'Mafia III' brings serious cultural issues to the 'Grand Theft Auto' formula

Let's be real for a minute: Big-budget, mainstream video games usually go out of their way to never engage with serious issues. When huge amounts of corporate money go into a project, it's generally good business sense to avoid controversy whenever possible. 

At best, you usually get social commentary using fantastical stand-ins for real problems. Cyborgs and elves are structurally oppressed instead of people of color, for instance.

"Mafia III," if nothing else, bucks this trend with its treatment of race in the 1960s American South. While it isn't uniformly successful in everything it tries to do, there are so many little things about it that make it worth recommending if you want a solid video game revenge story.

Allow me to explain:

Regardless of anything else, "Mafia III" is a pulpy revenge tale through and through.

In "Mafia III," you are Lincoln Clay. He was orphaned and taken in by the black mob of New Bordeaux, this game's fictional version of New Orleans.

After returning from the Vietnam War in 1968, Lincoln's happy homecoming is cut short when the Italian mafia that controls the city guns down his de-facto family. Hell-bent on revenge, you control Lincoln as he systematically disassembles the mafia's hold on New Bordeaux, district-by-district.

It's a decent, if somewhat traditional, setup for a revenge tale. Where the narrative of "Mafia III" shines is not in the events of the story, but in the way it's told.

Everything is framed by documentary footage where central characters from the story recount the events of Lincoln's bloody quest, but years (or even decades) after the fact. It's a smart, stylish way to deliver information, and the game's use of popular music from the era is more effective than it has any right to be.

The voice acting is also incredible. Father James, a man of God who reluctantly assists Lincoln throughout the game, essentially narrates the story through the documentary sequences, and it's the best performance I've seen in a video game in quite some time.

I should also note that there's a stinger during the end credits that is thoroughly ridiculous and might be ruinous if it had anything to do with the main story. As it stands, it's just a very silly setup for a potential sequel.

Okay, let's talk about race now.

"Mafia III" is a game about race as much as it is a game about driving and shooting. After all, this is a game where you play as a black man in New Orleans in 1968.

Its developers have never shied away from this, which was encouraging on one hand and concerning on the other. It would have been very easy for them to mess this up, and mess it up big-time.

As a white guy, I can't tell you definitively whether or not they messed it up. I don't think they did, but it's not my place to say. Here are some great pieces of writing about this topic from people more qualified than I am:

- Polygon's review includes comments from a few non-white writers, with mixed reception of the game's handling of race.

- Vice Gaming's Austin Walker spoke to Charles Webb, the senior writer of the game, about its racial politics.

- In Paste's review, Terence Wiggins praises the game for its cathartic use of extreme violence against outwardly racist villains.

That last one is worth talking about. In case you weren't sure, this is a game where your main objective is to violently murder enemies who aren't shy about using the N-word when they see you.

Every player will have a different reaction to this. Some, like Wiggins, will find it cathartic, while others will find it a bit much. How you react to the way "Mafia III" approaches race might differ wildly depending on how (or even if) you experience racism in real life.

The only strong opinion I can give on this topic is I want to praise the developers for trying. They understood the politics inherent to the game's setting and never backed away from it. If nothing else, I think other game developers could stand to do the same.

As an open-world action game, it's basically fine, if unremarkable.

You might be wondering what it's like to actually play "Mafia III." If you've played a "Grand Theft Auto" game, it's a lot like that.

You can roam around the city as you please, stealing cars and being a violent a-hole if that's your thing. The shooting is cover-based, and you can use stealth to silently dispatch enemies before they even know you're there.

The game's racial politics play into its mechanics, with an on-screen indicator for when a police officer is watching Lincoln, even when he's not even doing anything suspicious. There are even segregated businesses and delayed police response time in poor, black neighborhoods.

It's competent and inoffensive at worst, engaging and fascinating at best. The biggest variable is the mission design, which is uneven.

Instead of going from mission to mission like in "Grand Theft Auto," your job is to take down the criminal rackets in each district of New Bordeaux. There's some light variation depending on the nature of each racket, but essentially, you're going to different buildings or back alleys and killing everyone you find.

You do this until you've done enough damage to bring out the racket boss, who you then find and deal with. After you've cleared out all the rackets in a district, you take on the leader of said district in a more exciting, fleshed-out mission.

These missions are mostly great, ranging from a shootout on a sinking riverboat to going undercover as a boxer. Unfortunately, they make up a relatively small portion of what you're actually doing at any given moment.

Still, the blandest objectives tend to only take 5-10 minutes to complete. It gets repetitive, but I never found it especially tiresome, if that makes sense.