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The devs behind Mafia: The Old Country know that you expected Tommy Guns. Not only are they a staple of the Mafia in pop culture, they were also a feature of the preceding Mafia games. But as the name implies, Mafia: The Old Country is winding the clocks back, to a time before the Tommy Gun was even invented. So as you might expect, the combat is wildly different than the point-and-shoot that gamers are used to, and Popverse recently got an inside scoop as to what that will look like.

That scoop came from PAX East 2025, where Mafia studio Hangar 13 was presenting an Old Country panel to a packed room of Mafia fans. During the discussion, Hangar 13 President Nick Baynes opened up about the layered reasons for the new combat in the upcoming Mafia game, starting with the character at the story's center: Enzo Favara.

"Enzo as a character," Baynes began, "Is a coiled spring. He's a survivor; he survived [working in] sulfur mines, so him scrabbling around looting for weapons in combat scenarios gives you a good idea as to what it would be like to kind of survive through these situations, rather than just shoot it away."

As anyone who's seen the Mafia: The Old Country trailer knows, there will of course be firearms in the game, just as there were in 1905 Sicily, where the game is set. But because of the lack of resources (bullets), the player will be forced to rely on a different way of surviving and overcoming odds - a simple knife.

"The knife is a sort of Sicilian tradition," Baynes tells the crowd, "Sicilian knife fighting is very evocative of the time period and Sicilian gangsters, generally."

But even though the technology of the weapon is scaled way down, Baynes & Co. knew they needed to find a way to keep the gameplay interesting. "We wanted to make it so that the knife is more than just a one-shot kill," he said, "You can choose from different knives in the game - each one has different attributes and skills associated with it. Some of them you can throw, some of them are better for the undercover aspects of combat."

"And then," Baynes concludes, "You've got this knife-dueling mode, which is new to the game and new to Mafia. Every now and again, you come up against sort of a boss character, and you have a one-on-one due to the death."

"That's sick as fuck," said panel moderator Greg Miller. Judging by theirreaction, the crowd agreed.

Mafia: The Old Country comes to consoles August 8.

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And be sure to check Popverse regularly for the latest gaming news.