"The driving has been revised a lot too and while our cars behave realistically to the 40s and 50s, we have two different driving modes," said Grace.
One for those who like authenticity when it comes to cars, and others who just want to go really-really fast. Grace said that the team also took into consideration different player styles, and decided to incorporate two different driving modes. With the combat, what we wanted you to experience was something more intense and more visceral - so yeah the gun combat has been revised a lot." The last one was in 2002, so what we did was revise the combat, looked at games that had come out like Gears of War and the way they were doing their combat, we looked at more third-person shooters. "I don't think we went through and tossed anything out, we just reevaluated everything like the police system, gun combat, and brought it up to gamers expectations of 2010. "So the 20s and 30s setting really felt right, but again, we looked at it and said okay, this is a franchise how can we make it even better. "The things we felt we did right with the first Mafia was this cinematic presentation of the story, the level of quality with the story, the authenticity - our last game was really highly rated," said Grace.
Speaking with us at GDC yesterday during a demo of the game, Grace said that the team looked to how other third-person shooters and driving games had advanced since the first Mafia came out in 2002, and how the team could apply the advancements to Mafia II and still maintain the cinematic setting. Mafia II's senior producer, Denby Grace, has explained to VG247 some of the changes the team made to the driving and combat mechanics in the series, one of which is the addition of two driving modes instead of one.