Mafia The Old Country Official Breaking Omertà Capturing Performance Video

Games World

Join developer Hangar 13 for a behind-the-scenes look at Mafia: The Old Country in this new video for the upcoming action adventure game. In this latest video, meet the cast of Mafia: The Old Country, see how Hangar 13 chose the cast and captured the performances for the upcoming game. Mafia: The Old Country will be available on August 8, 2025.

Transcript

00:00What are you doing here?

00:04Um, looking for Luca.

00:07And is he here?

00:09Sneaking around where you don't belong

00:12will be the last thing you've done.

00:15Capisti.

00:17In Map of the Old Country, our story is actually very grounded.

00:20It's a very kind of personal story.

00:22It's really important that those characters do feel believable.

00:25They feel like they live in that world.

00:28No more running.

00:35For anybody working on story-driven cinematic games,

00:40the casting process is always hugely important.

00:43Father, it's so good to see you.

00:46The actors are going to help you bring the emotions

00:49that you want the player to feel to screen.

00:51To friendship.

00:52We've been very lucky.

00:53We found our core characters, our central five or six characters,

00:56all just popped out from the screen as soon as we saw them.

00:59Are you going to tell me the truth?

01:01Or are you going to accuse me of having a wild imagination like everyone else?

01:05The first time I saw Riccardo on the screen,

01:07I had an immediate strong instinct that this was going to be our guy.

01:10This was our Enzo.

01:11I thought family was supposed to mean something.

01:13How can you do that to him?

01:14How can you do that to him?

01:15I had a relationship with Enzo before Riccardo, the actor, got involved, right?

01:19Because we understand his journey in the game.

01:22I had a different idea to who Enzo was going to be.

01:25And it's really interesting to see what the actor brings to the character.

01:28Because a character in a video game passes through a lot of hands.

01:31From the writers, to myself as AD, to the character artists, to the animators.

01:37Everybody brings something to the character.

01:39And Enzo absolutely evolved across that process.

01:42He started as sort of a younger guy, in a way,

01:45that was maybe even more naive and fresh-faced than you see him in the game.

01:50I'm going far away from this place, Gaetano. Never coming back.

01:55Enzo is a badass, right? Enzo is a dangerous guy.

01:58But he also has this at the side to him where he's very human and approachable.

02:02He's trying to figure some of this stuff out in the same way players are

02:05as they encounter him in the game.

02:07Riccardo still has a lot of that.

02:08He has that naivety, has a quality to him in his performance.

02:12We needed somebody very, very special for that role.

02:15And yeah, we were lucky that Riccardo came knocking.

02:20We are trying to listen to our actors and to their ideas.

02:26Because in the end you could enrich the experience that the player has

02:29while playing the game.

02:31And it's them who play the role at the end of the day.

02:33So they need to feel comfortable with what we are asking them to do.

02:37All of the men in this room are bound by blood.

02:41So we cast great actors for the role.

02:43Our job is to take those performances, their talent, and put it on the screen.

02:49It's not always straightforward.

02:50There is so much work and effort that goes into translating what we all take for granted,

02:55which we see every day in the nuanced actions, behaviors, movements of real people.

03:00The emotions that they convey really comes across in the detail of those performances

03:05when you see them in the game itself.

03:07I think that the biggest challenge for an actor that's not used to acting in the motion capture stage

03:20is the emptiness of the motion capture stage.

03:22The actors need to be able to imagine a lot.

03:26We are supporting them by the props, explaining what each prop means,

03:31what the set looks like.

03:33And then we are also showing them the virtual world on the screen.

03:40We are having two studios, one in Brno, Czech Republic.

03:43We use this mostly for the systemic animation,

03:45for all the player locomotion, NPC locomotion,

03:48the world interaction, all the non-spoken events in the game.

03:52For the cinematics and narrative and spoken parts of the game,

03:57we are using the California 2K Games motion capture studio in Petaluma,

04:01which is really huge.

04:03This studio allows us to capture, we call it teacup, like total capture,

04:07which means that we can record not only the body animation,

04:10but also the facial expressions and the audio of the actors.

04:15The actors, they are enjoying playing and imagining the world, you know,

04:23so it's a blessing to work with them, you know.

04:25They all love to do so.

04:27My precious.

04:30Getting the imagination out of their head may sound challenging for them,

04:34it's kind of also freedom for them, you know.

04:36Chemistry between the actors, particularly Enzo and Isabella,

04:39has been really, really amazing.

04:40It's a real pleasure to watch.

04:41People might talk.

04:44And what would they say?

04:45The way that we tie together the music and the performances

04:50and the location and all these things to produce, hopefully,

04:55a very memorable introduction into Sicily and to Enzo's experience,

05:00that's there to really make players form a relationship with the cast,

05:04you can form a relationship with the experience, I think is fantastic.

05:09You have a name?

05:10Enzo.

05:11All right, Enzo.

05:13Let's go.

05:34In this play.

05:35Yes.

05:36Yes.

05:37Yes.

05:38Yes.

05:39Hey, they are planning.

05:40We have a particular reality for

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