From Barebones Explore To Actual Free Ride
Mafia: The Old Country has always been more about tight story missions than massive open worlds. Even compared to the rest of the Mafia series, it was a very guided experience. The original Explore mode gave you a slice of Sicilian countryside to wander around in, but there was basically nothing to do except drive and stroll.
The new Free Ride update changes that. It completely replaces Explore mode and turns that empty map into something closer to a simple open world. It is still very basic, but it finally gives you reasons to hop back into the game once the main story is done.
Instead of being a walking tour of Sicily, Free Ride adds activities, collectibles, and some new toys to play with. It will not turn The Old Country into a full sandbox like Mafia 3, but it does at least make the world feel more alive.
What You Can Actually Do In Free Ride
Free Ride introduces two main activity types that will feel familiar to almost any gamer: racing and combat. These are straightforward but give you some structure when you are just messing around off the main story path.
On the racing side, you get both car and horse events.
- Car races: Three lap based circuit races, three point to point road sprints, and six time trials. If you like the old school cars in Mafia, this is where the update puts most of its energy.
- Horse races: Three circuit races. The game already made horse riding a bit of a chore in the campaign, so this is probably just enough for people who want to try it without suffering through it.
Combat also gets some side missions designed for quick bursts of action.
- Standoffs: Five straight up gunfights where you just show up, shoot it out, and survive.
- Assassinations: Four stealth focused missions where you need to take out a specific target. They encourage a quieter approach instead of just blasting everything.
On top of these marked activities, 2K hints that the world hides a few secrets. These are said to offer powerful rewards if you track them down. Given the game’s limited gadgets, you can expect these rewards to mainly be new weapons and cars rather than anything wildly game changing.
Free Ride also drops a good chunk of new gear into the game:
- Four new knives
- Three new guns
- Two new cars
- Three new charms
- Sixteen new outfits
Taken together, that turns Free Ride into a kind of simple playground. You have more tools, more reasons to drive around, and some goals that actually reward you for exploring the countryside.
It is still not close to a fully featured open world game. The author of the original article calls it a very very basic open world. But it is definitely better than the nothing Explore mode offered at launch and it is extra content that the developers did not strictly have to add.
New Modes, First Person Driving And What It Means For Mafia
The Free Ride update is not just side missions and cosmetics. It also folds in a few new modes that might tempt fans back for at least a quick spin.
- Photo mode: If you like capturing dramatic screenshots of vintage cars, moody lighting, and period outfits, this gives you proper tools to do it.
- Cinema Siciliano mode: A black and white visual filter with deliberately degraded audio and Sicilian language turned on by default. It aims to make the game feel like an old classic movie, complete with grainy presentation.
- Classic difficulty: A tougher setting inspired by the original Mafia, which was known for some brutally hard missions. This is for players who want more punishing combat and driving.
The most eye catching addition though is first person driving. For the first time in Mafia history, you can drive from the driver’s seat view instead of using the usual third person camera. That might not sound wild if you play a lot of racers, but for a story driven crime series like Mafia it is a big shift in how the cars feel.
Being able to see through the windshield of those vintage racers and heavy sedans could make races and chases feel more intense. Even the article’s author, who is not keen on replaying the full story, admits first person driving is tempting enough for a casual cruise in Free Ride.
None of this completely fixes the base game’s biggest problems. Mafia: The Old Country has been criticised for being mechanically derivative and telling an extremely predictable story. The plot goes exactly where you expect it to go, from the opening moments to the final act.
However, those issues have not hurt its success with the publisher. Take Two boss Strauss Zelnick has described the game’s shorter structure and lower launch price as the perfect result. In other words, The Old Country did exactly what the company wanted it to do, financially and strategically.
That matters because it suggests we will see more Mafia style projects like this in the future. Slimmer crime stories, lighter on open world features, but backed up with updates like Free Ride to give them a little extra life after launch.
If you bounced off The Old Country because of the story, Free Ride will not magically fix that. But if you enjoyed the atmosphere and driving and just wanted more reasons to hang out in Sicily, this update finally gives you an excuse to go back and cause a little more trouble.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/mafia-the-old-countrys-free-ride-update-is-out-now-replacing-its-empty-open-world-with-an-extremely-basic-one/
