Mafia II Breakdown from PlayStation: Official Magazine of May 2008

The latest issue of PlayStation: The Official Magazine contains an extensive preview of the upcoming Mafia II. As always, when a hot story is shown, a NeoGAF member will break it down for us. Lets take a look.

• The game will feature 3 families.
• Cops only call reinforcements if you committed a large enough crime.
• In total, there are about 2 hours of cutscenes.
• The game will contain references to the original game along with easter eggs.
• The game has 3 acts.
• All of the 2.5 square mile city available for travel at the start.
• You can use taxi's to get around the city.
• Cars get damaged, dirty, and even explode if shot in the gas tank.
• You can customize cars with your own license plates.
• There are 2 types of context sensitive environment interactions: Standard and Violent.
• You can buy food from vendors such as hotdogs.
• While buying stuff you cannot be attacked.
• NPC's will smoke, read newspapers, wait for buses, look through trash cans, etc.
• In several points in the story, you can make choices that affect the game.
• The game will feature multiple endings.
• Police will go after other criminals instead of just you
• You can buy houses where you can store your gear
• You can take missions for and against competing families.
• There will be many interactive objects such as chairs, bottles, sinks, etc.
• The map will have waypoints including sidequests.
• Checkpoints have improved from the original game.
• There will be no on screen interface.
• You can go to gyms to learn new hand to hand combo moves.
• Shooting through doors will possibly be added.

The game is sounding promising. I will have to pick up this issue soon as I'm a sucker for Italian games. I even re-purchased Godfather: The Don's Edition when I already had the original on the PlayStation 2. Damn Italian blood.

[Playstation: The Official Magazine May 08]