A huge leak about Mafia 4 and the state of its development surfaced yesterday, containing vital information about Hangar 13’s next project. The Mafia franchise is far from over, with the 4th installment being well in development and with a potential release date of 2021.
The leaker, Reddit user TheTruthTeller1985 claims that his sources are ex-developers for the project as well as one journalist. While this is a credible lead, this is nothing more than one man’s information so take everything we state below with a grain of salt.
Development Journey
Mafia 4 has started its initial prototyping as soon as all DLC for the third game were over, according to the leak. Back then, Hangar 13 dropped the project to work on a new IP, which unfortunately didn’t work out. A small team was working on Mafia 4 in Brighton, coming up with an ambitious prototype that managed to catch the team’s attention and since then, most of the studio is working on it. This doesn’t fall far behind from what we know since only two months ago Hangar 13 filed trademarks for Mafia.
Mafia 4 Story
On to the game itself now. The leak suggests that Mafia 4 will be set in Las Vegas in the ’70s and will be a straight sequel to Mafia 3. You are back in the Italian mob, this time as a new character with no words of any old faces making a return. Motion Capture has started 8-9 months ago, so the studio is going the extra mile for the needed realism. Last but not least, Hangar 13 won’t follow the flashback storytelling that we were used to and instead, it will adapt a present-day plot.
Mafia 4 Map
In terms of setting, the Mafia 4 map will be bigger and its setting will span across a whole decade. In that time, you’ll be able to use an empire-building system that will let you buy out, build and transform buildings into casinos and more.
Mafia 4 Gameplay
According to the leak, the MAFIA engine has been redone and “remastered” to be ready for the fourth game so that most of the issues that were present in Mafia 3 won’t be the case with that one. That means that missions won’t follow the same dull procedure as before. The project is ambitious and that means better and in-depth gameplay.
Mafia 4 Release Date
Don’t expect Mafia 4 to release for this generation of consoles. If the leak is to be trusted then it will release in 2021. Given the back and forth with its development team, it wouldn’t surprise us if the project is still very early in its development.
Mafia 2 Remaster
Closing up the leak, we find out that there might be a Mafia 2 Remaster in the works. One small inside Hangar 13, set in Czech is working on a remaster for Mafia 2, using the Mafia 4 engine. If that’s true then its release won’t take as much as the next games and we might get to play it sometime next year.
Summing up, we have Mafia 4 releasing in 2021 with a new protagonist and a much more ambitious gameplay system. Mafia 2 is getting a remaster sometime before that and both are using a new version of the existing engine, suitable for large-scale projects that can take the franchise to the next level.
We remind you one more time that this is only a leak. Even though most of the information seems credible, we should wait and see what Hangar 13 has to announce when the time comes.
