Mafia:
Man of Honor
Lighting
Gameplay lighting for the new chapters of Mafia: The Old Country — Man of Honor.
On the project from the beginning, worked closely with the art directors to hold the established look.
Revisiting Sicily and pushing the game's lighting language further: a bigger world, a deeper story, several brand new locations to light.
Man of Honor expands the main story with two new chapters and more places to visit, from the darkness beneath the Norman ruins to the opulent glitter of the Masonic Lodge.
Gamesurf noted that the expansion inherits the artistic quality of the base game, with winter altering the lighting and atmosphere of familiar locations.
L'Immacolata. Special care taken to show off the festive outfits of the townsfolk, and to keep the shrines in shade so the candles read.
Porto Almaro. Bespoke setup layered over the default night time lighting for the mission angle of approach. Offsetting the lights' origins towards the player to prevent premature culling, so the town still reads as one cluster.
The Lodge approach. One of the most complex environments to manage. Threaded the sun through a gap in the hills, thinned some distant trees. Added lights and fog throughout to hold the planes apart and steer the eye.
The horse farm. Tense, unsettling atmosphere for the investigation. The lone lamp reads from outside and pulls the player in.
The new mine. The third mine I lit for the game — I did the introduction and the ending, so this one sits visually between them. The dust is denser but localised: Enzo passes through it now instead of living in it.
Norman ruins underground. Kept this location distinct from the main game's qanats. Held the light sources to what bandits would plausibly use: no wall candles.
Chauffeuring Salieri. Building up towards the horse farm segment. Bespoke HDRi for the sky, localised fog for the depth. The last sunlight before the sun goes behind cloud and the valley turns cold. The transition is dynamic.
Winter Porto. The same harbour I lit for the Race chapter, re-lit for a Sicilian winter — a colder sky and a lower sun, with heavier haze to hold the far shore at distance.
The warm home. The player returns to the apartment several times, so each visit needed its own character. This is the most naturalistic of them.
The Masonic Lodge game room. The whole mission builds to this moment — the most opulent room the player has seen in the game. The villa I lit a chapter earlier now feels like a farmhouse by comparison.
The end. Enzo and Cesare get a moment of hope here. The AD wanted the shot moved so I picked the spot for more sunlight, swapped the original night for a sunrise and built the new sky from scratch.