Max Payne is back for video games!

Unfortunately, this is not a new chapter in the story of the fugitive mythical cop, but it is still good news. Remedy Entertainment has just announced the start of construction on the remakes Max Payne And its fabulous sequel! Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Released in 2001 and 2003, respectively. We insist on remakes, not 1080p remastered / facelifted versions.

The site was created with the blessing of Rockstar Games, which at the time was already the publisher and director of the first two games. Max Payne 3Released in May 2012. These remakes will in any case be executed through a fairly substantial line of credit, which is equivalent to the AAA production budget of the game developed under Remedy Entertainment, as they specify elsewhere. This statement is accompanied by a press release.

“Max Payne has always had a special place in our hearts at Remedy and we know that millions of fans around the world feel the same way.” Said Remedy CEO Tero Virtala. “We are delighted to once again be partnering with our Rockstar Games partners to give players a chance to recreate the history, action and atmosphere of the original Max Payne Games.

Below, for fun, is a trailer Max Payne 2. Mona Saxe is still seen and died …

A cult game for a hero who is no less

In 2016, we had the pleasure of talking to Sam Lake about the studio’s new game release day, Quantum break. Studio support RemedyEntertainmentIt was he who gave the first part of the Max Payne saga its properties. And we asked him, in his opinion, what was the reason for the success of this license, which was also revolutionary when it came out in 2001.

“When the game was successful, we were just a group of young friends and, to be honest, it took us a long time to master this success. I think this can be explained by the existence of certain elements that still exist in Remedy games today. We did not have much experience, we tried to make a game that we wanted in the first place.

Max is a character with a strong personality, strong motivations that pushes him forward. There is also having a real story, even in an action game. It was something very rare at the time.

When I wrote Max Payne’s story, I always had in mind how I created the story in the brutal action game, how I came up with this story in the midst of all these sequences of shootings that occupy most of it. Character time.

This brought me to the extreme of everything: the personal condition of the hero is completely hopeless. At the limit, every audible and / or visible word, sometimes written in close-up on the screen, should grab the player’s attention. Max absorbs anger and despair; Must have seen and heard.

The way the story was told was also innovative, with the help of graphic novel style scenes. At that time we still did not have well-mastered video scenes and in that sense, we thought we could go further to change the style of this visual and narrative graphic novel. We found that he gave much more personality and credibility to Max Payne and his world.

I also wanted to take the game to the film Noir approach. It was the work of our chief designer and then project leader, Petri Jarvilhto, who also wanted to play a part in watching John Woo HK action movies. The funny thing about all of this is that John Woo’s films clearly show the echo of the film noir genre. As a result, Max Payne coexisted perfectly with this type of world.

Memorable sound, but pictorial face

In the first game, we heard the voice of actor James McCaffrey. If it was ideal, first of all, we would keep the face of the hero. That Sam Lake therefore. “In fact, except in the days of full-motion video games, actors were rarely used in video games. It was not something natural. Sam Lake told us.

“I’m a big fan of graphic novels and have been offered painted panels as graphic novels for in-game narration. Add to that the fact that one of my hobbies is games. Role-playing games. We even took pictures.

I brought some photos to the office to show me and said that we really need to get or combine the graphic novel dimension into a story and that we can use the photos as a basis for the work. They found that it was not a bad idea and said to me, “Now that you’ve posed like that, maybe try this pose there, or even that?” etc. That’s how I ended up borrowing my features from Max Payne!

Also, at the beginning of the game and character development stage, everything was still painted, the graphic novel panels were hand-painted and served as a hint. Technology evolved, we started using photos to work on game textures, and there I could identify myself.

In the middle of the production, someone still suggested that we might hire professional actors, but in reality, we were already too far away from developing the game to use them. So it was with Max Payne 2 to give it an even more realistic side, but not the first part. And then we could hardly afford it! “