Same publisher, two polar-opposite takes on crime. GTA 6, due November 19, 2026, bets on a satirical open world set in an ultra-modern Vice City. Mafia: The Old Country, released in August 2025, tells a linear story in 1900s Sicily. Here’s what really separates these two games from the same company.
Two crime games, one owner: Take-Two
That’s the paradox that makes this comparison so juicy. Grand Theft Auto VI and Mafia: The Old Country both belong to the same publisher, Take-Two Interactive. The company operates through several labels: Rockstar Games, which develops GTA 6, and 2K, home to Hangar 13, the studio behind Mafia. Two gangster games, two teams, one owner cashing in either way.
Still, nobody at Hangar 13 seems to fear Rockstar’s steamroller. Asked about sharing the calendar with GTA 6, studio president Nick Baynes explained that the two series had drifted apart ever since the days of GTA III and the first Mafia in the early 2000s, to the point that the release of Rockstar’s game “isn’t something we ever talk about.” The message is clear: Mafia no longer plays in the same league, and it owns that.
Mafia tells a story, GTA 6 lets you write your own
The core difference comes down to one word: freedom. Mafia: The Old Country is a linear, narrative-driven game, and Hangar 13 makes no secret of it. There is a map of Sicily, but you barely explore it: progress runs through one scripted mission after another, like a gangster film you happen to hold the controller for. You play as Enzo Favara, a young Sicilian pulled into a Family, across a tight campaign of roughly ten hours.
GTA 6 aims for the exact opposite. Rockstar promises a fully open world, the Florida-inspired state of Leonida, which players roam freely between story beats. Where Mafia takes you by the hand to serve its narrative, GTA 6 drops you into a sandbox and watches what you do with it. That’s the same philosophy we dug into in our comparison of GTA 6 and Cyberpunk 2077, two open worlds that couldn’t be more different in shape.
1900s Sicily vs. present-day Vice City
The gap is historical, too. Mafia dives into Sicily at the very dawn of the 20th century, its stone villages, vineyards and old-world codes of honor, all in a dusty sepia palette. GTA 6, by contrast, unfolds a present-day Vice City, neon, social media and 2020s pop culture, a grinding mirror of modern Florida carried by the duo Jason and Lucia. We broke down this pair and their role in the story in our piece on Jason and Lucia, the GTA 6 duo.
The tone follows the setting. Mafia commits to realistic crime drama, with no winks or parody, while GTA 6 leans into its signature: social satire and dark humor, fake brands and unhinged radio stations included. The trailer below captures that modern energy Mafia deliberately doesn’t try to match.
RAGE vs. Unreal Engine 5
The battle even plays out under the hood. GTA 6 runs on RAGE, Rockstar’s in-house engine, battle-tested on GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, two technical benchmarks for the open-world genre. It’s a choice of continuity: the studio has spent fifteen years refining tech built to simulate entire cities. We looked back at that legacy in our deep dive on the GTA 6 graphics engine.
Hangar 13, on the other hand, made a radical bet: dropping its in-house tech for Unreal Engine 5. It’s a first in Mafia’s history, after more than twenty years of proprietary engines. The idea, as the studio tells it, was to focus its strength on staging and visuals rather than on building an engine, even if that meant giving up the open world that tech might have supported.
Do you have to choose between the two?
The honest answer is that you don’t have to choose. The two games target neither the same player nor the same moment. Mafia: The Old Country is already here, priced around $50, shorter and more guided, with decent reviews (a Metascore near 73) and art direction that critics praised across the board. It’s a quality crime detour, framed by the press as a good way to pass the time while GTA 6’s delay plays out.
GTA 6 plays an entirely different tune. At $79.99 for the Standard edition ($99.99 for Ultimate), it promises a massive open world and hundreds of hours of play, not to mention its future online chapter. Two budgets, two ambitions, two ways of telling a crime story, gathered under one banner: Take-Two. Mark your calendar for November 19, the GTA 6 release date, to see whether the giant delivers on its promise. Until then, Mafia’s Sicily is open.
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