a lot of effort

• Mafia III is out now

OCTOBER 2016

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