As our story begins, Mafia III introduces its documentary-style frame and sets up the game’s historical context: a 1960s America mired in an unpopular war, jolted by violent crime and political assassinations, and challenged by growing civil unrest. The cinematic opening mixes bright, tourist-friendly images of New Bordeaux, Louisiana with dark glimpses of the blood-soaked mob war at the heart of Mafia III.
The intro features snippets of interviews with Father James Ballard, retired priest at St. Jerome’s Catholic Church in New Bordeaux’s French Ward district; and with Jonathan Maguire, the FBI’s former Assistant Director, Criminal Enterprise Branch from 1966-1999. It also includes recorded, on-the-record testimony from a former CIA agent, John Donovan, at a 1971 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing in Washington. All speak of Lincoln Clay and his infamous vendetta against the Italian mob in New Bordeaux.
Father James and Agent Donovan also provide some of Lincoln Clay’s backstory: the abandoned boy who grew up in an orphanage then fell in with the local African-American mob led by Sammy Robinson. Lincoln eventually shipped off to Vietnam and became a highly decorated special forces soldier—two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and the Distinguished Service Cross.
As the prologue ends, we learn that Lincoln Clay mustered out of the Army in 1968 and returned to Sammy’s Bar in New Bordeaux’s Delray Hollow district. There he discovered that Sammy was in trouble: he owed a lot of money to the powerful Italian crime syndicate that ran the city and took a cut from every racket.
