“We think there’s a large audience for compelling stories that don’t require massive time commitments,” 2K president David Ismailer said in a statement. “We’re excited to offer a game like Mafia: The Old Country in our portfolio, and to provide a linear highly-polished narrative experience that can easily complement the other more persistent games our players also love and engage with on a more consistent basis.”

So wait, is this that thing where AAA publishers think shorter, linear action games are inherently worth less than shitty bloated open world games? Like how Hi-Fi Rush was $30 and Redfall was $70? I mean, I’m not complaining about it costing less, but it’s so weird, if so. Going by the store page, it seems like you do have to travel places, implying open world in some capacity, but maybe just a small open world? Cynically, is this them pricing a game lower than usual that they know is bad?

EDIT: Confirmed via FAQ, this is a linear action game and not open world. Optimistically: great! Most open world games don’t make great use of it, and I’m here for the crime story anyway. Pessimistically: there’s a good chance they salvaged a bad open world game into a wonky feeling linear game with open world vestiges, like Ride to Hell: Retribution, and the low price is to just get any kind of return on a project that produced a bad video game. I hope it’s the former!