“What cannot be mended must be transcended.” - Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu
Longing for the moment when sun shines on the leaves of the Torrisi vineyard, I rush to the glare. What is the price of bringing this lush world to us? I played Mafia: The Old Country in America, in the country where someone or something always has to lose. And Valle Dorata is its colony, manifested only in relation to Empire Bay: the heart of empire. What is created in The Old Country’s virtual Sicily dreams of coming to fictional America for profit or a better life.
As I wonder this, the omnipresent shadow of a mountain, an active volcano, scrutinizes Valle Dorata, a reminder that we are not only small and weak, but also part of nature. All that Don Torrisi built through criminal capitalist entrepreneurialism will be destroyed if Mount Etna erupts. Nevertheless, the Torrisi and their rivals, the Spadaros, continue with their “old ways.” No amount of foreshadowing or explicit warnings will deter them. These families answer only to greed and rage. These “old ways” are a manifestation of a sort of bucolic tribalism.
For devotees of “the old ways” depicted in The Old Country, worship is split between four Gods. Two are ancient deities: the Catholic God, worshipped for aesthetics and tradition, and Mars, the ancient Roman God, because La Cosa Nostra dispenses violence and conducts war. He blesses each bullet Enzo fires. The two newer Gods are cutting-edge. Early in the game Luca says to Enzo “We can’t have labor unions on the Don’s turf. We are in favor of free enterprise around here.” Capitalism joins the altar of the exalted. What better way to rake in the profits? The final God conjoins our world to The Old Country’s: technology. The Torrisi and the videogame industry both worship this last God. How the videogame industry worships technology is evident in its push for great graphic fidelity, more power. The Torrisi’s take over the Spadaros’ sulfur mines and the indentured workers utilized by its former owners are an affirmation of their growing ambition to industrial modes of production for profit seeking, no matter the moral cost. A more obvious example of their technology worship is their love of guns, especially American ones.
Prior to joining the Torrisi, Enzo was a carusu, a mine boy, forced to labor in the mother of extractivist industries. What comes out of those mines? Sulfur. The Torrisi are men looking to reshape nature and exploit it. Stealing from their brethren is only training for a bottomless lust for nature's bounty. It is disturbing to see how effortlessly Enzo makes the transition from carusu for the Spadaros to mass murderer for the Torrisis. It reminds me of my high-school classmates, all sons of immigrants joining ICE for the check and something “meaningful to do.” Or how that Call of Duty game we play on Game Pass, where we bomb and destroy Shithole Countries, is developed and is able to be played through the wonders of the cloud. The cost is one so unimportant that it is barely mentioned: destroying those same countries’ environments in the physical world. Dr. Benjamin Abraham, founder of AfterClimate, says it best: “videogame planes emit real carbon.” Such things when known hit us with such force they become enigmas. The human mind has difficulty comprehending such scales.
The Gods, specifically the new ones, carry with them ancient curses. No amount of crossing yourself after killing dozens of guardia, bandits, Spadaros, or even Torrisis will release you from damnation. Enzo can’t repent for the games whose production requires massive resources. The Old Country’s developer Hanger 13 and Take-Two Interactive (Hanger 13’s parent company), along with the Torrisi, eat technology’s fruit. The Old Country has been promoted as a product of “art meets technology.” The cost of creating big-budget games is obfuscated so that those who play don’t notice what is needed to produce its outgrowth: the water to cool the servers, the energy and waste created to experience scenic fictional Mediterranean vistas.
Making videogames at the scale of The Old Country is violence. According to Take-Two Interactive’s Impact Report 2024 the company's carbon emissions have been steadily increasing year after year. They calculate that 512,699 (MT CO2 e) worth of emissions were created by the company in 2024. This same year real-world Sicily was experiencing a climate emergency, its worst drought in over twenty years. Most of the island is now at great risk of desertification. This problem is not present in The Old Country’s Sicily inspired Valle Dorata which instead presents an idyllic climate and rustic locals.
The Old Country, like most videogames where kinetic action is the core ludic interaction, takes power, parent of violence and destruction, for granted. I wanted more than just mafioso Uncharted. Although Hanger 13’s game waits until Chapter XI to announce La Mattanza [the slaughter], it is a state that actually begins from the very start of the game—the killing and brutality are present in its very arteries.
Dismayed by The Old Country’s contradictions, I found myself frustrated after guiding Enzo to kill dozens at a baptism—to his credit, he didn’t start it. The game has the gonads to push a moral tale of violence begets violence. But The Old Country, with all its picturesque scenery and beautiful objects, has little truth to tell. How can the game transcend its contradictions and lift its curses? The many cliches within its code do not offer an adequate reply.
