Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Games like Grand Theft Auto (especially in the run up to the release of GTA6) have taught us to expect that open worlds are ours are bastions of freedom to be taken over. Mafia The Old Country, on the other hand, has disappointed many critics by presenting a beautiful vision of 19th/20th century Sicily that can nonetheless only be interacted with in very specific ways. In this video essay or analysis or critique or whatever you want to call it, I argue that Mafia's world design has always been very deliberate in this regard. Protagonist Enzo is decidedly not free—Mafia merely uses its more rigid approach to world design in order to ask, why should the player feel any different?
Support the show on Patreon - patreon.com/writingongames
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0:00 - Mafia is not a living world, it's a postcard
2:37 - You don't "take" Mafia's open world
3:48 - Mafia is not Grand Theft Auto
6:11 - The artistry of Mafia's world design
7:01 - Is Grand Theft Auto really that "open"?
9:07 - Outro
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Sources:
Macchiaioli: Italian Painters of the Nineteenth Century, Norma Broude (1987)
tsofa.com/the-macchiaioli
eclecticlight.co/2015/05/09/beyond-the-french-impressionists-3-the-macchiaioli-giovanni-fattori
dailyartmagazine.com/macchiaioli-italys-revolutionary-impressionists
bruceonarthistory.com/2018/04/30/macchiaioli-impressionism-10-years-before-the-impressionists
https://www.visit-livorno.it/en/attrazione/macchiaioli-e-dei-postmacchiaioli-labronici
theartpostblog.com/en/the-macchiaioli
theartwanderer.co.uk/macchiaioli-italians-who-invented-impressionism
bruceonarthistory.com/2018/04/30/macchiaioli-impressionism-10-years-before-the-impressionists
Games like Grand Theft Auto (especially in the run up to the release of GTA6) have taught us to expect that open worlds are ours are bastions of freedom to be taken over. Mafia The Old Country, on the other hand, has disappointed many critics by presenting a beautiful vision of 19th/20th century Sicily that can nonetheless only be interacted with in very specific ways. In this video essay or analysis or critique or whatever you want to call it, I argue that Mafia's world design has always been very deliberate in this regard. Protagonist Enzo is decidedly not free—Mafia merely uses its more rigid approach to world design in order to ask, why should the player feel any different?
Support the show on Patreon - patreon.com/writingongames
---
0:00 - Mafia is not a living world, it's a postcard
2:37 - You don't "take" Mafia's open world
3:48 - Mafia is not Grand Theft Auto
6:11 - The artistry of Mafia's world design
7:01 - Is Grand Theft Auto really that "open"?
9:07 - Outro
---
Sources:
Macchiaioli: Italian Painters of the Nineteenth Century, Norma Broude (1987)
tsofa.com/the-macchiaioli
eclecticlight.co/2015/05/09/beyond-the-french-impressionists-3-the-macchiaioli-giovanni-fattori
dailyartmagazine.com/macchiaioli-italys-revolutionary-impressionists
bruceonarthistory.com/2018/04/30/macchiaioli-impressionism-10-years-before-the-impressionists
https://www.visit-livorno.it/en/attrazione/macchiaioli-e-dei-postmacchiaioli-labronici
theartpostblog.com/en/the-macchiaioli
theartwanderer.co.uk/macchiaioli-italians-who-invented-impressionism
bruceonarthistory.com/2018/04/30/macchiaioli-impressionism-10-years-before-the-impressionists
