Rockstar and Remedy to collaborate on MAX PAYNE remakes

Remedy Entertainment are remaking the two games that brought them to widespread public attention in the early 2000s. They are rebuilding Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne in the Northlight Engine which powered their previous two games, Quantum Break and Control. The remakes will be published by Rockstar Games, who have owned the Max Payne IP since the mid-2000s.

Max Payne was originally released in 2001 and was highly praised for its stylish action and its use of "bullet time" to slow time down and allow the player to precisely control where their shots went. It was also applauded for its ridiculously over-the-top narration, dialogue and storytelling, which mixed graphic novel and video game tropes with meta-humour. Max Payne 2 was released in 2003 and was an impressive technical achievement as one of the first video games to implement a full physics engine. The game was also praised for its even tighter storytelling, better action, stronger writing and being one of the very few good examples of a video game romance story. I have a full retrospective on the games here.

Max Payne 3, released in 2012, was developed internally by Rockstar and was considered something of a letdown, with strong action but poor storytelling and, in particular, endless cutscenes that got in the way of the gameplay. The franchise has been on hold since then, with Rockstar working on their Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption franchises instead.

Remedy have only just started work on the remakes, but the current plan is to combine the two games into a single title. They note they presented Rockstar with the proposal for the remakes and Rockstar agreed to fund and publish the title, assigning a budget in line with their top-tier games. Fans will no doubt hope this also increases the chances of a Remedy-developed Max Payne 4 should the remake be successful.

Remedy are also currently developing Alan Wake 2 and Control 2.