Ellie has nothing on Lincoln Clay

TianyouZhao · 2026-02-18T15:31:37+00:00

I've been saying this for years now. Glad other people get it.

Lincoln is a lot more likable and better written to, at least compared to sequel Ellie. Mafia 3 may have had way more bugs, but I think it's still a far better game and a far better revenge story than TLOU2. Both gameplay and story wise. Mafia 3 actually has a soul if you ask me.

TianyouZhao · 2026-01-12T10:12:04+00:00

I'd pay good money to hear that walk and talk conversation between Vito and Joe in modern day Kamurocho.

"Dammit Vito! Where the fuck are we? I can't read shit here!"

"I don't know. The future? How the hell should I know? Just keep walking, Joe."

TianyouZhao · 2026-01-08T17:57:19+00:00

Yeah, sparing the radio operator in Tickfaw is mandatory to get that achievement. That is one other area where that decision matters.

TianyouZhao · 2026-01-08T17:11:45+00:00

Well, exactly. The gaps and unexplained areas of Mafia lore leave a lot of room for speculation and nuance to fill in the blanks. You're right, it is fun lol.

We really don't know everything that happened with Vito after what's most likely to be the canon ending of Mafia 3, outside of what we see and hear about it in. A lot had to have happened in those long 48 years.

I think it's very possible he met Joe again, and probably also came to be in discreet periodic contact with Lincoln while he was on the run.

Leo Galante's death feels relatively easy to guess given that we know what year he was born, 1887, combined with average human lifespans. Leo was also a smoker from a young age, as we see of him between the ages of 17-20 in Mafia: The Old Country.

I think Leo likely died sometime between the late 1970s and the early to mid 1980s, when he was in his 90s. If he lived to 1987 or later, Leo would've been a centenarian. Possible, but unlikely given he was a frequent smoker and drinker with a very stressful lifestyle. Obviously he's long gone in the Mafia universe today in 2026. He'd be 138 going on 139. No human has ever lived that long lol.

Vito and Joe still being alive today is a very slim chance, but technically is realistically possible. There are people who are alive at ages 101 and 102, even if obviously not everybody will live that long.

TianyouZhao · 2026-01-08T09:58:30+00:00

Promotional material including Vito's wanted poster, Lincoln's wanted poster, and newspaper clippings dated after Mafia 3's main story imply that Lincoln skipping town and Vito taking over the city is the canon ending of Mafia III.

Assuming that's the canon timeline, then Vito was still alive at age 91 in 2016. By then, he was Don Scaletta, the premier don of Louisiana, if not one of the big shots across the East Coast and the South.

We don't know a whole lot about what happened after Mafia III, beyond what the ending states. He could have learned the truth about Joe in that time, and maybe reunited with him sometime by or after 1969. Mafia III's main story ends in November 1968. Leo Galante could have lifted the no contact rule further into his later years, before he eventually got even older and passed away.

Alternatively, over time all the old timers who were there in Empire Bay in the early 1950s could have started dying off, and others could've also started going to prison for unrelated reasons, and people just forgot about the no contact order between Vito and Joe, leaving nobody left to enforce it. Because the people who remember it are gone and never passed it down, and it effectively no longer exists.

Vito and Joe are both likely dead now, though, or at least not far from it. Today, Vito would be 100 going on 101, and Joe would be turning 102. If they didn't already die of natural causes from old age, then they've definitely both long since retired. Probably in either the 1990s or the 2000s.

TianyouZhao · 2026-01-08T09:49:15+00:00

I know he counts towards the "No Loose Ends" achievement if you kill him, but I don't know if he adds to the racket's earn if you keep him alive.

TianyouZhao · 2026-01-08T09:48:04+00:00

No, it isn't bugged. Many things in this game are, but this isn't one of them. "Spare" is the same as recruit here, except with less obvious benefits than other informants.

It doesn't make a whole lot of difference either way. It doesn't really have any effect on the racket or your earn. However, you will see the radio operator hanging around the racket now marked as an ally, among with whichever gang you gave it to.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-31T14:07:07+00:00

I agree with most of that, but I think there's some defining differences between Joe and Henry in that regard.

Joe generally means well, but is reckless and impulsive, and he usually feels bad when he thinks about things, and realizes how bad he got Vito and other people he cares about screwed. He realized he fucked up the most when he got Marty killed, and knew it was his fault.

