http://www.vice.com/read/we-talked-race-and-politics-with-the-senior-writer-of-mafia-iii

and the piece this interview stemmed from: http://www.vice.com/read/why-mafia-iii-should-tackle-race-head-on


I'm VERY curious about this game. Never played the other Mafia games and haven't seen any actual gameplay, but Austin Walker's coverage of it has kept me very curious to try it for myself to see what the fuck this game is going to be. it could be pretty damn original, or a total mess of misguided ambition.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

he was the best thing to happen to that site in years. i rarely go there anymore

anyway

i don't think open world, ultra violent, and narrative dissonance-heavy video games are the medium for attempting to convey to white gamers what experiencing racism can be like. whatever gravitas that "bark" has is going to experience immediate diminishing returns. my guess is that it's just going to fade into noise after the first couple of hours of hearing it. i imagine a certain subset of the audience will enjoy hearing it. the "he's playing on their perceptions and prejudices" angle is problematic because its meaning is probably going to be lost on a majority of the audience. i think the writer has been emboldened by being in an interracial relationship and thus thinks he has been granted some kind of "say" in this conversation. i wish austin had been able to talk to the sole black writer on staff

fwiw i only skimmed both articles. i may be missing some angle or justification on the writer's behalf

https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesrobertwebb
https://twitter.com/thecharleswebb

unless there's more than one black writer and you were thinking of someone else?

The interview reads like two smart dudes having a frank conversation, and all Webb really does is try to contextualize what they're doing with that in the game, he admits it may not work the way he hopes it will and originally he fought for even more slurs but realized this wasn't the game for that.


On the subject of Austin, he and Patrick Klepek posted their first podcast for Vice Monday and there should be another at some point today (though maybe not since Austin had to record the first one from a broom closet); they're targeting just an hour or so per episode as bookends to the week and I'm pretty stoked for it to be a regular thing. The first one is mostly about Trump and the goals of the podcast but it was good just to hear his voice again for sure.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

i zeroed on on this part of the second link:

"I know that the Mafia III writing team has at least one black writer on staff, and I wish he was here so that I could get his take."

and assumed the first link was him talking to the same folks as in the second link. poor posting preparation on my part

-30-
You know it's drama, but it sound real good.

Feel like I gotta donate on some church shit.

http://www.gamecrate.com/you-can-shoot-ku-klux-klan-rally-mafia-iii/14664

will cop on black friday hopefully on sale.

http://soundcloud.com/djshinobishaw
http://www.rareformnyc.com
http://twitter.com/DJShinobiShaw
https://twitter.com/RareFormNYC
PSN: ShinobiShaw

"Arm Leg Leg Arm How you doin?" (c)T510

imagine my fucking joy now

-30-
You know it's drama, but it sound real good.

---
Stoicism and chill.
---
Stay +.
---

I was watching a preview from a UK Youtube site. Was pretty weird to see a video of Brits playing a game where a black dude in the late 60's kills KKK members. Just typing that sentence out in itself was pretty surreal.

I do wonder how this game will get received outside of the states. I can't imagine a ton of Trump supporters firing this one up come this Friday.

"Sean sparks like John Starks, nah, Sean ball like John Wall" - Rest In Power Forever Sean Price.

GT: SoulGatherer

but the presentation is pretty top notch and they've got some real good character motivation going forward.

I'll probably pick this up Sunday, I just want to see a couple reviews come in.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I should get the game from Amazon today, but I am worried about this game having glitches in it since sandbox games tend to have them from time to time?

"Sean sparks like John Starks, nah, Sean ball like John Wall" - Rest In Power Forever Sean Price.

I didn't see any open world jank, it just seemed like they were struggling with the controls a bit. Could've been totally on them, like I said I just want to see some reviews/impressions hit over the weekend to see how the game progresses.


Right now I'd say it's a must buy on multiple levels, I'm just being more patient than usual because I'm not familiar with the developer.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

that stuff comes with the territory. if rockstar with their hundreds of millions of dollars can't iron out all the glitches in their flagship series then a smaller studio like 2k czech likely can't either

i watched the video nodima mentioned above. i agree with him on the controls seeming loose and possibly on the player. the game looked "floaty" and unresponsive. but it's an open world game and one is generally not expecting the tightest controls. it's not devil may cry or vanquish

however there were a few instances of good old open world jank. the most prominent being an unfortunate auto collision t-bone situation that rendered the player's vehicle entirely on its side with the player unable to do anything at all but just sit there. this resulted in an eventual "mission failed because the vehicle was destroyed" message, suggesting that the game was incapable of remedying the situation by righting the car or letting the player exit. that stuff is just going to happen in games like this

I ended up not getting this due to some other things coming up, and after reading several impressions over the weekend I think I'm going to wait for a sale around Christmas time.


