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.

A Bit Closer to Heaven: A Max Payne Retrospective

A Binary Choice
"They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point. I released my finger from the trigger. And then it was over."

In 2001 an obscure Finnish developer with exactly one video game to their name (a combat racer named Death Rally) released what many consider to be the finest action game ever made. Max Payne was a game that mashed together so many genre influences that it could have collapsed under its own weight. Instead it combined all of them into something artful and masterful, to the point where a full eighteen years after release there still hasn’t been anything really like it, save only the first of its sequels.

Rewinding a little, Remedy Entertainment was founded in Espoo, the second city of Finland, in 1995. It arose out of the demoscene, a movement dedicated to creating self-contained audio/visual demos which also served as testbeds for new software and technology. One demoscene group, Future Crew, decided to use their skills to form a company and create their first game. Death Rally, made in a team-member’s basement, was published by Apogee in 1996 and was a minor hit, enough for the company to expand and go big for its next game.

The company considered three ideas for their next title: a third-person shooter, another racing game and a space combat sim. Apogee were keen to continue their partnership and founder Scott Miller looked over the ideas. He thought the space combat idea was a bit niche and had a lot of successful series already underway (the X-Wing and Wing Commander series in particular, soon to be joined by Freespace), but that the action game idea was promising. First-person shooters were all the rage but arguably no-one had created a successful third-person shooter as yet, a Tomb Raider with less puzzle solving and more gunplay. There was also a nice synergy going on: Apogee Software had just rebranded itself as 3D Realms and released one of the most acclaimed first-person shooters of all time, Duke Nukem 3D.

Miller agreed to fund the game on the grounds that Remedy produced a graphically stunning game, that it didn’t cost too much and that they changed the working title of Dark Justice. He wanted a memorable, punchy title, preferably with the main character’s name in it. The team at Remedy were stumped until Miller suggested "Max” (possibly inspired either by Max Headroom or Homer Simpson’s "Max Power" alter-ego, or both) and the team suggested "Heat". A pleased 3D Realms spent $20,000 securing trademarks on the name until Remedy came back suggesting that "Max Heat" sounded like a porn title and what about "Max Payne". A few more thousand dollars later and the game had a name.

What it didn’t have was a story, engine or central mechanic. Remedy were not cowed, using their considerably technical prowess to quickly start building a 3D engine they called MAX-FX, putting a considerable amount of effort into particle effects and muzzle flares. An early tech demo, released to the public in 1998, made jaws collectively drop and started building hype for the game. Remedy had also decided to hire a professional writer, Sam Lake (who’d already provided some writing help on Death Rally), who started building up a significant amount of backstory for the central character of Max Payne. A massive fan of American TV crime dramas and pulp noir thriller novels, Lake wanted to make the game a psychological thriller as well as a violent action game, one that deconstructed the protagonist as it went along. Both he and the design team wanted the game to feel like an authentic noir thriller in New York, necessitating some of the team flying out to NYC and – accompanied by ex-NYPD officers as bodyguards – taking thousands of photographs of dingy back alleys to use as textures in the game.

The game had also gotten its gimmick. The developers were fans of Hong Kong action cinema, particularly the works of John Woo, and had noted that one of his signature styles was slowing the camera right down so individual bullets could be seen flying through the air. This wasn’t necessarily a new technique – Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch had experimented with such imagery in 1969 – but Woo had stylised it tremendously. Whilst the game was in development, the 1998 movie Blade also used some similar techniques. “Bullet time” became the central mechanic of Max Payne, with the player able to slow down time to the point where individual bullets could be seen flying through the air and allowing the player to shoot with incredible precision in the middle of the fiercest firefights.

To save money, the team decided to eschew in-engine cutscenes in favour of comic book panels, with single frames of imagery and a Raymond Chandler-esque monologue presenting the action. Northern Irish-American actor James McCaffrey was brought in to provide Payne’s voice and was an absolute find, his beyond-world-weary delivery becoming instantly iconic. Even the cost of a relatively unknown voice actor proved problematic for the budget, however, and left the team having to use themselves, friends and family as actors to portray and voice other characters. Writer Sam Lake himself was asked to model as Max Payne, giving the character his trademark signature, slightly constipated grimace.

Max Payne’s ambitions were expanding and in 1999 the game encountered an unexpected issue when the film The Matrix was released. The Matrix took bullet time to the next level, using it as a storytelling device as well as an aesthetic choice. On the one hand, this was great marketing for Max Payne but it also risked Payne looking like it was a rip-off. That was not helped by Payne’s 1999 release date being indefinitely delayed as the team encountered technical and storytelling issues that caused a full revamp of the game to take place. The game would not be released until 23 July 2001.

When it was released, it was an instant and immediate hit.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

Max Payne 3

Several years have passed since Max Payne's last adventure. He has left the NYPD and now spends his nights drinking in seedy bars. He is recruited by a former colleague to work security for the rich Branco family in São Paulo, Brazil, in what appears to be an easy job. When Max's charge, his employer's wife, is kidnapped by a gang, he finds himself drawn into a conspiracy which will lead him into some very dark places as he tries to redeem himself and find out what's going on in this city.

Max Payne 3 sees the return of the titular hero after a break of nine years. Remedy Entertainment, who made the first two games in the series, have moved on with their Alan Wake series of games, leaving Rockstar (best-known for the Grand Theft Auto series) to carry on their work. Whilst fans of the earlier games were dubious of this move, it was actually reasonably logical. Rockstar games often feature damaged protagonists trying to live better lives but being drawn back into a life of violence by circumstances, which is a perfect fit for Payne.

