The Rise and Fall of Max Payne

[Music] Paul's men from monic are trying to stop me thing is what time broke and changed Paul changed me to few features are is ingrained in the fabric of modern shooters as bullet time whether included as a mechanic that one can use at the press of a button or an occurrence that only happens in scripted moments bullet time is the punctuation mark of every game at graces an awesome yet functional tool that gamers and developers alike can't get enough of and it wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is today were it not for Max Payne released in 2001 by remedy entertainment a video game developer based in Espoo Finland Max Payne put players in control of its titular protagonist on a slow-motion massacre through New York's underground it was dark it was intense and most importantly it was much more than just a series of reality defying firefights with its story spinning an intoxicating noir inspired yarn about Max's descent into madness as he attempts to avenge his family's death players lapped it up in droves leading the industry at large to try and integrate its mechanics into their own products and remedy to produce a follow-up max payne 2 the fall of max payne the latter offered an even slicker rendition of max's twisted world in mechanics as well as an earnest attempt to try and portray a love story at a time when the medium let alone shooters rarely featured them unfortunately while its reception was even more impressive its sales struggled to pass muster and for a period of time after its release it seemed as if the series had nothing more to offer barring a mediocre film adaptation starring Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis yet like max himself its spirit refused to rest until it ended things on its own terms and in 2012 Rockstar Games released Max Payne 3 featuring a cruelly aged version of this series protagonist and a setting more reminiscent of man on fire than the Big Sleep the three equal offered longtime fans are they're different experience than what had come before it one that had thoroughly used the mechanics systems and characters remedy had cultivated during this series heyday but still felt distinctly rockstar in its execution not all were pleased with this change in direction and its sales while better than its predecessors underwhelmed once more but even its most ardent critics agreed that as far as shooters went it was still dueling impressive like any video game series no longer being worked on max Payne's absence from the current realm of Triple A games as sad but when one evaluates what the series managed to accomplish while it was alive it's hard not to be appreciative of how it went out this is the rise and fall of Max Payne [Music] if pcs are canvases beckoning to be painted with then future crew was there da Vinci during the early 90s a finished demo group founded in 1987 future crew rose to prominence amongst computer hobbyists for crafting some of the most technically impressive PC demos ever put to code during the 20th century works like 1993 second reality provided jaw-dropping demonstrations of the power of computational technology with the latter prominently featuring effects scarcely seen on Microsoft's machines prior to future crew releasing it such as real-time 3d voxels and mesh deformation up until 1994 the crew continued to put out content on an increasingly frequent basis keeping its brand alive in the form of all manner of new demos and software for the internet to enjoy but after witnessing developers blood house and terror mark make history as Finland's first commercial video game studios that same year a few of future crews members became strongly motivated to follow in their footsteps and realized that the company as it currently existed would not allow them to do so as a result the demo group quietly disbanded in 1995 allowing those within the crew entranced by the potential that video games held to establish an outfit that could properly service their passion remedy entertainment during its first year remedies pockets were small and its workspace even smaller with its founders initially forced to code their work out of one of their parents basements but its ambitions were big so much so that it managed to attract the attention of one Scott Miller extremely early on the founder of Apogee software Miller had played a significant yet understated role in the development of the PC games market over the previous decade helping bring seminal shooters like Wolfenstein 3d and Duke Nukem 3d into existence as well as pioneering shareware games distribution on the PC remedy had originally approached Miller hoping to score a publishing deal for its first project a racing game titled high speed sensing both high speeds and remedies potential Miller signed the game on and proceeded to provide its creators with all manner of advice for the remainder of its development including convincing them to introduce vehicular combat elements into it and changing its name to death rally upon its release on home computers in 1996 death rally would prove a sizable hit cementing remedy as a developer worthy of recognition and its relationship with Apogee as one that would last for a long time to come yet the former wasn't ready to rest on its laurels it was anxious to move on to its next project and had three vastly different ideas as to what it could entail the first keeping a theme with death rally was a 3d racing game the second was a space simulation game in the vein of titles like descent free space or homeworld and the third was a top-down isometric shooter