Mafia

[The Last Stand]

You know, I often like to parallel GTA 3 with Mafia 1, which came out about a year off. One has a satirical and action-oriented tone, while the other focuses on telling a dramatic story in a realistic setting. Both are amazing in terms of what they achieve with their open world, particularly at the time, with a number of technical achievements, even if one had considerably more resources behind it than the other (though I don't think Mafia gets enough praise, it had a mostly realistic police response system, did a great job with driving mechanics to the point where I plugged a modern steering wheel and it was recognized by the game with zero extra work, and had a good approach for making a linear story while allowing you to explore its open world).

I disagree on the point where Mafia 1 did not get enough praise compared to GTA 3. Mafia 1 released on PC first, then consoles. You could tell from the console ports or conversions that it was not designed with a controller in mind. Whether due to technical limitations or lack of understanding of controller support, I would not know.

GTA 3 however, released to consoles first, then optimized itself for a PC platform. I stress consoles in this arguments because they were more accessible compared to PCs then. Plus, GTA 3 and Vice City predate Mafia's introduction to consoles so Rockstar had the open world formula down pact for those machines in mind despite potential tech limitations.