classicswim | [Mafia: The Old Country] Part 3

The story kept Luca’s last name a secret for a short bit. Trapani.

Luca was revealed to be the father of Mafia 1’s Sam. Or rather, the 2020 reboot of Sam’s character. The friend-turned-foe from the original installment of the series can be seen here as a small, quiet child.

It’s a major contrast if you’re thinking back to 2020. When they redid the character, it wasn’t done the best. By voice, you had to differentiate between Sam & Paulie, which I didn’t care for. The positive takeaway being there was no animosity as to whether Sam clipped Paulie himself. In 2002 you didn’t get as clear of an answer other than your friend simply being found shot to a paste.

The last installment made Sam appear more swarmy, and I wouldn’t have guessed him to be the son of someone so respected and adored in this villa.

It tragically starts to make sense as the timeline of mid 1900s Sicily rolls on.

Enzo had already shot and killed plenty, but the clear bullet to the face Ludovici receives from Enzo... the screen cuts to black. You’re then lead to see Ludovici at the catacombs, bills in his mouth, along with fingers severed.

The act was what “made” Enzo. What got him into the Torrisi family officially.

Enzo’s gifted an apartment from Cesare, one where blood’s on the floor and a crumbled threatening letter on the counter.

In spite of being good ways away from the sulfur mines, Enzo still holds the late Gaetano’s post card of Empire Bay. The closeup of the card shows it to be the same visual as the backdrop main menu screen from Mafia II. A screen I’ve stared at countless times years ago.

Empire Bay to Enzo no longer seems like a place he’d feasibly flee to, but sheer symbolism of being free makes it such a sacred item to him.

The Enzo-getting-made chapters give you a real fun light of Enzo Favara, Cesare Massaro & Leo Galante making the best out of their partnership. The three drive drunk at night in the outskirts exactly like Vito, Joe & Eddie several years later into America. Them drunkenly singing bad music as well. Mafia II, you had to stop the car so Eddie could vomit, or risk getting puke in the car. Old Country, you stop the car and Cesare pisses off a bridge while singing.

I wasn’t expecting the car race at all. I thought the horse race would’ve been enough.

You get a great ordeal on how past characters come to be. They set their sights on exporting wine to Empire Bay... mobsters from Empire Bay come to discuss things with Leo. Frank Vinci is with Leo! No inkling yet on just how the two would later rule things in the United States.

Seeing Leo in that way made me feel better about Joe Barbaro doomed to becoming Galante’s driver.

Giuseppe Palminteri by this point was already a respected illegal plates guy. You save him from guards at the San Celeste Town Hall where Vito Scaletta fought in the WWII chapter of the second game. It put things in perspective how that building was a lot of people’s introduction into the franchise. I was barely half expecting for it to be enterable again, but it was.

I’ve barely said much on the forbidden love affair between Enzo Favara and Isabella, Don Torrisi’s daughter.

I think for Tommy & Sarah, both the 2002 original and the 2020 remake, both couples I could take or leave. It was always presented to me as a poor man’s Henry & Karen Hill. But this is combining Romeo and Juliet directly with Omertà.

This far into the game, I love it and I love the characters surrounding it.

I think with the 2020 Lost Heaven remake, they just wanted Tommy Angelo to behave more like Vito Scaletta. They made Tommy’s “friend” Paulie a pathetic and boyish Joe Barbaro. It was a disconnect with 2002 Tommy Angelo being depicted as almost an angel eyed James Cagney movie era type imitation of a mobster. 2002 Paulie was a psycho Pesci cutout who Tommy always thought could stab him one day.

It’s not that I don’t like Enzo. Quite the contrary. But I’ve been this way before. Everyone knows how this goes. He’s given shit by everyone almost every day for being a mine boy who came from nothing. No matter how up the ladder Enzo clearly is by now, he’s always taunted with the idea of being a nobody and a follower.

Any time you hear Enzo & Isabella talk to each other, everyone knows it can’t be.

Il Merlo & Spadaro’s return to the screen take the events to an unreturnable sharp and bleak turn.

The parade shootout was more cowardly than I could have imagined.

Il Merlo singlehandedly shoots up a holy celebration with a sniper rifle. A celebration for Luca & Valentina Trapani’s newborn baby. No army of men killing civilians at first. Just this gimpy voiced fuck on top of a tower, who you have to chase into the forest to his very death.

Spadaro’s had informants, an unsanctioned public attack that got them all on the city press, and he arranges a sitdown just to tell Don Bernardo Torrisi to his face that he plans on taking over all the land.

Any mob sitdown you see in fiction typically ends with them leaving the area and working some type of angle from there.

These guys were shot at the fucking sitdown...

Leo Galante’s grandfather, Don Galante, was the first to be killed.

Luca took one to the arm and the chest. You had to battle your way to escape into Torrisi ground with Luca barely coming to.

I could feel it in my gut when Luca lost to his wounds. The most respected man in the entire game. More respected than his superior. Don Torrisi was just feared.

Driving to the sitdown... Luca & Torrisi talk to you about their youth and the beginning of the outfit when it was smaller. The dialogue wasn’t done as a way to impress you, or make you go “man, I hope we get that story next.”

The takeaway I got was the men being cursed to do the shit that they do. It’s not endearing for it to be passed down to Enzo & Cesare. Cesare was in no way a serious person until Luca was suddenly gone. Torrisi just becomes a fucking ghoul.

When Enzo & Cesare discuss shit not feeling the same without Luca, I felt that with Enzo waking up wielding a gun, scared... knowing the underboss wouldn’t be at the door or anywhere else again. They sold the tragedy of his absence. It’s like how the lighting gets darker and darker near the end of Sopranos without Bobby or Silvio.

Luca Trapani... enforcer who did absolutely everything by the book, did exactly as what he was told and enjoyed doing it... he tells Enzo while in a pool of his own blood to “get out.” It wasn’t until he knew his life was over and away did he have remorse and regret for wasting it all onto this.

Torrisi doesn’t trust Cesare. Torrisi leads Enzo to murder Spadaro at an opera in Palermo in vengeance.

Alberto Clemente? Don of the Clemente family in Empire Bay? Total shitbag. Well, Alberto had some relative who was tied to Sicily’s mob for some time before becoming Father Clemente in Sicily.

Father Clemente owed Don Torrisi a favor. Clemente’s guiding Enzo through Palermo sewers just to lead him up into the opera house to get the job done.

After flings of bullets across an auditorium, Spadaro’s dragged down below. Spadaro says Enzo’s grown from shit; Spadaro dies in shit.

By tomorrow, I will have seen the end of this game. Excited...