Who Squealed? Hints Of Mafia 3

He is a funny one, that Ian Video Games. I tell you, he spends all his time on The Internet doing the strangest things. No, not like that you cheeky madam. Ian - you'll love this - he's working on a sort of a phone book for the Internet, so people can look up any website. He spends all day searching for new sites, and notes every single name he finds in his notebooks. He's filled hundreds of them! Says he's taking the idea to Dragon's Den.

And you'll never guess what - Ian says in his research (his "research", lawd!) he came across signs that we might hear about a new Mafia game from 2K soon.

NeoGAF poster 'ekim' found that 2K have four Mafia 3-y domains pointed at their own server: mafia3thegame.com, mafiaiiithegame.com, mafiathree.com, and mafiathreethegame.com. None of these sites are active but the domains are registered, albeit anonymously.

In laymen's terms, it looks like 2K are preparing to launch a Mafia III website. Which might suggest they're preparing to announce Mafia III. The big European games expo Gamescom kicks off on August 5, so perhaps they'll announce there or shortly in advance. This isn't the first rumour Ian's heard about Mafia III, but it's the most concrete yet. It could simply be precautionary, or it could not.

Mafia is a open-world-ish sort of a GTA-like kinda series, telling tales of dear sweet young men pulled into a life of driving cars, stealing things, shooting guns, and betraying their pals. Illusion Softworks (now 2K Czech) released the first in 2002, set in the prohibition era, while the 2010 sequel took a new character into the '40s and '50s.

I always thought it a shame that Mafia II had such a beautiful world but so little to do in it. Unlike GTA, which crams its worlds full of things to do, Mafia has been far more on a linear progression of missions, even if you can drive wherever whenever. The first game had a 'free ride extreme' mode unlocked after completing it, spreading wacky missions across the world, so it'd be nice to at least see something like that return. I wouldn't object to it going more GTA-y, though.

Not that Ian cares about any of this, mind. He's chuffed with another four names for his directory. He's convinced he's going win over Hilary Devey and I don't have the heart to tell him she left.