Hangar 13 is making headlines this week. The Mafia 3 studio has been working away on a number of projects over the last few years, and now, the studio seems to have a plan in place for a new trilogy of Mafia games built with Unreal Engine 5.
This week, Hangar 13 studio head, Haden Blackman, left he company. Alongside this news, Kotaku's sources claim that Mafia 4 is now in early development and that the studio plans to release a full prequel trilogy to the original games.
Development of Mafia 4 will apparently be led by Nick Baynes and Hangar 13's studio based in Brighton, UK. The game is still in early development, under the codename “Nero” and will kick off a new trilogy of games in the series.
After facing a multitude of issues with its own proprietary engine with Mafia 3 and the recent Mafia trilogy remasters, Hangar 13 will be switching over to Unreal Engine 4. A number of other high profile studios also recently gave up their proprietary tools to use Unreal Engine 5 for future projects, including CD Project Red (The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077), and Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider, Marvel's Avengers).
KitGuru Says: Mafia 4 is in early development, which is good news for long-time fans of the series. Still, it will be quite some time before the studio is ready to show any real gameplay, or announce a release date.