not unlike the 1995 sci-fi shooter loaded in which the player would control a grizzled detective the latter concept which remedy had titled dark justice piqued Millers interest the most upon being presented with all three but he still felt that the concept needed work sitting remedies staff down miller explained that while he and the rest of Apogee would agree to aid in dark justices development he believed that the game would benefit tremendously if it shed its top-down form and followed in duke nukem footsteps from his perspective the latter had succeeded in becoming a massive hit in large part because of its strong impressive protagonist and it's jumped to fully three-dimensional environments following its third entry if remedy second game attempted something similar Miller contended it could end up being more successful than the team could possibly imagine a transmedia franchise unlike anything that finished video game industry had ever known that would continue for years without end captivated by Miller's proposal remedies staff returned home and got to work on turning it into reality one of the first things that they focused on was translating dark justices top-down gameplay into a three-dimensional third-person experience and making sure that it would feel as distinct as possible from the competition at this point in time the Tomb Raider series was quickly becoming one of the hottest commodities in the industry leading many other developers making third-person action games to try and directly copy its design and aesthetic fearful that doing the same would make their game be perceived as a market follower and not a market leader Miller instructed remedy to deliberately avoid implementing features in the game that would be perceived as being tomb raider esque such as elaborate acrobatic moves or swimming in addition the team also worked hard early on to figure out a better name than dark justice Miller had never been fond of it believing that in order for their game to be a hit it needed to be named something more catchy and distinct something that would allow for good wordplay possibilities when making headlines and preferably also be the name of its protagonists in lieu of anything better the team had initially gone and trademarked the name max Heat for a fee north of $15,000 but after a month of brainstorming they managed to settle on the much sharper Max Payne once the name was established the studio set about making Max Payne into a living breathing character and designing a story that would put both him and the games third-person gameplay to good use it's here that Sam Lake a young writer that remedy had hired shortly after death rally's release would find his calling while almost everyone on the team would help flesh out max Payne's world over the course of its development lake would serve as its primary author drawing from a variety of outside sources to help establish the tonal and aesthetic foundations upon which most of the game would be built during the project's early stages these outside sources came mainly from classic noir cinema which lake had always possessed a soft spot for it from the project's beginning he saw Max's character as being the perfect fit for hard-boiled ruggedness of Humphrey Bogart types with a dash of gloomy misanthropy and sarcastic wit for good measure but as the project grew bigger and more ambitious Blake's influences ended up extending to folklore and media well beyond his initial per view including Norse mythology and Hong Kong action movies the latter proved especially pivotal in hoping to find a look and flow of combat in Max Payne influencing remedy to give us antihero his ability to lead while shooting a dramatic fashion and most importantly his ability to enter bullet time in interviews and retrospectives years later Miller would recall how this ability came about in somewhat of an indirect manner apparently during a visit that he paid to remedies offices well into the projects development the studio showed him a new feature that implemented they gave enemies dramatic slow-motion deaths as of trying to be an interactive John Woo film impressed with the feature from a technical standpoint but dissatisfied with the idea of it just being eye candy Miller insisted that remedy turned it into a mechanic that the player could control at the press of a button and the studio followed suit this wasn't the first time that such an idea had been thought of or implemented years before Max Payne would make it to store shelves Requiem avenging angel a first-person shooter released by Cyclone studios would actually allow players to perform a mechanic of a similar nature upon its release in 1999 but because of its middling level design and bland aesthetics avenging angel ended up receiving a mixed reception resulting in the industry at large overlooking the title thus even though they couldn't claim to be at sole originators remedies staff could still count on their bulletyme mechanics being viewed as revolutionary and utterly unique when players would finally try them out but when exactly this day would come remained an open question at remedy for a long time as a result of max pains ever-increasing scope the studio gradually came to accept that it was going to take far longer to complete and death rally and resigned itself to telling the world that the game would be out when they felt it to be right rather than providing a fixed date in an interview with GameSpot in 2011 Lakewood recall how at the time the team was brimming with a perfect mix of ambition and innocence they were both extremely motivated to try and