Overview
The Penguin’s finest guide to dealing with Mafia 3’s countless bugs that apparently slipped by 2K’s (nonexistent) QA.
The Penguin’s finest… Intro
(Feel free to skip this section if you’re not into IT humor. If you are, feel free as well, but you’re gonna miss out).
Let’s face it: Mafia 3, while being an alright game, has more bugs than an Alpha. OK, Indev-Prealpha-Internal-techdemo, and believe me, I know. Because as of today, I’ve beaten this monster.
Sadly, though, 2k doesn’t offer a bug bounty program for their games, because if they had, I’d be rich by now. Unfortunately, I’m a penguin, so I don’t care about human money – if they’d send a beer my way, I’d appreciate though 😉
That is, with no bug bounty and no apparent QA internally (this being outsourced to the players), no reason for me not to go full disclosure. If they had had a Github profile, I’d do a PR right now with some fixes, but… well, guess what: They don’t.
Anyway, this isn’t supposed to be a rant. This is supposed to be The Penguin’s finest guide to avoiding the bugs in Mafia 3.
P.S.: You may notice that I crack a lot of jokes about drinking and coding, lack of sleep and coding, marijuana and coding and so on. I’m a coder myself, we all make mistakes (mine tend to be a little more costly tough), I also know what it’s loke to code on most of what I said above – tip for the future, sober up before you do your job, because someone has to maintain the mess you made.
And because I’m that someone for some people right now, I kinda have the moral right to crack that kind of jokes.
The “I refuse to move in a cutscene”
Sometimes, when you start a cutscene, Lincoln (or another actor in the scene) does not move and simply plays the idle animation.
Rating: From annoying (you can skip and miss the cutscene) to really annoying (you can’t skip the cutscene and have to reload the last checkpoint).
Workaround: If you want to view the cutscene, reload the last checkpoint. If you don’t, just skip it. If it’s not skippable, reload checkpoint.
Where: It occured to me during “Sign of the Times” and during “Unfinished Business”. Safe to assume it may also occur in the main game or pretty much anywhere else.
The “I was asleep in a cutscene, but I refuse to move NOW”
(Occured only during “Faster Baby!”, perhaps only there. Both the car and the cutscene are exclusive to this DLC).
After loading an injured person into the back of a car (I’ll keep it unspecific, it’s one of the final cutscenes during “Faster, Baby!” and I don’t want to spoil it for you), the camera stays focused on the person, the car disappears from view and the chase continues.
The rear-view mirrors still work, so if you want a challenge, complete the chase this way. Bonus points if you upload a youtube video of it.
Rating: Annoying, but if you got to that point, you’re getting quite used to loading checkpoints or restarting your game.
FIx: Like I said, do the chase entirely this way (essentially, driving backwards) and do a youtube video of it.
Real, actual Fix: Reload the checkpoint. The game is saved right after the cutscene and you can drive normally.
Where: AFAIK, only “Faster Baby!”. Even if I’m wrong, that’s probably not gonna be frequent during the main game.
The “You want story progess? No, hear me tell about Empire Bay.”
This one can hit you early (I got my first one after meeting the Italians (again, unspecific to prevent accidental spoilerage)) (Yes, I close as many brackets as I open. Deal with it, it’s OCD), so many newbies don’t recognize this as a bug.
A person that should actually give you a story-related task (kill someone, talk to someone, trash something) or initiate a conversation refuses to talk to you and instead, when interacted with, just small-talks to you.
Rating: Annoying. Gamebreaker for Newbies.
Fix: Less high-proof alcohol during coding.
Workaround: Reload checkpoint. Usually, you respawn right in the office of the person you wanted to talk to, but be prepared for a short drive.
No screenie, sorry – there wouldn’t be much of a point though.
“Water-solvable concrete” or “Where the duck is my car?”
Didn’t I just park my car on this slope? Oh well… Better call the car delivery.