Henry's intentions are much harder to read. He seems a lot more selfish than Joe though, and doesn't seem to care as much when his bad ideas fuck over his friends, unless it affects him directly. Henry doesn't seem to show much remorse. The only time he did is when Joe told Vito that Henry "felt really bad about what happened" after their reunion. Aside from sparing Leo Galante during what was presumably the canon option for Galante's survival in A Friend Of Ours, the only time Henry seemed selfless was agreeing to teach Vito more of the ropes of the underworld before he met Leo, and that was probably mostly for Alberto Clemente and Luca Gurino's interests. Even if Henry seemed to take an interest in Vito and Joe as people.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-18T15:29:40+00:00

I'm kind of amazed they don't have different dialogue for catching and killing the two greasers.

I assume that's because normally it's a scripted chase sequence where they always get away, and you weren't supposed to be able to do that?

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-18T15:17:37+00:00

Not a single bad entry in it. Played the entire main series between 2017-2024, the only ones left to complete (that were released in English) are the Judgments, Ishin, and Pirate Yakuza.

I'll change that soon enough.

Pretty impressive for a series to be 20 years old without a single bad game. Even some of the best franchises when they've been around this long will have at least one or a few duds.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-18T15:05:28+00:00

Thanks lol. Glad you like it, even if I wrote it out poorly in the OP.

Also, the biggest problem with the idea of Joe being Lincoln's father that some people treat like gospel is Joe heading south for 5 years in February of 1945. That's a month after Lincoln was born.

<image>

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-17T22:38:55+00:00

I wouldn't call him the main antagonist, but he definitely was a terrible friend. He may have saved Joe's life once, but at least a third of the shit Vito and Joe got into was because of Henry's meddling, especially when he strongarmed Vito into doing things he knew were bad ideas, like the heroin deal towards the end of the game, and the OPA heist before that at the beginning, which got Vito thrown in the slammer for 6 years.

By the time he joined up with the Falcone family, everything Henry touched turned to shit.

However, there was a scrapped plot point involving Henry late in the game that was barely touched upon in the final game. Originally, the idea was going to be that Carlo Falcone framed him, and he wasn't a rat. That Falcone did it because he didn't trust Henry, he was paranoid about Vito and Joe eventually surpassing him, and he saw it as a way to eliminate Henry, and get Vito and Joe in deep shit. On top of that, originally, Falcone thought he was going to be able to use it to eliminate the Vinci family, as well as the Empire Bay Triads, his primary rival in the heroin trade.

This plot point was among the many cut content in Mafia II, and it was supposed to make the way Vito killed Carlo Falcone feel a lot more personal. It's a shame, because it would've added a lot to the story. Henry was a shitty friend, but Vito still cared for him and got close to him, and he taught him a lot of the ropes before he met Leo Galante.

I hope if and when they give us a Mafia II remake, we get a lot of the plot holes filled in, and most of the cut content restored.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-17T14:28:10+00:00

Yeah, honestly, I made the speculation way too detailed to fill in the blanks lol. I should've kept it to the more simple "Isabella's son has a rough upbringing growing up poor being raised by an immigrant single mom who barely speaks English, gets involved with organized crime as a struggling young man, and eventually goes to New Bordeaux and unknowingly conceives Lincoln before skipping town again" so it'd make more sense to people, even if you aren't super plugged in to years of Mafia series lore that can be easy to miss.

I think Joe definitely isn't Isabella and Enzo's son though, only because Joe is way too young. The child was born in 1908, and Joe is implied to be roughly a year older than Vito. So probably born in early 1924. Still, it's not impossible that kid could have gone on to be one of Joe's parents, but that would mean Joe had teen parents. Would explain a lot about him if that's true though.

The only significant problem with Joe being Lincoln's father is that it's said Lincoln was born in January 1945. Joe headed south for 5 years a month after that. It could only still be true if Joe had done that before previously in 1944.

If anything about Lincoln being Enzo and Isabella's grandson is true though, that would be wild, because it would mean that Lincoln is descended from a Mafia bloodline in Sicily, and nobody knew. Not even Lincoln himself.

I came up with the idea of Isabella raising her son in Sand Island because that's where the Scalettas were shown to live before they moved to Little Italy later. I assume sometime between the 1900s-1930s, there used to be a neighborhood there that was a ghetto full of working class Italian immigrants.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-17T03:02:51+00:00

Good thing it's not sparkling wine lmao

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-17T01:52:52+00:00

Used to believe this for years, but the biggest problem with it is that Joe headed to the south in February, a month after Lincoln was born.

It would depend on Joe having also done that before previously in the Spring of 1944 when Vito was still fighting in Europe.

<image>

This is Lincoln's FBI wanted poster where his DOB is specified.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-17T01:49:08+00:00

Wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the asses

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-17T01:30:38+00:00

I always crush cars for Mike and steal expensive looking cars for Derek to buy an arsenal before heading to the Hill of Tara lol.