prove themselves to the world yet utterly unaware of what they were getting themselves into this resulted in them having little fear for how much work a project like their current one would entail as well as little desire to back off once they were in the throes of it and if their publisher a new york-based outfit named gathering of Vella purrs ever came knocking on their door to speed things up Apogee was usually able to shield them from such pressures and lets him continue working on their game at a speed they were comfortable with amidst all of this remedy experienced growing pains both good and bad becoming a bigger and world leader entity than ever before while struggling with being a smaller studio than most of its American counterparts its staff graduated from their parents basement into a proper office building once it became clear an upgrade was an order and after deducing that it would be immensely helpful to the development of Max Payne organized a heart swelling trip to New York where six of its members extensively documented all the highs and lows that the city had to offer yet they also were forced to come up with many creative workarounds when designing aspects of Max Payne deemed too labor-intensive or costly to do normally when deciding how to convey the game's story for example Lakes suggested that the studio used comic panels instead of fully animated cutscenes so that they could both cut down on time and appear more stylized all at once likewise when giving all of the characters in the game facial textures the team resorted to using anyone they could get a hold of as their face models resulting in Lakes own likeness being used on paints head the sheer amount of features and systems that Max Payne gradually took on also resulted in its team dropping plans to include a multiplayer component speaking to retro gamer Magazine in 2015 Miller would describe how once they ironed out how pain slow-motion abilities would function they vainly attempted to prototype a multiplayer component where players will be able to use it against each other tweaking it so that they could only activate it in a localized bubble 40 feet around them but after discovering that this would be extremely difficult and time-consuming to implement the team decided to drop it and reinvest what resources would have gone into it into other parts of the project in an era where most other shooters worth their assault featured a multiplayer component of some sort this decision didn't come lightly looking back in retrospect however most involved with this development would agree that it ended up being for the best as it allowed them to focus on making a single great experience instead of what might have been two average ones 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 the final stretch of max pains development would be spent refining every square inch of its offerings after spending nearly five years with their noses to the grindstone remedies staff wanted to ensure their end product would be able to justify the means that had been taken to realize it and justify them it did upon being released in July of 2001 Max Payne would go on to become a massive hit receiving praise for almost everything that it had to offer critics found its story to be riveting praising both its content and the unique blend of mediums that used to convey said content for their character and quirks as well as the emotional payoffs they eventually provided we're previous narrative heavy shooters attempted to embody a singular tone or mood Max Payne succeeded in jumping back and forth seamlessly between self seriousness and self-awareness its characters and environments using both to keep players on their toes until the end and they couldn't get enough of it more importantly the game managed to do all of this without diminishing the appeal of its combat which players found even more enjoyable the firearms featured within it were varied and punchy the enemies that force their use were intelligent and ruthless and the one trick that players can employ to make killing the latter easier bullet time was a delight to behold not only did it look extremely impressive but it played an integral part of enemy encounters turning their strength and speed into a factor that players could reasonably manage it offered a perfect mix of functionality and stylishness and worked wonderfully with most of the environments around Max which remedy had had the foresight to fill up with interactive and often breakable objects one of the only parts of the game that players would consistently express their dislike for was its length clocking in at a little over 10 hours max pain wasn't breezy but it wasn't all that long either making its lack of multiplayer offerings feel all the more noticeable intrepid players could reattempt its campaign on more challenging and complicated difficulty modes which unlocked after repeatedly beating it though these only added so much to the experience not as disliked by players specifically but something that would give remedy itself pause after the fact was how it had chosen to close out its narrative during a presentation at the 2004 Game Developers Conference Remedies Marcus Maki would explain that they regretted their decision to kill off or incarcerate most of the game's cast by the time its credits rolled as it made it difficult for the studio to begin conceptualizing where they could take things in Ex and continue growing it into the franchise that Miller had promised it could be yet these criticisms would do little to stop Max Payne from completely and utterly proliferating across