I don’t know what causes this, I tried reproducing it to no avail. What you see here is a solid slope of concrete that I was able to walk on, but the second I stepped off of it, the car sunk. Apparently, Lincoln Clay is Jesus. Or Mafia 3 is bugged.
Fix: Learn the difference between concrete and water before attempting to code game physics.
Workaround: Get a new car from the Irish. The ones you find in the streets suck anyway.
Where: It happened to me shortly before activating a phone relay in the Bayou. Don’t know if that has something to do with it.
“Cutscene? I thought you said image!”
This one is particularly annoying if you follow the story and not much to care about if you don’t.
Instead of a proper cutscene showing, the game only shows the first single image of it. To me, this occured when I alt-tabbed out of the game… I should have known better. AOE 1 had problems with this, too.
Fix: Integrate the game with 21st Century OS Features. People WILL minimize the game, true multitasking is a thing in 2017.
Workaround: The only workaround known is to restart the game.
Where: This occured to me during “Faster Baby!”, but it persisted during several cutscenes. Might persist into the rest of the main game, don’t know.
“The DLC is complete… But still, no reward for you.”
After completing the “Sign of the Times” DLC and fully renovating Sammy’s, the game might not register the completion. You still get to see the final cutscene, but no special car and no special clothing for you.
Fix: Tests. Release half a year after you’re done developing, spend the time doing an open beta. Or a closed beta. Or whatever. But TEST people. Seriously.
Workaround: Sorry, but you won the jackpot. Either finish the game without the nice rewards (you still get your share of fun) or restart completely and hope it doesn’t hit you twice in a row.
Where: Looks like it only affects “Sign of the times”. I could be wrong though.
“Help, my Gun turned into a useless toy”
Now, this might be a bug or it might be a “feature” I don’t recognize… But occasionally, some parts of opponents may be invincible. That is, you can empty a whole clip (talk FAF Backburn shaped, not Lupara) at point blank range into them and they still stand.
They DO play the hit animation, but nothing more after that.
Maybe there is an evil voodoo spell that turns your gun into a BB Gun after some kills. I don’t know. Ad I don’t want to know.
Fix: Don’t anger voodoo priests when developing a video game. Or don’t anger them at all… after all, what did they do wrong? Leave them be, they’re just people after all.
Workaround: Headshotting the opponent in question usually helps. Slowing time usually helps headshotting the opponent, but if you didn’t figure that out yet, maybe go back to play “The Sims”?
Where: This occured several times, mostly in the main game. Also, fights with more enemies seem to be more likely to carry at least one of them.
Final Words…
…to you.
I hope this guide helped you work around the bugs. I also hope that my tongue-in-cheek style of writing did cheer you up a little.
If you do encounter a bug that’s not in the guide, try the RRR rule.
Reload (The last Checkpoint)… if that doesn’t help…
Restart (Mafia 3)… if that doesn’t help…
Rethink… if you keep encountering that, work around it in a weirder way – like my Grandpa used to say, if the car doesn’t work, ride on a goat, it may get you there. Or kick your ass.
If you want to play a game with less bugs, play Mafia 1. The graphics are… well, aged, but the gameplay and story are still epic.
Oh yeah and… don’t let all of that “QA has encountered a problem and had to be terminated” stuff spoil your fun. Mafia 3 is still awesome. It just has its… ahem… issues.
To 2k (In case they ever read this)
I hope you don’t take offense in some of my jokes in here. They were my original thoughts when I encountered the bugs, so they are relevant.
I’m a dev myself (high-security web applications), so I know mistakes happen. Mine just happen internally because I tend to test my stuff.
To be fair, my mistakes would also cost a truckload of cash and possibly could put me in jail… but whatever the challenges, we love that job, don’t we?
If you publish the next part of Mafia, maybe test it for half a year (Can anyone spell public beta – free publicity, free testers and free suggestions, that’s bound to be a win!) once you think it’s finished – you’d be amazed about what players would have to say. I’ll happily contribute.
Otherwise, I’ll have to write a guide like this again…