Mafia 4 May Feature Stealth Gameplay & Multiplayer/Live Service Elements

The fourth entry in the Mafia series, Mafia 4, may feature stealth gameplay as well as multiplayer/live service elements.

According to job listings for the positions of Lead AI Designer, Principal AI Designer, and Senior Systems Designer, Mafia 4 will feature “Stealth and Combat gameplay loops” and may also have multiplayer/live service elements.

The listings for Lead AI Designer and Principal AI Designer state that “the next iteration of the Mafia franchise”, Mafia 4, will feature “Stealth and Combat gameplay loops”. It further mentions that both AI designers will drive the creation of AI systems, archetypes and behaviors from prototype through to release for the game. Furthermore, they will be responsible for the design and development of combat and non-combat NPCs. They will design new archetypes that fit the vision of a Mafia game, all the way from creative and technical design prototypes to enemy behaviors and abilities. They will also ensure that players can understand AI intention and plan their combat accordingly.

Meanwhile, the job opening for Senior Systems Designer at Hangar 13, the studio working on Mafia 4, states that candidates with experience working on AAA titles, multiplayer games and/or live game design would be a good fit for the job, indicating that the game may feature some multiplayer or live service elements.

Previously, it was reported that Mafia 4 is being developed using Unreal Engine 5. According to an earlier job listing for a Tools Engineer on LinkedIn, Mafia 4 appeared to be in pre-production, and would run on Unreal Engine 5. The Tools programmer’s duties were to create and maintain tools for an unannounced multi-platform game in pre-production at the time at Hangar 13 using Unreal Engine 5.

Based on the listing, the chosen candidate would build tools within UE5, along with any necessary work to interface with external content creation tools, proactively identify the tools that would be needed throughout development, participate in the design of the game features to assist in the creation of supporting tools and technologies, and improve existing pipelines and tools to decrease iteration times for content creators.