the industry with both PC gamers around the world picking it up in droves and game developers repurposing its bulletyme mechanics for their own use innumerable times in the years that would follow in one fell swoop remedy had started a revolution and there was no going back Remedy entertainments new commodity would become available to a wider audience the following December when max Payne's Xbox and Playstation 2 ports would arrive on store shelves speaking to GameSpot in 2001 remedies Petra Harbor Leto would describe how the studio realized halfway through the noir shooters development that it would make for the perfect console game and was very careful from that point forward to design it with this in mind even though it would debut on personal computers first the Xbox port which had been handled by Austrian developer neo software productions would prove this belief to have been well placed with critics finding it just as great as what had been offered in the original release the PlayStation 2 port on the other hand which had been handled by Rockstar Toronto would endure criticism for its longer and more frequent low times shoddier framerate and neutered environmental effects though these problems would do little to dissuade people around the globe from still picking it up after half a year out there seemed to be no stopping max pains continued domination even Japanese gamers normally fickle towards shooters began eating it up after it arrived on home consoles yet news of an official sequel would remain elusive until May of the following year when take to the publishing house behind rockstar and the Grand Theft Auto series would announce that it had purchased the series rights and mandated remedy to make Max Payne 2 a reality for take 2 both of these decisions represented an opportunity for to build off of the rip-roaring success of Grand Theft Auto 3 and consolidate its image as a vanguard of edgy and mature experiences while for remedy they represented another validation of the fact that it had made something truly great and a chance to follow it up with something even greater even though the team had been able to accomplish wonders with the original Max Payne it's relatively low-budget had forced them to cut corners rendering them unable to realize its world and characters and as professional manner as they had wanted as memorable as Sam Lake sneering version of Max's face was the studio was ready to give their protagonists a much more professional one and the budgeted had been given to help realize these ambitions which included an eight million dollar incentive payment from take 2 more than allowed it to do so once production on what remedy would eventually title max payne 2 the fall of max payne entered full force however the studio would do much more than just give its first game's aesthetics a fresh coat of paint in addition to overhauling the game's combat mechanics and enemy AI to be significantly more complex for example remedy attempted to make the game spaces as rich with kinetic activity as possible using havok physic's in his 2004 Game Developers Conference presentation Marcus Maki would explain that the studio wanted to add an extra dimension to the sequel's environments and saw applying havok physic's to them as both a great way to do so and a great learning opportunity for any future projects that would require the middlewares use meanwhile lake worked hard to ensure true story would both be able to offer a much more complex and nuanced tale than that of one and break new ground with the character of Mona sax a contract killer that appeared briefly in the first game before being killed off Mona like so many of one supporting cast had come to be seen as a missed opportunity due to her premature death prompting the rider to not only revive her for the sequel but allow players to control her for a few levels and sent her much of the game's plot around a budding romance between her and Max beyond helping give the game a distinctly different flavor than its predecessor the latter allowed Lake to add a layer of tension to the story that wouldn't have been possible any other way and more importantly add further depth to both characters motivations all the while Max Payne 2 was in production a port of the first Max Payne for the Game Boy Advance was also being whipped up on the side by Mobius Entertainment established in 1997 Mobius had spent the first five years of his existence mostly developing licensed games and ports for Nintendo's handhelds working with such properties as Barbie Bionicle and high heat Major League Baseball each had been challenging in its own right yet the results it had booked with Max Payne which takes you had approached the studio to develop after seeing its past projects had been in a class of its own speaking to IGN in December of 2003 Mobius says David box would describe how the advances limited Hardware forced the studio to come up with a variety of creative workarounds while designing the port this included adopting a new powerful scripting language to bring its most impressive moments to life modified cellphone technology to fit half an hour of spoken dialogue into its cutscenes and an efficient 3d renderer to realize all of its characters after the game's programmers assess that it would be to memory intensive to animate them using sprite work all these tribulations and many many more may developing the Game Boy Advance title a challenging process yet Mobius took them in stride like so many others the studio felt Remedies original game to be a landmark experience and saw its porting work has the ultimate