The game acts as a reboot of the series. References to the events of the first two games are minimal and, aside from a couple of flashback missions set in New York, the game is set in a different city in a different country with a very different culture (not to mention a different and un-translated language). The only constants are Max himself and, of course, his ability to slow down time to engage in combat.

Max Payne 3 is overwhelmingly impressive from a production values standpoint. The graphics are fantastic, with the game employing a vivid visual style. Keywords from conversations flash onto the screen and sometimes the action dissolves into line breaks and the colour desaturates, almost like you're watching the action on an old 1980s TV that is about to expire. The game's colour palette tends towards the bright and colourful, but there is a dark hue to everything. Sections set in crumbling warehouses or an abandoned hotel contrast the light and dark elements of the game's style. Animation is astonishing, with Max storing his weapons on his person and moving them around naturally to swap guns or take painkillers. The game feels like it's had a million dollars spent on every single minute of it (in sharp contrast to the low-budget feel of the first game, with its amateur cut scene actors).

The game's centerpiece is action and gunfights, and the title impresses in these areas. Combat is hard, fast and furious, with effective use of bullet time necessary to proceed. The game also employs a cover system, one of the more tiresome elements of modern action gaming, but the use of bullet time and headshots makes it mostly an optional feature with only a few moments where its use is necessary to proceed. More satisfyingly, the ludicrous modern gaming concept of 'regenerating health' has been thrown out of the window and replaced by Max's more familiar use of painkillers, adding a great deal of tension to the action sequences and requiring the player to plan attacks more intelligently than just charging in, knowing you can hide behind a box to get your health back. Unfortunately, bullet time has been gimped since the second game. There's only one level of bullet time (you don't get additional slowdowns when you shoot more people) and, ridiculously, it doesn't regenerate when you make kills. Given it is fairly slow to regenerate, a fair amount of combat has to take place without the use of the game's central mechanic and main selling-point, which seems strange.

The writing is okay, though Dan Houser's script is notably less funny, knowing or introspective than Sam Lake's work on the first two games. But it's reasonable and House deserves some props for moving Max on in his life, continuing his character arc and trajectory from the first two games. The other characters in the game are somewhat less successful, with no memorable equivalent to say Vladimir Lem or Mona Sax, but they do their job well enough. The change of setting is far more successful, with São Paulo (or, rather, the criminal underworld that is the main setting) presented as a dark, threatening city which is a perfect match for the semi-noir stylings of the series. This is backed up by the soundtrack (by American band Health), which is excellent.

So the game is well-made, with amazing production values, a decent story, some good characterisation and great action (if not quite as well-executed as the first two games). But there is a major problem. You see, the game doesn't actually like you playing it very much. For every minute you spend actually playing the game, it demands that you spend at least another watching it play itself, through intrusive use of lengthy, unskippable (as they hide loading sequences) and non-interactive cut scenes. Cut scenes are not just present at the start and end of each level with maybe a few reserved for major moments mid-level (the sort of structure the first two games employed), but they take place near-continuously. Frequently. opening a door will trigger a cut scene showing Max going through the door and taking cover before letting you resume control. This even happens if you've already flown through the door in shootdodge mode, resulting in frustrating (and continuity-breaking) moments where you could have wiped out a dozen bad guys in five seconds in bullet time but the game demands that you hide behind a counter instead and fire from cover. Cut scenes often kick in after you've dispatched the last bad guy in an area, taking you to a new area with no opportunity to loot the enemies for ammo (which is in fairly short supply throughout most of the game). There are also too many moments when the game has Max doing some really cool things (like diving between moving trains or jumping from an exploding rooftop onto a helicopter) when you don't have control.

Max Payne 3 is, of course, a linear action game and railroading is to be expected. Certainly the first two games had a lot of cut scenes and moments where player choice was taken away, but generally it was in areas where it made sense. They were also infrequent compared to the amount of time the player had control. Max Payne 3 actually seems to resent you doing anything other than what it wants you to, and punishes you if you try. During a shoot-out near a plane taking off, any attempt to jump onto the plane will result in a cut scene where a bad guy kills Max with a grenade, with Max standing there and unable to do anything. During a battle on a river dock, falling in the water will result in Max's instantaneous death, despite him being able to swim in a cut scene a minute later. Despite Max's ability to slow down time in gameplay, in a cut scene he runs into a room where a friend is being held hostage and is powerless to stop them being executed, despite the fact that if you had control you could wipe out everyone there in moments. The game also employs a checkpoint system rather than allowing quicksaves, resulting in the player sometimes having to repeat 10-15-minute long sequences if they are killed, which is simply unacceptable.

When it actually lets you play it, Max Payne 3 (***) features some intense and engrossing action sequences. However, the game makes the classic mistake of placing itself and its story (which is decent but nothing special) ahead of the enjoyment of the player. As a visual experience, Max Payne 3 is impressive and intermittently even brilliant, but as a game it's a let-down compared to the first two titles in the series. It is available now in the UK (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3) and in the USA (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3).

GAME OF THRONES RPG's release clashes with year's biggest 2 games

Cyanide have released a docu-trailer for their Game of Thrones computer RPG. This trailer shows some gameplay with two of the game's developers talking about the title.

Game of Thrones: The RPG will be released on 15 May in the United States but, completely inexplicably, won't be out in Europe until 1 June (since clearly it takes two weeks for digital information to cross the Atlantic). The publishers, in their wisdom, have also decided the release the game on the same day as Max Payne 3 (one of the biggest games of the year on both console and PC) and Diablo III (probably the biggest game of the year on PC). In fact, they've somehow managed to cross with both dates for Max Payne 3 (which is out on 15 May on console and 1 June on PC).

I can only conclude at this stage that the publishers don't actually want anyone to play the game. There's some very strange decision-making going on there.