Sounds like the presentation and character work is stellar but the game kinda gets in the way, heard from quite a few people it'd have been better off as a more linear game.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

so it isn't fair for me to say if the gameplay is highly repetitive or not. I do like how you are forced to use the stealth aspects with the missions since going in guns blazing will leave you full of holes.

One early complaint I have is I wish there were more radio stations to listen to since driving around is very necessary and it gets very old listening to the same songs.

"Sean sparks like John Starks, nah, Sean ball like John Wall" - Rest In Power Forever Sean Price.

I think Mafia III is going to be the first game I attempt to do an actual "review" of (I've posted a few on this site in the past but I'm considering a very comprehensive breakdown of why this game works and why it doesn't) and I have to say that one thing that sticks out most is the artificial nature of everything going on in the mid-game. All these goons with names and backstories and rackets don't actually matter to me, and essentially are just guys I can't kill with bullets and refuse to kill with a knife because I'll earn more money longterm if they live.

Meanwhile, I'm the de facto head of the black mob (a mob we're led to believe definitely existed in this world prior to the end of the prologue) and yet I'm still taking orders from a guy while he cuts carrots in the visitor center of his local boardwalk minutes after I walked into an abandoned house with him and two other people and told them all I'd murder them single handedly if they didn't listen to what I had to say. There's no evidence that I'm representing anyone other than myself, and as such the game often makes me feel no different than a Michael De Santa trying to please everyone around me so they'll just get off my back and let me be at peace with myself.

I picture a game with a version of the Nemesis system (Shadow of Mordor), where I pit my underlings against theirs while I got to the gym, run scams on cars and other seemingly minor activities, only to suddenly be faced with "2/3 of your guys are dead, this guy wants access to your docks and what are you gonna do it about, huh?" and spring into action. But on an even simpler level, why can't I offer rackets to my black friends from back in the day? Am I really playing the one black guy in 1968 "New Bordeaux" that had three black friends and two of them were murdered during my homecoming party?

This is a thing that's actually helped make the storytelling of Vice City standout more over time, because you were given bigger and bigger problems as you became more and more powerful, yet there was also a hint of Tommy Vercetti that felt the job could only be done right if he was the one to do it. Still, in 2004 terms you definitely had the feeling you were a mob boss getting your hands dirty only because you were bored, or felt you had to, not because you were told to. San Andreas backed this power fantasy up further but not only having you call goons in, but actively having them join you off the streets if you pulled over and honked the horn.

Two years after Shadow of Mordor and a decade+ after those two open world crime pinnacles, Mafia III often acts as if it learned nothing. Here's my list of ongoing pros/cons and a couple anecdotes I'd like to flesh out in a full write-up once I've seen the game through (I imagine I'm at about the 50% point):

pros:
weight, impact, movement
motion capture, voice acting, writing
unique setting
soundtrack
cool playboy interviews (beatles, rich white men)
revenge porn


cons:
gates on driveways are stupid
rehash combat arenas
loot lust
directionless midgame
half-baked systems (police, henchmen, A.I.)
crazy lighting system
lack of open world logic
stunted mobility
health damage in car crashes
stand-still side mission conversations (Nikki Burke vs. Father James/weed guy)
cutscenes pre-rendered
lack of black mob (there's the Haitian mob, but where are all your friends from before the war?)
lack of radio diversity
car flips, character tossed out (appaears to have been patched?)
orange car delivieries
repetitive interiors

moments after stealing my one and only car that had people in it, I felt as though I’d discovered how empty this game truly was at its core.

finished mission, got in a car, engine didn’t start and couldn’t drive, got out and a person popped into car, couldn’t enter other cars or order a vehicle because the game thought I was still in a car, closed the application hoping that would fix things and lost 1-2 hours of progress


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

great write-up so far. please finish it

> but where are all your friends from before the war

I was under the impression that they all died or just left after being betrayed by Marcano.