opportunity to honor it even though most fans attention had already shifted towards its sequel like all the bad things in my life it started with the death of a woman when max payne 2 the fall of max payne landed on store shelves in November of 2003 this attention would nonetheless prove to have been well-placed a few outliers aside almost everyone that got their hands on the game found it to be a triumph and an extremely worthy successor to what had come before it whether smitten with the over-the-top nature of its environmental physics or emotionally arrested by the complexity and tenderness of its love story critics found everything new that the sequel had to offer to be subtly executed and everything old that had been given a facelift quite literally to be a substantial improvement over its predecessors offerings the only area where critics stopped short of offering the same amount of praise was its length which many felt to be as discouragingly brief as the first game its home console ports also had their troubles unlike the first Max Payne the sequels PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions had both been handled by neo software productions which had been acquired in the interim by take-two and rebranded Rockstar Vienna yet much like the first game the PlayStation version proved a disappointment with many decrying its long loading times ugly texture work and erratic framerate compared to the Xbox version but at the end of the day the most significant area where the fault of Max Payne would falter was its profitable whether due to its newfound emphasis on romance people perceiving it as not being as innovative as it actually was or some other unknown factor the sequel simply wouldn't sell through at the same rate as its predecessor in the months following its release with take two describing its sales as being continuously disappointing at a financial meeting in February of 2004 Mobius says Game Boy Advance title wouldn't fare much differently its reviews brimmed with positivity with critics agreeing that it was a surprisingly solid adaptation of this series first outing as well as one of the most technically impressive shooters to ever grace its platform yet its sales struggled to pass muster with many gamers ignoring it in favor of other more appealing portable experiences unlike Remedies title however Mobius as elaborate porting work would still end up paying dividends albeit in an indirect manner just a few months after the advanced titles launched take two when announced that it had acquired Mobius outright and renamed it Rockstar leads with Sam Houser explaining in a press release at the time that the quality of its portable production single-handedly swayed them to pick the studio up [Applause] Rockstar leads would subsequently go on to help port many of its parent companies hottest properties for the PlayStation Portable such as Midnight Club and manhunt as well as developed the Grand Theft Auto stories games and chinatown wars in collaboration with Rockstar North remedy on the other hand would move on wholesale from take to Circus and start working on an original property speaking to Screen Rant in 2018 lakewood explained that while the end of Max Payne 2's credits teased that it had more in store for its downtrodden New Yorker remedy had always planned for the sequel to be its last foray in the franchise regardless of how well it was received the studio had nothing but love for the series yet after working on it for seven years without a break its staff wanted to take some time to wind down go back to the drawing board and try something different after a long rest and an even longer period of experimentation remedy would eventually reemerge after a seven-year slumber with Alan Wake an action-adventure game about a novelists struggle against supernatural monstrosity Alan Wake offered a uniquely bifurcated experience its gameplay alternating between calm but short non-combative segments set during the daytime and thrilling encounters with beings that emerged only during the night true to remedies and tensions it was thoroughly different from Max Payne yet it also made no illusions about being substantially influenced by the latter while it's nighttime segments featured a variety of mechanics and systems distinct to itself such as using flashlights to weaken enemies they also featured several directly inspired by the noir shooter like being able to perform slow-motion dodges in times of need and though its narrative stops shy of confirming whether the two existed within the same universe its world bursts with dozens of references to it including a surprise appearance by Max's old likeness Alan Wake sales would ultimately fall short of remedies expectations but those that played the game couldn't praise it enough in a generation where more and more games were embracing cinematic qualities and production values remedies latest work still felt a cut above the rest it was a special game and especially amongst Max Payne fans a great continuation of its series leg especially when compared to what had come out just before it during the very first meeting in which Scott Miller convinced remedy to turn dark justice into Max Payne the entrepreneur had stated that if the series was a hit there could very well end up being a film made about its world and characters however after selling off the series film and television rights to collision entertainment in 2001 and hearing almost nothing of it in the years that would follow it seemed to remedy that this dream was destined to languish eternally in Hollywood limbo until word came in