How A Two-Bar Section Created the Ballet-Inspired Soundtrack of Mafia: Definitive Edition
When people think of the mafia, generally they picture The Godfather, or just in general think of early 1920s-1930s Prohibition Era history. The same can be said of the Mafia games, save for the exceptional Mafia 3. This year, Hangar 13 is returning to the original game in Mafia: Definitive Edition, fully remastering the game from the ground up. Alongside the many graphical and gameplay improvements, Mafia: Definitive Edition sports an entirely new soundtrack as well.
This time, in Mafia: Definitive Edition, the fully orchestrated and remade soundtrack sets the tone of Mafia in an interesting way. In an interview with Game Rant, composer Jesse Harlin explained how the sound of Mafia: Definitive Edition spawned not from a place of traditional film or game orchestration, but one of grace. Rather than compose a score punctuated solely by musical elements of melancholy and dread, Harlin determined Mafia's new sound from a two-bar section in one song, of which expands throughout the whole soundtrack.
The first Mafia game released on PC in 2002 (ported to consoles in 2004), and was generally well received by critics. The game evoked a similar open-world feeling to that of Grand Theft Auto, largely taking inspiration from Grand Theft Auto 3 before it. Mafia released in the same year that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City did, but was relatively successful for one key reason: its time period. While Rockstar Games had tackled the 70s and 80s, Mafia headed to the 30s. Centering the game on a mob family blood feud, the game was very much captured the essence of organized crime dramas that TV and film had previously.
Mafia's original soundtrack assisted in that ambiance, but did so in a very minimalistic manner. There were moments of orchestration throughout the main game that punctuated important moments, like meetings with Don Salieri, but they were few and far between. The majority of the game's music soundtrack used licensed music from the time period, instead of original orchestration. While licensed music will still be in Mafia: Definitive Edition, the remaster has a fully orchestrated soundtrack as well.
When discussing the original soundtrack, composer Jesse Harlin had mentioned that the original game's few orchestrations weren't really formative in the new soundtrack coming to the remaster:
"2K came to me early on in the process, and the first conversation was 'we're redoing the game, we would like you to create a new score for the game.' That decision was made before they approached me, we're going to create a brand new score. Honestly, I only listened to the original score, start to finish, twice."
There were some orchestral ideas that Harlin utilized from the original soundtrack, but for the most part the game's new soundtrack is entirely Harlin's design.
"It's interesting because I used sections of the original game's main theme by Simunek, the beginning of it, throughout the whole score more than the original game used the main theme. I used that same main theme a lot throughout various songs, incorporating it as a thematic element, keeping that familiarity from the original game."
Harlin elaborates and mentions that there's one particular musical quote (portion of music) from Mafia: Definitive Edition's score that served as a tentpole inspiration for the whole soundtrack. "Buried in one of the action tracks, there's a two-bar chunk of music that actually inspired the rest of the soundtrack," Harlin explains. "In 'One Twitch Away,' at around the 1:30 mark, there's a section that's very graceful like classical stage or ballerina music. That doesn't sound like a film score, that's something new."
This particular song would go on to permeate throughout the entire Mafia: Definitive Edition score, as often as possible. Being a game all about the mafia and Italian mob in the thirties, there's plenty of orchestral melancholy throughout the entire soundtrack. An identifiable pulse of melancholic strings emulate a heartbeat of tension in every song in the soundtrack that provides a sense of foreboding. To counteract that, Harlin's orchestrations add moments of bright, vibrant sounds in between tenuous strings that add a sense of whimsical flavor in each song.
From here is where Jesse Harlin's soundtrack for Mafia: Definitive Edition lives up to the title of a "bullet opera." This conceptual hook that Harlin coined acts as the theme throughout Mafia's new soundtrack. Elements of grace and levity in between the melancholy sounds create the game's triumphant and tragic sound. The soundtrack is meant to feel relatively familiar, but also capture the tragic, Shakespearean ambiance unique to Mafia: Definitive Edition. It creates this dichotomy of triumph and failure that makes the new soundtrack's inclusion far more impactful on Mafia's storyline.
Mafia: Definitive Edition releases on September 25, 2020, for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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