Take-Two’s big boss Strauss Zelnick says it got the ‘perfect result’ from slimmed-down mob tale Mafia: The Old Country, so I’d brace for more games like that if I were you

I didn’t love Mafia: The Old Country. Where previous games in the series had compensated for their lows with some truly high highs, I felt like Hangar 13’s more linear world and more traditional mob story reduced its Sicilian series entry to a uniform level of predictability and blandness, and said as much in our Mafia: The Old Country review.

But I still consider myself a fan of the Mafia series and, indeed, of Hangar 13 as a studio—it proved it can put out a game I love with Mafia 3 (and an idea I love with Rhapsody, its sadly canned post-Mafia-3 project), and I want to see more from both. So, regardless of my cold feelings toward the game, I’m glad to hear The Old Country did well enough to appease Strauss Zelnick, CEO of 2K’s parent company, Take-Two.

Zelnick told The Game Business that Mafia: The Old Country’s sales had surpassed Take-Two’s internal expectations—though he didn’t say what those expectations were—and that “What we suspected was confirmed.” What did Zelnick and company suspect? “If you give consumers a great narrative experience that’s a lot of fun, somewhat contained, and at a fair price, then you can have the perfect result.”

Which sounds to me like Take-Two is gonna get Hangar 13, and perhaps other studios under its control, to take a crack at doing the same thing again. Suits me.

While The Old Country didn’t hit for me, I do think it’s good for studios to focus on games that are smaller, tighter, more contained experiences. Not everything needs to be GTA 6 and, indeed, even GTA 6’s attempts to be GTA 6 seem to be getting it into a spot of bother.

What I would like to see is bigger narrative swings. Hangar 13 has shown it can write stories and characters I really love with its games before—and I think a big part of my disappointment with The Old Country was how cliched a lot of its story elements felt. Perhaps now the big bosses have realised development at this scale can work, studios will feel more confident to try bolder stuff when it comes to the writing.