This game is a remake of Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (2002) with for modern consoles with the latest graphical enhancements. The game adds more in-depth character development scenes including giving characters like Pauli and Sam last names, giving characters like Don's Salieri and Morello first names and showing more scenes with Sarah, Tommy's wife, who only appeared in the original game only once.
Czech actor and voice-actor Petr Rychlý reprises his role as Paulie in the Czech version after 18 years.
The game will feature collectible cards each with the characters full names, which were not revealed in the original game:
- Paulie's last name is Lombardo.
- Sam's last name is Trapani.
- Don Salieri's first name is Ennio.
- Frank's last name is Colletti.
- Vincenzo's last name is Ricci.
- Luigi's last name is Marino.
- Don Morello's first name is Marcu.
- Detective Norman's first name is John.
The actor who voices Paulie, Jeremy Luke, played Mickey Cohen in the short lived TBS show Mob City (2013).
One of the songs played on the in-car radio is 'Heart and Soul', written by Hoagy Charmichael and Frank Loesser and first recorded in 1938,which puts it right on the limit of the time on which the game is set. In addition to featuring in the movie Big (1988), it formed the melody for Train's 2017 hit, Train: Play That Song (2016).