No longer glamour, but dust: "Mafia 4" and the harsh everyday life of Sicily around 1900

Kim Muntinga

5.9.2025

Translation: machine translated

Pictures: Kim Muntinga

After three US locations, "Mafia: The Old Country" moves to Sicily around 1900, where rural confinement and social hardship replace urban modernity and give the series a completely new tone.

Dust hangs in the air as the morning sun struggles to break through the grey clouds over the Sicilian mountains. Men with black faces and tired eyes leave the mine, their bodies bent from constant toil. Among them is Enzo Favara, the protagonist of «Mafia: The Old Country» - a man whose life is characterised by confinement, poverty and hopelessness from the very beginning.

Developer Hangar 13 is relocating the plot of the fourth instalment of the series to this Sicily around 1900. And thus back to the place where the mafia is not transfigured into a myth in the glamour of big American cities, but is tangible as the bitter reality of everyday life in Sicily.

This article is not a classic game review. Instead of focussing on game mechanics or technical aspects, it sheds light on the historical background of «Mafia: The Old Country». How does the fourth instalment of the series reflect the reality of Sicily around 1900? How does it contrast with the previous instalments in the series? And why does it no longer tell the story of the Mafia as an American myth, but as the bitter reality of everyday life?

Attention: This article contains light spoilers for the plot of «Mafia: The Old Country».

Sicily around 1900: a country without a state

Around 1900, Sicily was one of the poorest regions in Europe. While the Italian nation state pushed ahead with modernisation and industrialisation after unification in 1861, the south - and with it Sicily - largely fell by the wayside. Illiteracy, hunger and a lack of infrastructure characterised everyday life.

Contemporary estimates suggest that around 70 per cent of the population in Sicily at the time could not read or write. In industrialised northern Italy, the proportion of illiterate people was less than 30 per cent. For most people in Sicily, daily survival was far more important than school education.

The situation of the rural population was particularly precarious. As tenant farmers (mezzadri), they had to hand over the majority of their harvest - in some cases up to two thirds - to the large landowners. What was left was barely enough to live on. They also had to buy seeds and tools on credit, usually at usurious interest rates. Poor harvests exacerbated the situation, trapping many families in a lifelong debt trap. In the sulphur mines, which made Sicily internationally famous at the time, men and children worked in life-threatening conditions.

At the beginning of the 20th century, labourers suffered from high mortality rates due to accidents, exhaustion and illness. Although the state was present on paper, it was far removed in reality: the courts were corrupt, there were no police officers and the bureaucracy barely reached the remote villages.

In this gap between hardship and the absence of the state, the mafia emerged and grew. Initially, it acted as a kind of protective organisation that enforced rules where state institutions failed. However, unofficial arbitration soon turned into a system of organised violence. The so-called uomo d'onore - the «man of honour» - promised security, but demanded silence (omertà) and loyalty.

Those who did not pay risked social marginalisation, violence or death. For many young men, this mixture of coercion and supposed protection was the attraction: the clan offered a sense of belonging, influence and a minimum of security - even if it was also the greatest oppressor.

The result was a mass exodus. Between 1876 and 1915, around 1.5 million Sicilians left the island for the USA. Many of them settled in cities such as New York or Chicago - and with them, the Mafia also found its way across the Atlantic. This turned a local power structure into a transatlantic phenomenon whose shadow still extends today.

Enzo Favara in the maelstrom of violence

It is precisely this historical moment that «Mafia: The Old Country» picks up on. The game tells the story of Enzo Favara. From the very first scenes, it becomes clear that anyone born in Sicily around 1900 like Enzo has little choice. Even as a child, he is sent to the sulphur mines as a carusu to pay off his father's debts. He spends eleven years in darkness and dust - until a catastrophic landslide turns his life upside down.

The accident costs his closest friend Gaetano his life. Enzo himself survives, but in a conflict with the brutal warden Il Merlo, he finds himself in a situation that forces him to flee. By chance, he ends up on the territory of the Torrisi family and this is where the journey begins that turns an exploited miner into a man in the service of the mafia.

The mafia offers Enzo a sense of belonging and a way out of poverty. But it also binds him to a system of violence and silence.

Places as a mirror of development

From this moment on, Enzo's story develops step by step and the game world itself tells it. The places he passes through reflect his transformation: the darkness of the mine symbolises hopelessness and compulsion, the village stands for tradition and social control. Finally, the magnificent villas of the clan leaders symbolise power, which also means dependence and danger.

Figures between hope and betrayal

In addition to the locations, the characters characterise Enzo's story. They mirror society and drive his transformation. Even though the locations and social structures are based on reality, the characters in «Mafia: The Old Country» are fictitious. Enzo Favara and the Torrisi and Spadaro families exemplify a milieu that existed in a similar form without referring to specific historical figures.

