Mafia: The Old Country is set on the island of Sicily. Despite your proximity to the Mediterranean, however, there’s no swimming in the latest, not-quite-open-world gangster game. A clip showing the new blockbuster’s lack of “swimming physics” quickly blew up on social media, spurring a debate about whether The Old Country cuts corners. In actuality, I wish more games were fine with cutting junk that doesn’t matter.
Swimming is one of the ways an open-world game proves just how premium and expensive it is. Falling in water meant instant death in Infamous 1 and 2, while in Second Son it merely returned you to the last hard surface you were standing on. But in Ghost of Tsushima, light swimming mechanics became part of exploring the world. You couldn’t swim in Grand Theft Auto until San Andreas. One of the more controversial aspects of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom games is that, while you can swim on the surface of the water, you can’t dive underneath like in previous games.
In case you were wondering, Mafia: The Old Country doesn’t have swimming physics just like previous Mafia Games pic.twitter.com/oUA13X64Q1
— NikTek (@NikTekOfficial) August 8, 2025
Swimming was never a thing in the Mafia games until Mafia 3, which took place in a canal- and swamp-filled version of New Orleans called New Bordeaux. So it might have made sense to expect that to remain part of the feature set in The Old Country. But the new game is also more streamlined, focusing on its characters, missions, and world rather than on the kind of sandbox bloat that can be fun to mess around with but ultimately doesn’t add a ton to the overall experience. The Old Country is $50 and only 12 hours long. To some that’s a raw deal. But for advocates of quicker, cheaper, more sustainable game development, it seems like the perfect antidote to a lot of the big-budget excess that weighs down so many other projects. So, instead of letting you spear fish or dive for treasure, The Old Country warps you back to land anytime you fall in deep water.
“This reminds me of when we showed BG3 to someone (exec or whatever)–a wealth of mechanics–and with zero emotion he just goes ‘can you swim in the game?’ Like bro this isn’t mechanical whack-a-mole, endlessly layering on mechanics maketh a good game not,” Larian Studios publishing director Michael “Cromwelp” Douse wrote on X in response to the debate over Old Country‘s old-school swimming band-aid. “The realities of game design are such that each feature has a cost. Manpower-> time-> budget. ‘Why not just[…]’ can set a producer on fire. Try it, its funny. Better to not swim if you’re not going to do anything with it, than to add it simply to have it.”
Engagement baiters show invisible walls and “no swimming” but conveniently they forgot to show areas where the need to swim was thought of, and very obviously decided against. Many other games teleport you back to the shore and no one is complaining. pic.twitter.com/HRfJiU5ARE
— Silent (@__silent_) August 10, 2025
Douse pointed to day-and-night cycles as another example. While occasionally pretty and immersive, most games don’t actually do much with them, like change how characters act at night or what enemies you might face. It’s one of those back-of-the-box bullet points that can get wheeled out in pitch meetings to impress a publisher but can end up leading to more headaches and a less focused game in the long run.
“I feel like I’m aging out of the gaming sphere because I see this and ask myself ‘Does this game even need a swimming? Should dev time be devoted to it’ and people in the comments are saying ‘This is unacceptable for a 2025 game’ Idk I just don’t think games need every mechanic,” read one viral response to the swimming debate from X user ActuallyTina. “I would much rather devs spend time on mechanics that actually engagement the player a lot then a big empty world with nothing in it or swimming that is just there because idk its 2025 and you need swimming.”
