Man of Honor Turns Mafia's Sicily Into a Proper Open World

"Making Salieri the focal point of Man of Honor lets us showcase who he was before his emigration to America and subsequent rise to power," Hangar 13 design director Josh Zammit wrote in a PlayStation Blog post today, revealing the first gameplay footage of the expansion. It's a smart hook for longtime fans of the series, but the real story here isn't Salieri's backstory. It's everything Hangar 13 is bolting onto the map around him.

Mafia: The Old Country launched with a gorgeous Sicilian setting that served its linear campaign well but gave players almost nothing to do outside the story. Free Ride mode was barren. Hangar 13 started patching that gap with a Free Ride update last November, and Man of Honor pushes it further by turning Salieri into a quest-giver who operates out of a warehouse in Porto Almaro. From there, players pick up two types of contracts: Challenges, which include standoffs, assassinations, circuit races, road sprints, and time trials tuned for higher difficulty; and Jobs, which are standalone missions involving tasks like infiltrating a citrus farm, stealing delivery trucks, and towing high-value vehicles back to Salieri before rival smugglers intercept them.

Outside of Salieri's contracts, the Valle Dorata map picks up collectible Wanted Posters, Stunt Jumps, and destructible sulphur trucks scattered across the countryside. Completing activities earns Dinari, the in-game currency, which can be spent on three new guns, three knives, five charms, three vehicles, two horses, three outfits, and five hats. Some of the new gear leans into arcade-style fun over period accuracy. The Rimbalzu throwing knife bounces to a second target for silent double kills. The Precisione Speciale rifle fires explosive rounds. A charm called Dolce Morte makes defeated enemies occasionally drop fruit that restores health and grants bonus Dinari.

Salieri before Lost Heaven

The expansion also adds two new story chapters set in the winter of 1905, a few months after protagonist Enzo Favara's initiation into the Torrisi crime family. Enzo teams up with a younger, scrappier version of Salieri, who fans of the original Mafia will remember as the Don of Lost Heaven's Salieri crime family. According to Zammit, this version of the character is still hustling for his cut of the family's rackets rather than running his own operation. The chapters can be accessed through the main campaign once players reach the required story point, or jumped into directly.

I've always thought Mafia: The Old Country's biggest weakness was how little it trusted its own open world. The campaign was tight and well-written, but Free Ride felt like an afterthought, a pretty map with nothing pulling you across it. What Hangar 13 is doing with Man of Honor looks like a genuine course correction. Standoffs, assassination contracts, races, and proper side missions with their own objectives give players a reason to stay in Sicily after the credits roll. It's still not on the scale of a Red Dead Redemption 2 or a GTA, but at $10, it doesn't need to be. It just needs to make the world feel lived-in, and the list of activities suggests it will.

Man of Honor launches on August 14 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, priced at $10.