Mafia: The Old Country‘s depiction of 1900s Sicily is teeming with immersive detail and dangerous encounters. With the new Free Ride Update, the developers at Hangar 13 are giving players even more freedom to explore and survive the Valle Dorata’s criminal underworld.
See all the additions included in the Free Ride Update via the trailer below, then read on for insights from Associate Design Director Josh Zammit about this free update for owners of Mafia: The Old Country.
How does Mafia: The Old Country’s Free Ride mode call back to, or differ from, past Free Ride modes?
Free Ride is a callback to the original Mafia’s Free Ride Extreme, as well as the Free Ride mode we shipped in Mafia: Definitive Edition. It’s a collection of Challenges separate from the main story that give players chances to revisit the world in a more self-guided way. Mafia: The Old Country’s Free Ride mode will be slightly different from previous titles, yet familiar to returning fans all the same.
This time, we’ve constructed several kinds of repeatable Challenges—including combat, stealth, and different race types—in a variety of new and familiar locations. Completing Challenges will earn you the Dinari in-game currency to spend on the new outfits, charms, weapons, and vehicles unlocked by progressing through this content (as well as on items unlocked via the campaign). We’ve also included a number of other fresh and exciting features for players to sink their teeth into, and I hope fans enjoy them.
What’s the first thing you’d suggest players to do when they enter Free Ride mode?
There’s a lot to explore in this update, so players will have plenty of potential starting points. But I’m excited for them to experience the Valle Dorata in the most immersive way possible, and to me, that’s First-Person Driving. The first thing I’d do is spawn my fastest car from the garage, turn on the First-Person Driving camera, and just joyride. The new Photo Mode is another much-requested feature I think players are going to love. So get out there, find some action and beautiful vistas, and take amazing screenshots to share with friends.
Which pieces of content are you personally most excited about?
We’re super proud of everything the team has achieved, so I find it hard to pick one that I’m most excited about. I love the races; it’s a ton of fun to drive around our world at high speed in the amazing old cars. There’s loads of technical corners, and the better you get, the more satisfying they are to navigate.
The Combat Challenges are great as well. Standoffs push your limits when it comes to openly engaging enemies, and Assassinations are fun to experiment with until you nail that perfect run. There is one piece of content I think players are going to find especially intriguing and unexpected, though I don’t want to spoil it. Keep an eye out for notes in Enzo’s apartment—one may end up revealing something cool to investigate.
Beyond extra Challenges and other added content, how does this update enhance one’s experience of the main campaign?
I’ve already mentioned First-Person Driving because it really hits differently, and that’s equally true during the story. Driving around with Cesare in first person is great fun, especially in Chapter 7. It adds to the immersion and feels like living in that moment with your best friend.
Cinema Siciliano is another fantastic way to experience Mafia: The Old Country. We’ve gone out of our way to make it feel like you’re playing a genuine piece of classic Italian cinema. The visual treatment is stunning and it feels like you’re experiencing a black-and-white movie shot on an old-school sound stage, while the vintage-sounding audio convincingly brings the whole thing together.
We’ve also added Classic Difficulty, adding a new degree of challenge and raising the stakes higher, making for even more reason to take another crack at Enzo’s journey.
On top of that, all the new items you can earn by playing Free Ride will be usable in the main story campaign.
For new players, all of these elements will be present from the start, and having them as options throughout the game is going to be awesome. I’d recommend playing through on one of the original difficulties first, but if you’re confident in your skills—or just want to get punished—Classic puts them to the ultimate test.
How does First-Person Driving change the feel of exploration?
Though it’s something the team always wanted to include, this is the first time we’ve officially supported first-person driving in the franchise. We’re massive driving fans, so it was important to get the details in the cars right.
In terms of how it impacts exploration, it obviously changes the way you see things as you drive around immersed more firmly in Enzo’s shoes. I’ve spent many hours traversing the Valle Dorata with it now, and still stop to marvel at details I rarely noticed while zooming around in our classic third-person view. Tackling races in first person offers another new way to test your abilities, as dust and smoke from other cars add an intense and exhilarating perspective that the detached camera can’t easily convey.
How does Free Ride mode make use of the game’s map in ways that the main game didn’t or couldn’t?
We want players to explore the world in a freeform way, and Free Ride turns it into an expansive hub where you’ll find and access various Challenges by travelling around, unlocking Hitching Posts, and meeting contacts. Challenges are instanced and accessed via these contacts, and doing so will place you into a combat location or special world state.
These combat encounters reuse mission locations, so once you’ve played the corresponding story chapter and unlocked a Challenge in Free Ride, you’ll get to re-experience areas in new ways. Races happen out in the world and we’ve placed them along less-traveled paths, so it should be fun seeing parts of the map you may have previously passed by.
Of course, there may be new places to explore too, but that’s something you’ll have to discover for yourself…
Mafia: The Old Country’s Free Ride Update is available November 20, free for all PlayStation 5 players. If you haven’t picked up the game yet, PlayStation Plus Premium subscribers can try it via a Game Trial beginning Friday, November 21.