The Mafia series has never had a clue what to do with its open world. In Mafia 1, the titular city of Lost Heaven was set dressing—something that felt like it existed because, 'Hey, GTA 3 has just come out and is tremendously popular, and we're making a game sort of like that.' In Mafia 2, avarice got the better of design, and all the side activities that would have rounded out the base game's home of Empire Bay were carved off to be flogged to you later as DLC, leaving the map as strangely empty as its predecessor's.

Mafia 3 took an honest swing at things, trying to fill its home of New Bordeaux with stuff for you to do when a main quest wasn't holding your hand. It didn't work. The activities were one-note and tedious: an endless cycle of clearing out the same damn warehouse of the same

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