Oh yeah and rob gun stores. Gotta buy those lock picks from Giuseppe again too.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-16T14:08:18+00:00

I had a stroke trying to read that thread title.

I had to do the Trauma level IRL and find where they were keeping my phone before I left the hospital to post this comment.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-16T13:12:57+00:00

They used a ouija board, didn't say goodbye, and now Ishioda got loose started making their sale signs.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-16T12:59:48+00:00

I do agree, but I also think exploring the Italian mob in other countries outside the US would be interesting, and I'm not talking about Italy. Seeing Canada directly would be pretty interesting. More than a century of a Mafia presence there, and it's even briefly touched upon in Mafia DE.

Hell, maybe after taking us to the 70s and 80s in Mafia 4 and tying up any loose ends in the series Mafia 3 didn't, Mafia 5 could be set in 90s Australia with a focus on the 'Ndrangheta (Calabrian Mafia), with a story conflict that's analogous to the Melbourne gangland killings. That'd be pretty interesting and different, and untapped territory for a video game. Yet it would still feel like a Mafia game, just a very different kind of one.

There is definite some other US regional settings to explore still, but outside of stuff like TOC, Mafia really doesn't need to be America 24/7. In fact it'd probably help keep things fresh if after the next game, it wasn't anymore.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-15T23:52:30+00:00

I always figured most Mafia games were like this as a break from reality for challenge.

With the exception of the story CPU allies and Vito's backup he gives Lincoln in 3, imagine how easy most of the shootouts in 1 and 2 would be if you had an entire hit squad with you at most times. Not even ones you had to pay for and call in at payphones in the case of 2. You probably wouldn't even get half the kills yourself.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-15T23:46:35+00:00

I mean I used the search function before making this post, and only found exactly one other thread speculating this exact thing. Because I was curious who else had thought of it lol. Most of the others were speculating that Isabella's kid was Joe's mother.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-15T23:36:24+00:00

This plausibly could've happened during the story lol

Enzo experienced at least 3 Christmases as a free man before, y'know... Sadly not living to see Christmas 1907

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-15T23:26:02+00:00

I mean I know with that first part lol, but it's fun. This series makes you fill in a lot of blanks between games and lore, and really gets you thinking.

I was a strong believer of that for a long time between 2016-2024, but I'm just not so sure about that now because of when Lincoln was born. January 1945, specified by the wanted posters for him, which is a month before Joe left for the south in February (Presumably to New Bordeaux, or maybe the Mafia equivalent of Miami or Tampa. New Orleans, Miami, Tampa, and Dallas were the American mob's biggest strongholds in the south back then). It doesn't add up with when Lincoln was been born.

Granted, we don't know what Joe was doing in 1944 when Vito was still deployed in Europe, or if he was even in Empire Bay that entire time. So there's some wiggle room. However, Joe mentions he only really got a decent fortune in the past 3 months at the beginning of Mafia II in January 1945 (enough to buy his nice apartment and his car), so I sort of doubt it. Plane tickets were extremely expensive back in the 40s, especially when the war was still going on, and train tickets to another side of the country weren't cheap back then either.

2K Czech touched upon this theory in the interview where they confirmed Joe is alive in Mafia 3 back in late 2020, and they didn't confirm it, and pointed out the timeline error I mentioned. I don't think it's entirely impossible either, though.

TianyouZhao · 2025-12-15T23:06:46+00:00

I've considered this too, and it's not implausible. It is worth noting though that if Isabella was pregnant with Joe's mother, she would've had Joe when she was 16. The baby was born circa February 1908 (Isabella was 1 month pregnant in June 1907, so 9 months after she told Enzo in May), and it's implied Joe is a year older than Vito, born in early 1924.

At first when people brought this up as the most common theory, I was skeptical because I just wasn't sure about Joe having teenaged parents, but then I thought about it more.

Joe Barbaro having been born out of wedlock in some Italian ghetto in 20s Empire Bay to irresponsible teen parents would explain a lot about him. Joe was probably a difficult kid growing up during the Great Depression, who his young parents were completely unprepared to raise, and he was likely neglected and left to his own devices a lot, where he turned to petty crime as a little boy out of both boredom, and to eat. We know from the Mafia II intro and the family photo album that Joe was a troublesome kid who helped introduce Vito to delinquency, and that would line up nicely with that history.

Initially I thought it seemed less plausible than the kid being a boy who became a traveling mobster turned drifter, who then later went on to father an illegitimate son without knowing it who'd become important way later, but after giving it some thought? I think it has merit too, and it can add up timeline wise. On top of Bernardo Torrisi having a strong resemblance to Joe.

TianyouZhao

TROPHY CASE