[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH AC 1 to 2 is probably one of the better examples of direct sequel development. I want to say Witcher 2 to 3 also had a nice leap. Mafia story promises to be good, and with an added bonius it is taking place during the time period that does not get that much attention in games, so we can hope foir the best.

As for GoT and GoY, I want to say that the plot was never a strong point of that game, it was the setting. the ancient Japan. Even if Like a Dragon did it better, I suppose. So it is more like chambara genre with all its stamps, it does not need intricate plot to be entertaining. And GoT creators even hinted at that soimewhat with that Kurosawa mode. I guess you may enjoy the game more if you approach it from this mindset.

I doubt it will be as good or socially controversial as Bully, but it's something. It surfaced in my newsflashes in one of the journals I read, and I thoiught you might be interested to know that Bully may get a younger cousin soon.

[ZaidH]

@DoctorEldritch Man, Witcher 3 was a leap and a half. I still have an Xbox 360 copy of Witcher 2 waiting to be played, but god, it felt so overwhelming to my younger brain. It’s wild how much more accessible Witcher 3 is despite being so dense. And yep, Sicily is the main draw for me when it comes to Mafia.

See, that’s the thing. I really enjoyed Tsushima because of its gameplay loop, which made side quests like “They killed my child/father/mother/wife/husband, please avenge them!!!” fun. But in GoY, I personally feel like there aren’t many big gameplay changes to keep things fresh. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom borrows heavily from Breath of the Wild (the map, the gameplay mechanics), and its story could honestly cure insomnia, but the new gameplay additions are substantial, so I didn't feel even a bit burnt out.

That said, it does feel unfair to say all this before the game is even out. The devs mentioned they’ve taken the stale side quest feedback from the first game seriously and are planning to add more unique content.

If it's marketed properly, the starving Bully fans will eat this game up (myself included). It’s crazy that so far, Hogwarts Legacy is the only game that has even come close to filling the Bully-sized hole in gaming. Many thanks for sharing this with me 😄 (and shoutout to the journalist who dug this deep!).

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH Sicily is a nice location to be sure, but the time period seems to be a good choice, too. If all goes well, we get to see how those terms like omerta first came into being. In most Mafia games and movies, these already exist, but it would be interesting to see how it all got started.

To be fair, those quests did more or less correspond to the setting. You want inventive quests, you go to Yakuza. Even if they all end up in fights eventually 😅

As for the differences, so far I know that in GoY they developed the stance battle mechanic, and instead of one katana and several stances, in GoY, there will be multiple different weapons, each one of them will be a separate "stance". Which makes sense, as GoT overlooked some traditional weapons in favour of katana only: naginata, kusari-gama, nunchaku or yari were left out, for example. It'd be good to try a hand at those. I also read that GoY has a camp that you can make anywhere, and NPCs and traders come to you, which is nice, but more of a quality of life than gameplay improvement.

Sort of, you could become a Slytherin bully, but the game did not allow you to do anything too mischievous. Just, you know, practising Unforgivable Curses like Avada Kedavra, which is not nearly as serious and reprehensible as, for example, sneaking out of the dorm 😅

But in all seriousness, there really are not that many gamers like Bully, the other one I could think of is No School No Rules, but it's been stuck in Early Access for 5 years now (even though they only wanted to spend one year there) so not sure if it will get released at all or not. And it has Mixed reviews, so the Early Access version may not be that good.

[ZaidH]

@DoctorEldritch Great time period indeed. I like that the game isn’t set too far from Mafia 1, so character cameos like Don Salieri and even a young Tommy are at least a slight possibility.

That’s actually a pretty good point lols. That said, with how beautiful Ghost of Tsushima was, it’s surprising that a farming minigame wasn’t included. Around the time Tsushima came out, it almost felt like an obligation for gaming presentations to feature at least one farming game 😂 And those QoL changes sound very welcome. If executed well, they might even bring the game closer to RDR2 levels of character development through those small camp interactions.

Lmao, young me used to get genuinely intimidated when the clock in Bully turned bluish and curfew houes began 😅 I knew how easy it was to escape the prefects, but something about the whole forbidden vibe just felt scary.

Oh wow, No School No Rules even seems to have counterparts for Jimmy, Pete, and Russell from Bully 😂

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH I actually thought that they may have more connections to Mafia 2, remember that had a mission in Sicily called The Old Country? seems that Mafia 4 will take place at least partially in that city. And that Don from Mafia 2, Don Calò, may probably make an appearance as a younger version of himself, too. Here is another interview that developers shared about going to the roots of the series:

Farming may be standard gameplay-wise, but GoT focused on the story, and it would probably be too comical:

"Mongols are invading my homeland, our army is in shambles, my uncle is kidnapped, what little allies I have left need my help, the woman who saved my life is making me turn into an honourless guerrilla for the sake of liberating our home and, most tragically of all, my rice field is not doing too good and needs more fertiliser."

Not sure about RDR2 level of interaction, though. RDR2 was a story of Arthur Morgan (mostly), but it was also a story of the Van der Linde gang and its downfall towards the remnants we see in RDR1. Much of what Atrhu did was for the sake of the gang and its members, rather than personal goals or gain. GoY is shaping up to be a personal story of a woman on a path of revenge (Blue-eyed Samurai, how is that second season coming along? 😉), if there are more camp characters, then it could switch from a personal story to a collective story, and that may take away from the setting a bit. But maybe you're right and they will manage to do it in a way that would enrich GoY personal story without taking any spotlight away from it.

