Mafia Interview

AT: As it was announced, Mafia will be using extremely realistic car maneuvering. In the few racing games, we've seen lately, developers have accomplished rather good wheel handling (Midtown Madness 2, Driver). Your game presents vehicles from the 30's, which were tough for driving in actuality. How will you find a compromise between realistically difficult car handling, and satisfactory player controls?

DV: I think, that our physics are at the same level as the most accurate models around, like Ferrari 355 from SEGA, or GRAND PRIX LEGENDS. Other games than these two are not very real. Both games that I mentioned are VERY tough, but we are not crazy, so we will try to make Mafia as much user friendly as possible. I don't think that It will degrade our physical model. Important is, that whenever you do, it's not precalculated, and we are not cheating. You can do any maneuver as in reality, we can only help you a little, because handling with joypad, or keyboard is harder than handling with wheel. Even handling with special wheel for PC or PSX is not perfect and the same goes with feedback. When you are sitting in the car, you feel gravity or inertial forces that you cannot feel on your couch. We can do absolutely realistic and supertough game with our engine, but I prefer playability. And about cars. Old cars aren't always slow craps as most people thinks. Some of them can go over 140 MPH and they have also great acceleration.

AT: The action scenes are in third person perspective, are there going to be exceptions to the rule, like will you be able to use sniper-sight, for instance?

DV: Yes, there will be sniper-sight, and maybe we will change into first person in small indoor areas. But as I said - maybe.

AT: Will the fighting and killing take place exclusively indoors? Or will Tommy be able to explore the vastness of the cities on foot? And will the player have to stick to the on-the-rails kind of gameplay, or will there be a freedom of moving about in and out of the city?

DV: There is not even one mission, which is only indoors. In some of the first missions, player's freedom is little bit limited, but later he can go anywhere he wants. But playability will be linear. And we have good reasons for it. We are doing the game for a pretty long time and if the game was non-linear, we would do it twice as long.

AT: Is the main character, Tommy, going to be working alone, or will he have associates and sidekicks? If not, will receive any kind of assistance from other gang (family) members?

DV: In many missions, Tommy will have friends with him, they will be controlled by the CPU, and hopefully they will be smart. They must be :)

AT: Can you tell us a bit more about the multi-player missions?

DV: We plan to have something in Counter Strike style, like Police vs. Gangsters in large missions from game and racing on the circuits and car chases in the city. But our main goal is single player right now.

AT: What developing stage is the game currently at? Can you speculate the release date?

DV: Many things are finished, many are not. We are heading for Q1 2001. But you never know how long it will take to develop something that no one did before.

AT: Do you have anything planned beyond Mafia?

DV: Yes. I have some ideas for new games. But now Mafia is more important.

Daniel Vavra
Lead Designer of Mafia
Illusion Softworks