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
