Interview: Andy Wilson On Mafia III’s Tone, Violence & Trailers

In quite a lot of other games, Lincoln Clay could be the bad guy. He’s part of the Black Mob, he’s run with the Italian Mafia, and he’s on the rampage through New Bordeaux, building up a criminal empire of his own while exacting revenge on those who’ve done him wrong.

Having played a good few hours of the game – you can read our impressions here or watch our video chat – we spoke to Andy Wilson, Executive Producer, about the game.


TSA: The splash screen that pops up at the start of the game talks about how you include racism and discrimination in the game, because of the 1960s setting. Can you talk about how important it is to represent that in Mafia III?

Andy Wilson: It was very important, and those are actually Haden’s [Blackman, the Creative Director] words. He penned that, so with respect to others in the room, it’s not a PR statement, it’s very much his thoughts and we all feel that’s the right sentiment.

Obviously we’ve got some fairly deep issues in the game, but the goal is always to try and be authentic. Removing it, not reflecting it or not having the world react Lincoln in the way that it would have in that time period would have been really weird. It would have been disconnecting and probably even quite offensive to some people, as well.

With that in mind, it was just important to set the tone. You’re going to see some pretty harsh stuff, but we don’t agree with the opinions of some of the characters in our game, you know?

TSA: Yeah. Do you almost wish that you could have gone further with this? Obviously, you have to make something that’s fun to play, so it’s not like every cop sees a black guy in a nice looking car and decides to pull him over.

Andy: Yeah, and even with things like the general traffic rules, we’ve still got some of the elements of Mafia II in the way that the police will respond to you doing crazy stuff in a car, but there comes a point where it becomes very heavy handed in terms of setting too many rules for the player. It’s not really in relation to the racial aspect, but with all those kind of mechanisms, we try not to be too heavy handed.

TSA: I think it does say to be wary of the cops, but then I’m driving the wrong way up the street and hooning around corners!

Andy: It’s more that they will, if you’re seen breaking into vehicles or something like that, or if you’re being careless and crashing into other cars…

TSA: Police cars in particular. They take offence to that!

TSA: What were your visual reference points when creating the game? There’s things like the beautiful sunsets and blooming skyboxes, the torrential rain. Obviously it’s based on the real world city, but did you also look to TV, film and even comic books?

Andy: Well actually, we have two comic book writers at the helm – Haden Blackman, the Creative Director and Bill Harms, the Lead Writer – so there is some influence there.

Visually, a lot comes from the real world inspiration of New Orleans. It’s a colourful and vibrant city, and reflecting that in all aspects is important. It does have those sudden torrential downpours as well. We were there a couple weeks ago and it goes from bright sky to a sudden monsoon and all the way back again.

Also just capturing some of the 60s look to things. I think when people think back to that time period, they think of it in terms of movies and what TV looked like. Obviously, the real world in the 60s didn’t actually look like a grainy, saturated movie, but having some hints of that helps to psychologically transport you back to then.

TSA: I’ve talked about it a lot and I actually asked Bill back at Gamescom about the violence in the game, and now it’s your turn! I think the main thing for me is that going between lethal and non-lethal takedowns needs you to go into menu. Personally, I’d have expected to have both options on the fly, did you consider that in development?

Andy: We did actually think about having it in the weapon wheel as a toggle, but actually, we’ve got a lot of information in there already and we found that players were starting to get overwhelmed. So we stripped out some things like that.

My thinking on it is that if you want to play that way, we allow you to play that way. Yes, it’s in a menu, but it’s still accessible. The way we look at it from a design philosophy is that we give you objectives and we give you tools, and we let you play it how you want to play.

The violence, I feel, has to be seen in context, and the context is that Lincoln is not a hero, he’s a criminal. Also, he’s had his whole family taken away from him and he’s extremely angry about that, so he wants to go after the very bad people that did that to him. The context is set in that way and then furthered by that he’s a big, powerful guy and was in the Special Forces too.

It’s definitely a part of the game and his character, but again, for people that want to play non-lethal, we let you do that. For me, I tend to play non-lethally, because my previous game was Splinter Cell and I love playing stealthily. One of the things I like to do in the game is soak up all the extra environmental storytelling, and you see a lot more of that if you’re being stealthy.

