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Mafia: Definitive Edition – Part 3-2

Now that Prohibition has been repealed, I’m sure the mafia in Mafia: Definitive Edition will quietly, peacefully give up the life.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
Andre at https://www.twitch.tv/goodoleandre

This conversation we have about Tommy is part of why I like to at least have an idea of what I want to talk about before I start playing a game on stream like this, because this stream of consciousness isn’t really intelligible to anyone but me, as I’m talking. Andre is responding to the points I’m raising with my words, but not the points I’m actually trying to make: The ones I have difficulty articulating in the moment.

What I was trying to say is that Tommy himself is a pretty flat character who only seems to be here for the ride. He doesn’t undergo much major character development, and the conflicts of the plot tend to happen both around and to him more than directly involve his input or agency. He is the least interesting character out of all the primary cast despite acting as the leading man.

But I don’t want to say that as if it’s necessarily a bad thing, because we’re grading on a curve. In 2002, when this script was originally penned, protagonists like Tommy were normal. They were acting less like characters and more like player ciphers, allowing us, as the audience, to interface with the cast of the game, participating in the events that would define their lives in our perspectives. Tommy isn’t really a character as much as he is a tool for us to insert ourselves into the world of the video game.

And while that was a prevailing school of thought for how to treat our player characters, I find that the most memorable characters have more to them than just that. Enzo, for example, is a character who grapples both with his own agency and, in many ways, his lack of it. Joel, from The Last of Us, is another example where although he is the lead character, there’s a depth and complexity to him and his motivations that colors the central conflict of that story.

It’s not fair to compare Tommy to either one of those characters, but it does show you how far we’ve come in the time since.