Mafia Preview

From what we've seen, Illusion Softworks isn't just trying to make Mafia look great--the developer is clearly attempting to render its 12-square-mile city with as much detail as possible. Mafia has some very impressive-looking special effects, including lightning on a stormy night that illuminates the surrounding clouds and sky and muzzle flashes on guns that flare out in the darkness. We watched an absolutely spectacular firefight between gunmen armed with rapid-firing tommy guns in a dark garage, and the continuous illumination provided by the blazing guns actually lit up the entire area from all sides as the gangsters all fired bursts, ducked for cover, reloaded, repositioned, and fired again. In addition, all of Mafia's buildings and streets are adorned with highly detailed textures, and the game will have plenty of appropriate ambient sound, including ragtime and swing music heard on radios or played by live bands, as well as chatter from the city's inhabitants as they go about their daily business. Mafia's citizens are all brought to life with very detailed and lifelike motion-captured animation, as well as fully lip-synced facial animation when spoken to. Tommy can speak to any characters in the game simply by walking up to them and right-clicking, and each character will have something different to say--especially when Tommy is foolish enough to draw a gun in plain view of civilians, who will run for cover and shout for help.