Well, curfew was one of the more innocent things you could do in that game, to be fair. It had grimmer activities you could get involved in.

No School No Rules is of a different cultural setting, but it did try to do their version of Bully. Seems something went wrong, though 🤔

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH They shared a cinematic trailer now, and to add to the atmosphere, it is in the native tongue of Sicily:

I wonder if they will have an option to play the whole game like this, like you could with English and Japanese in Ghost of Tsushima...

[ZaidH]

What a trailer! I haven’t watched the full dev interview yet, but I really liked the part where they mentioned that the Mafia remake served as a sort of guideline for The Old Country.

As for Mafia 2 cameos, I rewatched the scene you were talking about, and one of the YouTube comments had this -

Ever since I've played through this mission back when I bought the remastered I've been fascinated with it.

For those who don't know, Mafia 2 is basically 1/4 of what it was supposed to be. Especially the WW2 content that it was supposed to be something like 40 minutes long on my guess due to the fact that it was revealed that the creator Daniel Vavra wrote about 89 pages just from this chapter on Sicily alone.

It mentioned that he went to Sicily and spoke to war veterans, almost no other game did that amount of research to actually portray with that much accuracy. So Don Calo, 82nd airbone, Italians, 504th infantry, the uniforms, all look pretty accurate.

I don’t think it’ll be possible to integrate Vavra's work into The Old Country (which I assume won’t dive too much into the beginning of WW2), but I sincerely hope they take some inspiration from it.

LMAO imagining farming in the Ghost games does sound ridiculous now that you put it that way 😂 So yeah, Ghost of Yotei is very much a revenge story, but the devs have really gone out of their way to highlight the companions who will be part of Atsu’s journey. That said, since she doesn’t seem to be part of a larger group or collective, they’ll probably end up being your typical side quest characters. All this said, I should probably stop talking about this game until it actually comes out.

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH In the comments, some are calling for the native tongue of Sicily to be used throughout the game, not just in this trailer. Who knows, the developers may indeed do that, I would agree that it would add to the atmosphere considerably. I'd try playing a game in that mode.

Though I'd also agree that it is a complex subject. Like Kingdom Come Deliverance, one could argue that for immersion, you need to play it in Czech. But the actors are English, and it was the intended language of the game, and the one the original was recorded in. So there are arguments for either side.

I'd say it'd be odd if they had limited connections to Mafia 4, and I was surprised that they only made it 1/4 of what it was supposed to be, that is a lot of cut material. I wonder why no attempts were made to recover it by fan modifications, like they did for Oblivion in Skyblivion, for example. But that would explain the pacing in Mafia 2, I thought it was somewhat uneven, and they had those "after-story episodes" with other characters, it would probably make more sense narratively if the story was not cut like that. Oh well.

You can be a part of the group based on what you are, rather than a common goal. Atsu could belong to a ronin. And when meeting other ronin, she could share a sense of shared circumstances or camaraderie with them, without necessarily sharing the same goal for revenge. Maybe they could work that angle. Though her "travelling camp" suggests she would end up making a semi-tight group of loyal acquaintances who would seek her out when she makes camp, so there is also that.

[ZaidH]

@DoctorEldritch Unless I’m misreading it, I think the game might actually feature Sicilian voice acting?
https://mafia.2k.com/the-old-country/faq/

That’s a solid point about voice actors yeah. I’m currently playing Expedition 33 and really want to try the French dub, but holy lord, the English lineup is stacked and honestly really good. Even though the game is soaked in French vibes, the characters’ mannerisms fit surprisingly well with English.

I doubt the cut material is still in the source code, and Vavra’s work on it is probably not public. Otherwise, yeah I’m sure fans would’ve added it in by now.

As for Ghost of Yotei, I think you’re right about the direction it’s taking. In Ghost of Tsushima, everyone was affected by the Mongols, so Jin kind of embodied the fury of the common people. Atsu's journey however, should be much different than that.

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH I think you're right, it would have a Sicilian voice acting. I meant it more in the sense of which language was used in the original recording. For KCD it was English, and more authentic Czech was localised, so voiced by an actor different from the one who did face capturing and English recording. reverse for Yakuze: the original recordings were all Japanese, and an English dub was used afterwards. For Mafia, I would think that the original recording would be English, and Sicilia would be localisation. Which is still good, of course, it's just that, as someone who worked in localisation, I am interested to see how well it will be sync-lipped.

I remember there was an interesting behind-the-scenes video about the recording process for Expedition 33:

They really put in a lot of work there.

It could be, though often it is left in source code with hopes that it can become a part of a DLC. I think Skyrim may have had a lot of that. Some games have entire levels or biomes hidden, I think KoTOR 2 had a full planet cut out.

I think you're right, and historically, too. As in, GoT is set in a period of Mongol invasion, so it's "everyone's problem" and a period of "international conflict". GoY is set in a calmer period, and the story seems to be much more personal indeed. I wonder how soon they will port it to PC...