A recent job advertisement by Hangar 13 gives fans hope that development on Mafia 4 is indeed underway.
A new job posting on LinkedIn has given Mafia fans a heads-up on the next entry in the open-world crime series. It’s the first proper update Mafia fans have received since last year when Hangar 13 CEO Roman Hladík officially revealed that active development on Mafia 4 had begun. The announcement follows months of rumours and speculation.
Hladík’s confirmation of the existence of Mafia 4 and the status of development came just months after news broke that Haden Blackman was stepping down as head of Hangar 13 Studios.
In the same period, in May 2022, Hangar 13’s chief operating officer Matthew Urban also resigned. Following these departures, there was some doubt around the game’s development. So this update is particularly welcome.
According to the job description, Hangar 13 is looking for a tool programmer to be part of its creative work environment. At Hangar 13, tools programmers work with content creators to provide them with the tools they need to create polished AAA titles. But the most exciting part of the job description comes towards the end. Here it is mentioned that the successful candidate will be required to work on creating and maintaining virtual tools to support the development of “a currently unannounced multi-platform game currently in pre-production using Unreal Engine 5”.
This unannounced multi-platform title is likely none other than Mafia 4. However, if it’s Calo, it’s strange that it’s still in pre-production. More than half a year after Hangar 13 announced it was working on the game. With that said, it could be that the preliminary work on the project is nearing completion. The conceptual phase is almost over, and complete development will begin soon.
Shortly after Nick Baynes took over from Haden Blackman as studio head of Hangar 13, and several layoffs took place, he stated that he would be working on getting the development of Mafia 5 approved by the series’ publisher, 2K, while the development of Mafia 4 is still ongoing.
This allowed the team to jump into the next game’s development rather than just working on patches and DLC. Perhaps the pre-production mentioned in the job description above is actually a reference to Mafia 5.
Another project that could potentially be is something called Volt. Volt was the codename for a sci-fi title planned at Hangar 13 after the release of Mafia 3. However, Volt was eventually cancelled in 2021 due to many development hurdles and financial constraints. Thus, it is unlikely that the untested IP will be included in any development again.
Source: ComicBook.com
