Mafia Terra Madre: when prequels are our thing

Twenty-three years have passed since the shocking ending of the first chapter and I still haven’t fully recovered, but fear not, because Mafia: The Old Country (no, it’s not an Argentine soap opera with mustachioed actors and swooning beauties) will chamber *tlack tlack* its lupara shotguns during 2025 and will also be available for PlayStation 5.

On the game’s official website, the summer period is announced as the title’s launch window, and I couldn’t be happier about it: as I mentioned a moment ago, the ending of the first, unforgettable act led me to rather deep reflections and considerations, which I made then and which still come back to mind today.

The value of sacrifice and the subtle corruption of morality, a scale whose counterweights are never in balance, where the power of money and social and public supremacy overwhelms any yearning for personal dignity. The Mafia trilogy, although telling stories in different eras and with a cast of characters always different (except for Mafia II) the most famous and notorious criminal organization in history, puts us in the shoes of gray characters whose choices lead us to reflect on the meaning of honor, the real one, and of respect for oneself.

Con Mafia: Terra Madre we will venture out in combustion-engine cars and horses spooked by the urban chaos of San Celeste, a theater of war between gangs that the most attentive will remember as having already appeared in Mafia II, when, in the shoes of Vito, the hired killer, we took the reins of the story with its bitter aftertaste, told at the end of the first Mafia, a true masterpiece of screenplay, editing, and soundtrack.

But not from his enemies, who with rifle shots and armed with knives are eager to do him in, or a second smile across the throat, as the Corleonesi of Francis Ford Coppola would say in the iconic film series made successful by Marlon Brando’s performance.

And it is precisely in its cinematic cut, with Unreal Engine 5 in fine form, that Mafia: The Old Country plays its best cards on the table, judging by what has been shown so far. The gameplay will have us control Enzo Favara, a name that oozes Italian-ness from every pore, in the Sicilian countryside amid daring escapes and ambushes in the woods, where the screech of knives in blade-edge duels with enemy henchmen will become familiar, as will the smell of the blood of the vanquished.

Preferably, not ours.

Poco is still known about the plot details, apart from the scant news leaked so far: 2K did not want to stick its neck out too much, showing us graphically appetizing screenshots and teasing the hype of longtime fans by promising a complete return to its roots, the famous offer we can’t refuse, revisiting narrative themes and technical concepts that had made the first chapter of the Italo-American saga great.

Terra Madre is at the starting blocks with all the right cards in hand to set a new standard both in terms of the way it tells a story so intimately connected to a turbulent and fascinating historical period, and in terms of a more considered approach to the open world: being able to move from the countryside to the city by motorized means or “natural” ones such as the hooves of equine quadrupeds allows for a range of “chase” sub-quests that will delight anyone who, in previous titles, spent hours and hours roaming the busy streets of Lost Heaven in the Free Ride and Full Throttle modes.