When creating a grounded, ambitiously cinematic game like Mafia: The Old Country, getting great performance capture isn't just important—it's absolutely essential. That's why the team at Hangar 13 approached the process with the same care and vigilance as an auteur making a classic mob movie. By leveraging the development team's decades of storytelling and game-development experience, Mafia: The Old Country delivers a gritty crime drama worthy of both its genre inspirations and past entries in the franchise.
Casting the Family
Of course, before there could be performances to capture, the team had to find the perfect actors to fill out their cast. And as Game Director Alex Cox puts it in the Dev Diary video above, the game's central characters "all just popped out from the screen as soon as we saw them."
Riccardo Frascari—the actor behind Enzo's likeness and performance—stood out immediately, even if his take on the character differed slightly from the more naive protagonist some of the developers had originally envisioned during pre-production. It quickly became clear that this type of creative collaboration would only enrich the material, and soon the team was ready to begin shooting on the 2K performance-capture stages in Northern California and the Czech Republic.
During the production of Mafia: The Old Country, the stage in Brno, Czech Republic was where Hangar 13 captured the game's systemic animations, like player and NPC movements, along with the many non-speaking performances. For cinematics and other spoken, narrative-centric elements, the team used the stage in Petaluma, CA.
Taking the Stage
Despite the challenges inherent to working in head-to-toe mocap suits and uncannily empty stages, the actors all delivered silver-screen-worthy performances that bring the humanity and brutality of Enzo's story into sharp focus. With the help of props, advanced motion capture technology, and equally talented directors and crew, the cast brought the story to life by way of the same skills they would've used on a traditional stage or film set.
"When we were casting the actors, I wasn't sure we would be able to capture all of the little details in their expressions," reflects Associate Design Director Josh Zammit. "But it really carries through. The entire team has done a phenomenal job capturing a lot more nuance from the performances than we could in previous titles."
Executive Producer Devin Hitch shares that pride in how those subtleties come across in-game. "Everything we see on-screen is just so believable," says Hitch. "You feel every moment of each scene, and the facial expressions are incredibly detailed. The performances come through in a way that we've never seen before in a Mafia game."
As Cox notes, the chemistry between the actors has been "amazing to watch," so players can expect to find no shortage of Hollywood-caliber performances when the game is finally in their hands later this summer. Mafia: The Old Country launches August 8, 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, and is available for pre-order and pre-purchase. For now, stay tuned for one last forthcoming Dev Diary video digging even deeper into the making of this cinematic Sicilian epic.
