Mafia: The Old Country doesn’t have Italian voice acting, but 2K’s now revealed the reason behind what initially looked to be a rather perplexing omission – Hangar 13’s elected to go for Sicilian instead.
In case you missed it, The Old Country was revealed right at the end of Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024, with a teaser trailer confirming a 2025 release window and offering a taste of the game’s depiction of the mod underworld in 1900s Sicily.
Not long after that showing, fans checking out the game’s Steam store listing noticed that it didn’t have full audio for Italian checked in its list of supported languages, with English, French, German, Spanish, Czech, and Russian all having that box ticked. Given the thing’s set in Italy, people were a bit confused, but it’s ok, 2K’s now stepped in to clarify the situation.
“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 publisher tweeted, “Additionally, Italian language localization will be available for both in-game UI and via subtitles.”
So, there you go, there hasn’t been a bizarre cock-up, it’s just that the devs wanted to go with Sicilian, which is a regional dialect boasting its enough of its own unique quirks, words and pronuciations to be considered a separate language to what we class as standard Italian. It’s a bit hard to explain in full why the two differ so greatly without giving you a complete history of modern Italy, but it’s well worth looking that up if you’re interested. Tell Giuseppe Garibaldi I said ciao.
Are you keen to play through Mafia: The Old Country in full Sicilian for max mob immersion when it arrives in 2025? Let us know below!