mid-2005 that 20th Century Fox was going to help see it to fruition as production on the movie ramped up people's emotions ran the gamut after witnessing big-screen video game adaptations struggle for decades to do their source material justice most fans were tempered about its prospects remedy on the other hand was less ture even though its members would never be contacted to consult on the film's production its mere existence still excited them it was rare enough to see a finished creation get made into a big Hollywood production let alone one based on a video game and getting to see theirs adapted in such a way was still a huge point of pride for the studio unfortunately there wouldn't be much to be proud of when it was released in October of 2008 well the movie would clean up at the box office it was struggle to find an audience willing to champion it after the fact its plot action sequences and cast of characters proving too poor to seriously appreciate yet not so poor that they could be enjoyed ironically perhaps most disappointing was its decision to cast Mark Wahlberg as Payne himself despite seemingly trying his best to bring the antihero to life most found that his portrayal severely lacked much of the personality and humor native to remedies version of the character the film's interpretation of Mona sax portrayed by Mila Kunis wouldn't be very well received either if the Max Payne movies succeeded in doing anything it was uniting fans across the world in their dislike of it and making them wonder just what had happened to the series of games that it was supposedly based on if Hollywood still felt that Max Payne was a hot enough commodity to warrant a movie it would make sense for take-two to think that it warranted an official third entry as it would turn out an official announcement about the future of the franchise was less than a year away and fated to cause even more hostility almost immediately after the release of Max Payne - take 2 has stressed that its titular protagonist adventures would continue in due time with CEO Jeffrey lapa stating in March of 2004 that even though the sequel sales had been disappointing the series overall brand was still too strong for it to be written off a third entry was inevitable however to ensure whatever they made next would hit home stronger than - they would need to make whatever came next that much more spectacular and in order to make it that much more spectacular it was going to take them a while from there the series faded into the background with Neriah people on its future leaking out in the years that would follow even during the development of the movie behind the scenes however a considerable amount of work was actually being done all over the world to try and get its third entry off the ground as revealed by concept artist johannes murca in 2019 the game was first handed over to its former porters at rockstar vienna in 2005 which conceptualized a version of the three cool that would take place in modern-day Russia unfortunately after being abruptly shut down by take-two in May of two six Vienna was forced to lay off its 100 employees and cease working on it after that the game would switch hands a few more times before morphing into a massive multinational production within Rockstar Games with its Vancouver Toronto New England and London studios assuming the bulk of its creation and almost every other subsidiary helping out in a supportive capacity this gathering of developers would in turn take three into an even more unorthodox direction than Rockstar Vienna and Rhee envisioned it as taking place in Sao Paulo Brazil starring a significantly older incarnation of Mac's previous games had imaged this series protagonist as a young felt man exploring a sinister version of the familiar now he'd be burdened with a beer belly as big as as personal demons and fighting in an utterly foreign environment how this came about had been an evolutionary process in a 2012 interview with polygon dan Houser who served as three's lead writer would describe how during the early phases of this version of the games development the team was at a crossroads as to what direction they should take it totally and aesthetically they all wanted to properly pay tribute to remedies prior works and offer a noir esque experience but they also wanted the game to feel contemporary as well as distinct from la noir which rockstar had been helping Team Bondi develop since 2006 with this project Rockstar Studios had the unique opportunity to funnel the massive amount of expertise and resources they typically dedicated into open-world games into something more focused in scope and so they wanted to make sure whatever they worked on felt worthwhile enough to warrant this vision as a result the team settled on the phrase digital Noir early on to help guide his design and distinguish it from the games before and around it the decision to have the game take place in Sao Paulo led directly from this after evaluating its options Sao Paulo stood out to Rockstar Vancouver as the perfect intersection of modernity and depravity and advanced megalopolis flush with culture and cash but still typifies by its high crime rate and intense economic inequality its streets brim with a level of vibrancy and color unseen in most traditional noir yet his soul offered the ultimate backdrop in which Rockstar could at Max's latest battles moreover on a much simpler level it represented an opportunity to get max out of the Big Apple in a 2012 interview with Digital Trends rockstars Geronimo Panetta would explain how the studio felt that there was little