Meet Mafia 3's hero and his (fictionalized) home of New Orleans

Sure, the open-world crime-doings of Mafia 3 look pretty nice, but Lincoln Clay and New Orleans itself are easily the most interesting parts we've seen so far. Clearly the folks at 2K Games agree, since the very first videos they put out since that impressive reveal trailer were all about the protagonist and the city he plans to paint red (with mobster blood).

Both videos even have a little bit of new gameplay footage spliced in between scenes from the CGI trailer and developer interviews, showing Clay walking the streets, outrunning mafiosos in his muscle car, and blowing them up with a grenade launcher. Normally I'd ask the mob if First Blood hadn't shown them why messing with a slightly unhinged, loner Vietnam veteran is a terrible idea, but I guess it wasn't due to hit theaters for 14 years yet.

Speaking of anachronisms, it is odd that Mafia 3 drops the fictional-homage pretense and just takes place in 1968 New Orleans, although that does give the developers more historical touchstones to draw from than back in Lost Heaven and Empire City. Cultural commentary is dicey territory for most big-budget games, but Mafia 3 has a solid start, at the very least.

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Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.