Mafia 3 developer Hangar 13 has embedded that open-world fluff into every corner of the new game, and indeed into its very structure. What this leaves is a game that wants to forge a deeper, more serious narrative, but gameplay that depends on constant repetition of less meaningful tasks.

While those themes — especially racism — are new to the series, much of Mafia 3 feels shrouded in the legacy of 2010's Mafia 2, which received decent reviews but drew criticism for its empty open world. Mafia 3's open world is not empty; it flings to the opposite extreme, with a seemingly endless supply of side missions and collectibles.

Mafia 3 sets out to do something noble: It tries to eschew the parody and juvenile satire driving most open-world crime games in favor of a plot with deeper characters and more serious themes.

Framed as a historical documentary, Mafia 3 tells the story of Lincoln Clay, a Vietnam War vet who returns from combat to find his home city of New Bordeaux (a spin on New Orleans) caught up in a struggle between various underworld crime organizations. After an exhilarating first few hours that include a bank heist mission played out between flashbacks, Clay sets out on a path of vengeance, vowing to kill everyone between himself and a rival mafioso leader.

The setup is standard rags-to-riches crime story cliché. Clay starts at the bottom — or, rather, restarts there after everything is taken from him — and must not only destroy his enemies but slowly build up a crime empire of his own, recruiting allies to run each district of the city that he takes over. What sets the events of Mafia 3 apart is the element of race: Lincoln is black, and in a southern U.S. city in the late '60s, that means everything.

Lincoln isn't just mistreated by mobsters; he's despised by most of the people he's up against, and even society as a whole, reviled and demonized for the color of his skin. This adds another layer of righteousness and fury to the anger that drives his crusade.

Other perspectives As mentioned elsewhere in this review and in our first impressions, Mafia 3 is very much a game about race. I felt fairly strongly affected by how the game handles that theme in its early hours, but I'm also a white guy who has never faced racism in his day-to-day life. To provide perspectives on how Mafia 3's handling of the issue of race feels from the point of view of people of color, I asked several other staffers at Polygon to play the first few hours and provide their thoughts. Jeff Ramos: I was initially excited to see Hangar 13's game-opening comments on how Mafia 3 will not ignore racism. I was hopeful to see nuanced and well-thought-out examples of racism in action. Instead, the racism in Mafia 3 felt like a stagehand was pointing a spotlight directly at the action. I believe Hangar 13 tried to write racism into the plot and design of the game in a way that should've felt "natural." But the voice actors overly accent their racial slurs, white power rallies are literally peppered along the path toward major waypoints, and white characters aggressively shrug away from Lincoln. I can't help but feel like these are broad strokes. Granted, racism back then wasn't as subtle as it is now; it was front and center. The several times I've been a victim of racism, it has been subtle and almost "accidental." I know this is not the experience of many people of color. For some, the reality of people using racial slurs is all too real. I can imagine that for some, Mafia 3's racism will feel more "real" than it did to me. I hope that those who are not victims of racism can appreciate how overt racism can be at times. At the same time, I would've loved more instances of seeing racism "between the lines," so those with a keen eye could appreciate what racism looks like from another perspective. (Continued below ...)

Last week, after my first six hours with Mafia 3, I wrote that I was concerned that the issues of race would dissipate as the game continued. Those fears were semi-confirmed; race is an element throughout Mafia 3, but beyond a mid-game scenario where you have to fight against the Southern Union (the game's stand-in for the Ku Klux Klan), it drives the narrative less and less.

In general, Mafia 3's plot is full of promise that the the game's structure rarely delivers on. Its characters are sharply written, smart and easily relatable. Lincoln Clay is a likable protagonist — if only just slightly deeper than the average action game hero — and he interacts with a wide cast of interesting friends, such as Father James, a priest torn between helping Clay and chiding him for the terror he's causing. Even bad guys, such as the goofy, glad-handing "Uncle" Lou Marcano are a lot of fun to watch in cutscenes.

The problem comes packed into the very DNA of the actual game portion of Mafia 3. Developer Hangar 13 has built a world and characters I wanted to spend time with, but there's only really two ways to interact with them: shooting and driving. In a 10-hour action game with more linear design, this could work fine enough. In a 40-hour open-world game, however, it slowly drains the narrative of any lasting drama.

The problem isn't just that Mafia 3 is too long, though it certainly is. Within that running time, Hangar 13 didn't give me much to do. The core structure of Mafia 3 is built on repetition; each new territory you unlock in the city contains two illicit businesses that you must take down by running simple side quests. The overwhelming majority of these side quests are completed either by killing someone or interrogating them (i.e., pressing the button that would kill them, except instead, it launches you into a short dialogue scene). Once in a while, Mafia 3 mixes things up with a sub-mission that tasks you with following a car or destroying some merchandise, but these exceptions are rare and don't change the formula much.

Once you've caused enough damage to a racket through side missions, you'll open up the mission to track down the enemy heading up that operation. And once you've taken over both rackets in an area, you'll earn the ability to take on the mob boss running that district. Then, it's rinse and repeat for the next district, of which there are nine total in the game.