left to explore of his life in New York after the events depicted in Max Payne 2 shifting max over to Sao Paulo and giving him a more lethargic physique enabled Rockstar to turn a new page in his life while still continuing remedies storylines in a way that felt natural and logical when Rockstar would officially unveil this interpretation of this series in mid-2009 fan reactions would range from elated to adverse while many were happy to finally see the series continued and with a developer as competent as Rockstar no less many were equally dismayed by what it had become it was only natural that a Max Payne game not developed by remedy would be different from what had come before it but for them rockstars take on it was a pill too hard to swallow adding further salt to the wound was the announcement that this version of pain would no longer be voiced by his original voice talent James McCaffrey and that players would be able to take advantage of a cover system when in combat Rockstar had decided to implement the latter in an effort to try and further modernize the series design and acknowledged where shooters had gone since to his release but his detractors believed it would only dumb down and homogenize its gameplay Houser would claim in retrospect that this backlash left the team equal parts upbeat and downtrodden telling Gamasutra in 2011 that while it was disheartening hearing gamers call for their heads their cries also proved to them that they were working on a franchise that had a lot of love attached to it that the work they were doing mattered intensely to people on the outside unfortunately just as Rockstar seemed like it was ready to rebuke these people's concerns and release three into the world for all to judge themselves the game would be delayed into seeming oblivion and disappear from the public eye externally fears mounted among fans that the project was no more or possibly stuck in this same developmental nether realm that had swallowed rock stars agent internally however everything was business as usual albeit if the definition of usual meant excessive overwork evidence of this would quietly make its way online in early 2010 after a flurry of allegations was surfaced in January accusing Rockstar San Diego of perpetuating stressful and dehumanizing working conditions and gadget would receive word from an anonymous former employee that conditions at the vancouver offices were no different at this time with staff forced to work 14 to 16 hour workdays and six to seven days a week on the threequel this would later be corroborated by Kotaku's Jason Schreyer who would report in a 2018 expose into rockstars work practices that employees involved in its production viewed it as a death march filled with long nights and plenty of mandatory crunch everyone would still be working this hard a year and a half later when Rockstar would read a bit but the game itself would be in a slightly different place while its premise and mechanics were largely identical to what was detailed of it upon its debut everything about it now looked and sounded a little more like remedies games including Max's dialogue which Rockstar had decided to bring James McCaffrey back to voice at least one of us had a gun nail that raised our chances of survival all the way from nil to slim remedy would also offer its personal endorsement of three around this time with its staff revealing that they'd been approached to offer feedback on the project once its development entered its homestretch and had really liked what they'd been shown slowly but surely three won over more and more fans previously apprehensive of it and Rockstar showed off more and more aspects of it to draw them in further while most of these aspects were elements the industry had already seen the series do before albeit on a much smaller budget one was a future fans had long talked about for years but had never seen the Max Payne series properly attempt a multiplayer component the decision to include multiplayer had almost never been a question for the teams making it with rockstars Charlie brew sure explaining to GamesRadar at the time that from the projects on set they struggled far more with the question of how to make it special than whether it should exist their solution to this ended up being twofold a modified version of Maxis bulletyme abilities into it and make it so that some of its game types would incorporate elements of the game single-player into their makeup resulting in the creation of modes like gang wars and painkiller so I guess I'd be down what they a killer somewhere in a cloud that God puts holes and other bad guys well that's what they had paid for so in the end that's what they got finally after seemingly moving heaven and earth to try and finish it and enduring one last delay Rockstar managed to get Max Payne 3 out the door in May 2012 across all of the platforms that released on critical opinions were uniformly positive albeit slightly reserved about giving it top honors there was almost no disagreement that three's production values were among the strongest that rockstar had ever committed to the medium of games from the scale of its set pieces to the sense of weightiness that Max's older incarnation exerted when jumping the game boozed with more love and detail than almost every one of its developers previous titles that it managed to tell another riveting and introspective story about its eponymous character in the midst of all this was all the more impressive as were the many new improvements and possibilities that its gunplay and cover system offered and the dark ambience of