I always associate being stealthy with chokeholds and hiding bodies and all that kind of stuff. I hide them in alligators sometimes, but hiding is hiding!

TSA: [laughs] It’s just such a convenient place to keep them!

Andy: Exactly! They’ll never find them in there!

mafia3-p2il3

TSA: Do you think you’ve got the right balance between showing people story within trailers and trying not to spoil too much? There’s been a lot of trailers…

Andy: Yeah… I’ve seen the articles. It is a delicate balance, but there is a huge amount that has not been shown. It’s kind of weird, because I obviously know what constitutes a spoiler in the game, and there are certain things where we’ve made a decision to tell people about it.

For instance, the fact that your underbosses can betray you. We didn’t want to hide, because it’s an interesting aspect in the way the story develops in the game. It reinforces one of our design pillars, which is that every player’s story is unique. So we didn’t feel that’s spoiling anything, because it’s not necessarily going to turn out like that for every player.

Again, what we’re showing here and what we’re showing around the trailers with the betrayal, it’s kind of an early stage narrative moment. It’s so much a part of how and why Lincoln is who he is that it would be very difficult to talk about the game at all if we didn’t reference it. There are things like that where we made the decision.

But yeah, it’s always a balance and we don’t want to ruin it. I said to someone earlier that I almost wish, after you’ve done playing and you write your previews, that I could come round your house with a mind wipe device, so you get to have the full experience afresh.

TSA: [laughs] I think you’d need the Men in Black license for that.

Andy: And possibly a small change to the law…

TSA: Now I’m just thinking about Arrested Development and getting trapped in a Forget-Me-Now loop! [laughs]

Andy: [laughs]

TSA: You’ve got the whole city of New Bordeaux and the surrounding area, but looking at the objectives on the map, they seem quite focussed on taking down the Italian mafia. Are there also opportunities to take a break from that with things where you can just play around?

Andy: Yeah, there are other things, particularly in the bayou. There’s a whole set of things around illegal moonshine and going out into the swamps.

For me, I actually just like to drive around there, particularly at night and when it’s wet, it’s a very atmospheric place to be in. There’s definitely a lot going on.

Funnily enough, it seems to be the YouTube crowd who really like to play with the game systems and see the crazy stuff they can do…

TSA: Well, I found a way to spawn in infinite yellow cars…

Andy: Yes, I heard about this! So I’m now going to be furiously typing emails, saying “Fix it! Fix it!”

TSA: [laughs] Well, I was perfectly happy for five minutes, just driving around in a circle, hopping out and getting a new yellow car!

Andy: Some things are just interesting emergent things that happen, because they’re not technically bugs, just quirks of how our system is designed.

We had one guy, who was a YouTuber, and I was watching him play, and he just started murdering everybody, picking them all up, putting them in a big pile next to the river and then got in a car and started trying to dump all the bodies.

I asked him what he was doing…

TSA: Practicing? [laughs]

Andy: [laughs] No, he was trying to see how many alligators he could spawn. They are systemic, so when you put a body in the water, they will come hunting. That instantly gave me a moment of terror where I realised we hadn’t actually stress tested that system!

That’s the joy of open world games. I’m looking forward to the stuff that will appear online after we launch that we never anticipated.

mafia3-p2il4

TSA: Last question, and a fairly obvious one after last week: what are you doing with regard to PlayStation 4 Pro support?

Andy: Oh, um…

PR: Yeah, we’re not talking about that just yet, but stay tuned…

Andy: Yeah. You know, having these new platforms emerging, or new versions of the same platforms, for us as developers it’s definitely interesting to try them out. We’re always trying to push the metal as far as we can get it.

One of the nice things about this, essentially the same generation but moving on, is that the dev tools are upgraded as well. So actually, we’re getting ever better support from the first parties, and that allows us to do more as well.


Thanks to Andy for taking the time to talk to us. Be sure to check out our recent previews from Gamescom and from our hands on session this week, as well as our video of the game in action!

Mafia III is out on October 7th for PS4, XBO and PC… and there’s probably some PS4 Pro goodness waiting in the wings, as well.

Written by
I'm probably wearing toe shoes, and there's nothing you can do to stop me!