Don Bernardo is the first to give Enzo a perspective, but this new beginning is inextricably linked to duties of loyalty. Bernardo is not a benefactor, but a man of power: anyone who pledges allegiance to him belongs to the clan from then on. His daughter Isabella Torrisi adds another dimension: she is Enzo's hope for a life beyond violence, a glimpse of family and the future.

Enzo moves between two poles: clan and love, duty and freedom. There are also companions such as Cesare and Luca, whose loyalty remains uncertain, and antagonists such as Don Spadaro or Il Merlo, who epitomises the harshness of Enzo's past. Every encounter binds him closer to the clan, every relationship costs him a piece of his independence.

Language as a cultural foundation

The developers' decision to set large parts of the game to music in Sicilian - a Romance language in its own right that is often mistaken for a mere dialect of Italian - is particularly noteworthy. Where other productions would choose Italian or even English, «Mafia: The Old Country» consistently uses the regional language. This creates authenticity and anchors the plot deeply in the local culture.

Although Enzo himself is Sicilian, language becomes an obstacle for him. Sicilian was never standardised, each region had its own variants, and the clans also developed their own jargon. Language thus becomes an instrument of power: those who master it belong; those who don't understand it are excluded. For Enzo, appropriation not only means integration, but also engaging in a system of loyalty and silence and thus the central topics of the game: belonging, control, demarcation.

A social portrait of the clan.

A portrait of society in play form

In the end, «Mafia: The Old Country» is more than just the story of an individual. It is a portrait of society that paints a complex picture of Sicily around 1900 through places, characters and language. Enzo's rise is not a heroic tale, but a tragedy in which each level of success brings new shackles.

The game shows how poverty, tradition and the absence of the state create a world. One in which the mafia is not a myth, but an everyday reality and in which Enzo's path from miner to mafioso seems almost inevitable.

From American myth to Sicilian reality

The Mafia series was an American project for a long time. Lost Heaven, Empire Bay, New Bordeaux - the fictional cities of the first three parts may have been invented, but they reflected the USA in the 1930s, 40s and 60s with great attention to detail. Skyscrapers, jazz clubs, diners, neon lights: locations that are firmly anchored in our cultural memory, not least thanks to films such as «The Godfather» or «Goodfellas». The games thus tied in with the myth of the mafia in the USA, with the tale of the immigrant who strives for recognition and finds advancement in the underworld.

Tommy Angelo, Vito Scaletta and Lincoln Clay - the three protagonists - each embodied a variation of this narrative. Tommy, the taxi driver, is drawn into the maelstrom of the mafia and struggles with questions of loyalty and morality. Vito, the Italian-American, dreams of social advancement after the war, but fails because of a system that does not recognise him. Lincoln, the Vietnam veteran, is caught between racism, trauma and revenge in 1960s New Bordeaux and tries to build his own power base. What they have in common is that, one way or another, they make a choice: they seek the path to the top, even if it leads through violence.

«Mafia: The Old Country» breaks with this tradition. For the first time, the series leaves the American stage and goes back to its origins, to Sicily around 1900. Instead of urban modernity, rural harshness now comes to the fore and with it a mafia that is less a myth than a survival strategy.

This also changes the role of the protagonist. Enzo grows up in poverty and dependence - his life is determined by constraints from the outset, not by ambition. While Tommy, Vito and Lincoln act on their own initiative - advancement, recognition, revenge - he remains a driven man. His tragedy lies in the fact that he hardly has a choice.

In terms of tone, «The Old Country» also breaks new ground. Where its predecessors tell the story of the American dream and its darker side, this film is about the structures that characterised everyday life at the time. The silence of the villages, the rattling of horse-drawn carts, the creaking of old wooden floors prevail here. No tower blocks, no jazz in the background. Just the harsh sound of labour and the quiet threats of the clans.

The myth that has sustained the series so far is deliberately deconstructed here. This makes the fourth instalment not only a change of pace within the series, but also a new direction. It strips the Mafia of its romanticised glorification and shows it for what it was in Sicily: a system of control, born out of poverty, maintained through silence, anchored in everyday life.

In «Mafia: The Old Country», the series returns to its roots, creating an exciting contrast: what became a myth in the USA appears as reality in Sicily. The player no longer experiences the echoes of a legend, but the origins of a power that continues to have an impact today.

A new path for an old series

For me, «Mafia: The Old Country» was more than just a new instalment in the series - it was a surprise. I was and still am a big fan of parts 1 and 2, especially the first encounter with Tommy Angelo, the detailed depiction of Lost Heaven and later Empire Bay have stayed with me for a long time. Part 3, on the other hand, was a flop for me - the gameplay was too repetitive and the narrative lacked sensitivity.

I was all the more excited about the fourth instalment. And I have to say: it grabbed me. Hangar 13 has had the courage to reinvent the series without betraying its essence.

«Mafia: The Old Country» was provided to me by Hangar 13 for the Playstation 5. The game has been available since 7 August.

Kim Muntinga

Editor

Kim.Muntinga@galaxus.de

My interests are varied, I just like to enjoy life. Always on the lookout for news about darts, gaming, films and series.

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