Personally, I'm a big believer in both cultural authenticity and in not knowing what's going on. That's why I play games like Assassin's Creed, Metro 2033, and Indika in the native languages of their settings. Why should I listen to British or American voice actors affect accents when I could hear the game's script in proper Deutsch, Español, or Russkii?
It initially seemed that I would have no such option in the upcoming Mafia: The Old Country, the fourth game in the Mafia series and the second (or third, if you count the Mafia 1 remake) from dev studio Hangar 13. Fans have been a little perplexed to find that—in The Old Country's list of languages on its Steam page—it's set to launch with full audio dubbing in English, French, German, Spanish, Czech, and Russian, but no Italian. This despite the fact that The Old Country is about the origins of organised crime in Sicily, and every previous game in the series—including the one set in a fake New Orleans—had the option. That's right, folks:
If you want Italian, you'll only find it as an interface and subtitle option, not audio. I might poke fun, but the absence of Italian voice acting was a little disappointing. I imagine there's a line graph somewhere in 2K or Hangar 13's office that shows an Italian dub just isn't worth the resource investment, but I've always liked playing games in their 'proper' languages.
I'm not the only one, either. "The disrespect is insane," writes Twitter user SagamiSword_, "How do you make a game about Mafia, set it in Italy and not dub it in Italian despite previous Mafia games being dubbed in the language?"
It's not hard to find other fans who share the disappointment. "Why no Italian dub?" asks a tweeter named RealNova00, "In a game set in [Italy]?"
"I’m Italian and this is pretty disrespectful, we invented Mafia and we have the best dub actors in the world, I don’t want to hear Americans trying to replicate the Italian’s accent," wrote another user using the name th3l4stproph3t. "That's really sad. It may be stupid but I've always preferred to consume media in its 'original' language," writes a disappointed Reddit user, while others in the same thread hope that an Italian dub will be forthcoming after the game releases.
As it turns out, they won't have to wait quite that long. I kind of thought this might happen, and sure enough it has: Just hours after the lack of Italian language support in Mafia: The Old Country came to light, developer Hangar 13 has said the game is going all-in on "authenticity" with Sicilian voice acting instead.
"Authenticity is at the heart of the Mafia franchise, and Mafia: The Old Country will offer voice acting in Sicilian, inline with the game's setting in 1900s Sicily," the studio tweeted. "Additionally, Italian language localization will be available for both in-game UI and via subtitles."
Sicilian is a distinct regional language, with some similarities to Italian but many differences too. It's spoken primarily in Sicily, the island that makes up the southernmost part of Italy, and which also happens to be the home of Cosa Nostra—the Sicilian Mafia. Given that Mafia: The Old Country is based on the known origins of the Sicilian Mafia in the early 1900s, and is set in Sicily, the inclusion of Sicilian voice acting specifically is a nice touch.
Mafia: The Old Country is set to come out sometime in 2025.