Its boss fights—the knife duels—to quote Jorge Luis Borges, are “Una mitología de puñales lentamente se anula en el olvido (a mythology of stabbings that slowly fade out of memory [author's translation]).” Each thrust, stab and slash from Enzo and his adversaries mark a time of contemplation. They slow la mattanza to an intimate dance, becoming instead a ritualistic climax to the drama. In one dance, Messina, the bandit leader, screams “I saw it coming” as he gets slashed for half his life. Did he really see it coming? I wonder, does Messina care if he dies? Since he is not real, the lazy answer of course is no. But why was he programmed to fight Enzo? Why mutter aloud erroneous foresight? Clearly distressed by the game’s unmet promises, I fixate on its enigmatic faults and contradictions.
The Old Country’s story parades such enigmas. Most prominently of all, exploitation and violence are lionised, commemorated, canonised as the decisive and most important means of getting things done. Mind you, other games are guilty, but few look as good and offer a world so enticing to the senses. Valle Dorata beckons. I’d rather roam its winding roads and verdant orchards than follow “the old ways.” I, in a daze—while Enzo with a gun in hand kills dozens in a given chapter—daydream of being a farmer growing olives, grapes, and lemons. But for the Torrisi, the family that adopted Enzo and gave him a raison d’être, “the old ways” have an insatiable craving for blood. They and Hanger 13 will satisfy it. Thus, Messina and other adversaries are simply prolepses: representations of the soon to be dead.
Let us talk about the first God. The Catholic church is always present as warden of “the old ways,” accomplice to crime and yet also The Old Country’s moral compass. They have it both ways. How gluttonous! Absolved from every sin.
Just like technologies, to quote Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato Si’ “…have given us tremendous power” The Old Country and Hanger 13’s transmute that power into your PlayStation 5, Xbox, portable gaming device, PC. Again Francis: “When nature is viewed solely as a source of profit and gain, this has serious consequences for society. This vision of ‘might is right’ has engendered immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence against the majority of humanity, since resources end up in the hands of the first comer or the most powerful: the winner takes all.” With this in mind, who in the end can win in The Old Country?
Subtitled On Care for Our Common Home, Francis’ Encyclical, published in 2015, reinvigorated climate activism. Finally, a leader on the global stage spoke about anthropogenic climate change and our defilement of the planet with moral clarity. Francis embodied venerable Catholic teachings alluded to in The Old Country, yet few of them are followed. “…Our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us… This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse… We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor… We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth.” I think about Isabella, the mines of Valla Dorota, and the effects of AAA development on our planet when reading this part of Laudato Si’.
Lewis Gordon discusses how The Old Country’s length and development might be an ushering of something more sustainable. I doubt it. The Old Country is a power fantasy lived out and expressed through extractivist capitalist dreams. Mafiosos are the cowboys of the 20th century.
From environmental exploitation to organized crime to authoritarian patriarchy to futurism to fascism. These threads become woven together over time in the fabric of the Torrisi family. Poor Enzo and modern Isabella: their love meets the march of progress. Every boot in the garrison lands on their hopes.
Old enigmas these are, and like old actions and beliefs live in the future absolutely. So, like La Cosa Nostra and AAA video game development, they must adapt to the times now and coming. They do this by trading the horse for the automobile, the knife for the gun. The knife is always in vogue because the reflection on the bloodstained blade is a frill offering to the new Gods, It is also how we can see the old enigmas. With each mission let us chant: “Traditions, like ours, are what keeps San Celeste strong.”
The Torrisi, Spadaros, even the plotting aristocracy: in the fictional Italy of The Old Country, they are the first Futurists. They manifested and lived the movement before its founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti even penned his manifesto in 1909. “We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist… A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath… a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.” Marinetti sounds like he is describing Hanger 13 making the game, or Enzo in action, the player playing The Old Country, racing the Baron’s car in Roman ruins. Did those that build those decrepit monuments practice “the old ways”?
///
Outside in the distance beyond the screen the real Etna growls. On June 2, 2025 Mount Etna erupted. The rumblings and disgorges of ash and lava, a reminder of her power. Eighteen days later Mafia: The Old Country went gold.
***
Luis Aguasvivas is a writer, researcher, and editor. Currently, he is a NPR contributor and contributing editor at Gamers with Glasses. Find his other writing online at various places. He is a member of the New York Videogame Critics Circle. Follow him on @aguaspoints.bsky.social and aguaspoints.com.