Three months ago, 2K announced that Hangar 13 is expanding with a new studio located in the UK. It was later confirmed that this new development team will be focusing on a AAA, big-budget game. Hangar 13's UK studio is working alongside Hangar's three existing offices in Novato, Prague and Brno (both Czech Republic) to create a currently "unannounced" major console (and probably PC) game.
At Brighton’s Develop Conference, Mafia III game director Haden Blackman revealed that he's "incredibly proud of Mafia III on every level,” Blackman said. “The fact we tackled this really tough subject matter was fantastic. But at the end of the day it’s a dark game–it’s a violent exploration of damaged people. We want to continue to be able to do character studies and dive into what makes people tick, and universal human truths, but a lot of us on the team also want to do something a little more inspirational and more uplifting, so the tone of this new thing we’re working on is a little bit different than Mafia III, but it has a lot of the same underpinnings in terms of strong characters."
According to the director, Hangar 13's next big thing "got weight and heft. And it’s mature – not necessarily the rating but the subject matter.” This news is hardly surprising as Hangar 13's first game, Mafia III, was incredibly violent and graphic. “I feel a responsibility, yes. In the sense we have the capability to tell meaningful stories so we should tell meaningful stories with meaningful characters–and characters who you would not usually encounter any other way. It’s important to me we have a diverse cast. I might say the tone is a little more uplifting [but] we’re still dealing with really weighty subject matter and themes, and we’re not afraid to tackle those things," Blackman concluded.
Considering that Mafia IV (which was apparently set in Las Vegas during the 1970s) has been cancelled by 2K and Hangar's own IP codenamed Rhapsody (an action game fueled by music [which sounds totally awesome, I know]) has morphed into a standard superhero action game, there's a big chance that Hangar 13 and 2K Marin are currently working hard on the next chapter of the BioShock saga.
1968. New Bordeaux, Louisiana. The rules of organized crime have changed. After years of combat in Vietnam, Lincoln Clay knows this truth: Family isn’t who you’re born with, it’s who you die for. When his surrogate family, the black mob, is slaughtered by the Italian Mafia, Lincoln builds a new family on the ashes of the old and blazes a path of military-grade revenge through the brutal criminal underworld responsible.
Mafia III is currently available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.