Hot on the heels of the disheartening announcement that Mafia III will be capped at 30fps comes the actual release of the game. Five years after our beloved Mafia II hit store shelves the third entry of the series, set in developer Hangar 13’s version of 1960’s New Orleans, is now available worldwide to everyone who pre-ordered. While the change in setting from more traditional NYC-esque metropolises to a unique southern cultural hotspot will inevitably be an interesting one for the series, the inclusion of Vito Scaletta, the star of Mafia II, has surely convinced many fans of the series to give Hangar 13’s bold vision a chance. It’s worth noting that while Mafia III’s star is Lincoln Clay, Vito’s been in all three Mafia games, and while his role in the first game was small he’s been front and center in the latter two entries.

On the technical end of things, Mafia III may unfortunately undergo a troubled launch. While the game is already being praised for its captivating setting, interesting characters, and engaging storyline, it’s being panned on PC due to its dreadful framerate limitation. Thankfully 2K has not only acknowledged this but has promised a fix, which is apparently targeting a release of its own mere days after the game’s launch. The odd situation begs the question of why the game was not delayed for PC so that the developers could ready a build that supports higher framerates…or why the game’s marketing department didn’t forsee the framerate controversy turning into a debacle that would tarnish the game’s public reception at launch.

It seems that our previous statements regarding a fan-made patch may no longer be valid due to the strange announcement of an FPS fix that’s dropping within a matter of days, but that isn’t the end of Mafia III’s modding potential. There are already scores of players begging for script-savvy fans of the franchise to dive into the code and tamper with the many controversial creative decisions made by Hangar 13’s team, and we’re here to provide those modders with a database. We’re already looking at adding donation functions for individual modders among other exciting features to keep up with the ever-changing modding scene, so be sure to bookmark our site to stay in the loop for all things Mafia modding. We’ll be the first to report that someone’s clipped out that omnipresent rear view mirror or tweaked the police AI to behave more like Empire Bay’s unforgiving force.