its soundtrack which had been composed primarily by noise rock band health proved almost impossible not to love after watching Rockstar become more focused on crafting open-world games than non open-world games over the previous few years Max Payne 3 was proof that the house of grand theft auto could still kill it when tasked with making a linear experience and yet especially amongst older Max Payne fans it was also severely lacking in what had made its predecessor feel so special where one and two continuously attempted to poke fun at their own genre three shots straight it had no far-reaching allegories to Norse mythology meta monologuing about his hero being inside of a videogame or terrifying dream sequences to puzzle through just a straightforward genre story told seriously and using a few too many cutscenes for comfort some brazilian reviewers would also take issue with its depiction of Sao Paulo finding it to be more topographically and culturally similar to Rio de Janeiro than the former for better or for worse Rockstar had tried to give Max Payne 3 a different soul than remedies games and capture the dark zeitgeist of Sao Paulo when New York would have been far easier some found his results to be immensely satisfying while others were let down by them yet arguably more disappointing to all parties involved with the its commercial performance despite debuting more strongly than its predecessor Max Payne 3 would ultimately end up coming in below take twos financial expectations with its sales falling a few million units shy of being able to make up a sizable development costs in addition to leading the publisher to post a large loss for the period in which it was released Schreyer x' 2018 expose would also reveal that this resulted in rockstars employees receiving significantly lower bonuses than expected ending its lengthy development cycle on a juror note than many were hoping for it might have been stupidity drunkenness or maybe both but before I knew it I was back taking the same risks trying to save fallen women Rockstar would proceed to drip-feed 3 downloadable content for several months after its release providing new maps customisation options and game modes for players to mess around with in its multiplayer suite until January of the following year but in the end its community would die off much quicker than those of rockstars other online titles in the years that have followed the series Spirit has continued to remain alive and well dat remedy while the studio has branched out and moved past solely making third person character driven shooters the latter style of game continues to be its bread and butter with titles such as quantum break and control representing remedies most high profile attempts yet to further evolve max pains magic and unless its fortunes unexpectedly sour things will likely remain this way at remedy for some time to come yet the Max Payne series itself in its corporeal form has been all but missing in action remedy has expressed interest at the idea of taking up its mantle once more with late claiming in 2016 that if the opportunity were to arise he had confidence that they would be able to make something great but as Alan Wake quantum break and control of all shown the studio is in no hurry to go back and return to Payne's maniacal world it wants to keep moving forward and explore new ideas ones that it fully owns I don't have to fit into any other pre-existing mold likewise Rockstar has transitioned in the years max pains release to working solely on open world titles like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 with all of its subsidiaries meaning that unless the Houser suddenly become inspired to reimagine the series as a sprawling sandbox game it's unlikely to pick it up again either this doesn't mean that a new Max Payne title is impossible if the impetus to will Max Payne 4 into existence were to well up within take 2's executives they could theoretically mandate one of its non Rockstar studios to develop it such as mafia 3 developer hangar 13 or contracted out to a developer outside his purview but even the odds of this happening are slim despite critical opinions of Max Payne 3 having improved in the years following its release its sales never managed to push past the threshold take 2 wanted it to eclipse and in a generation where games cost more than ever to create money speaks louder than words as a result while the world might never get another Max Payne its accomplishments are still incredibly enviable when compared to most other inactive series not only did it stick around long enough to let its developers do everything we wanted to accomplish with its noir inspired storylines and reality defying gunplay but it managed to be influential enough to ensure it'll never truly die even after its characters and setting all fade from the public consciousness games will continue to endlessly emulate his style and mechanics and it's Spirit will persist that its original developer is still alive and continuing to make games similar in style to it is only further heartening as well as hugely helpful to its legacy at the very least one can imagine that max himself probably enjoys how quiet things currently are after spending a lifetime being forced into the most heinous of situations going this long without being forced into a new conflict must undoubtedly be refreshing despite knowing that one day his journey through the night may very well continue once more [Music] thank you for watching our video our documentaries are crowdfunded and made possible by your continued support for us we'd like to thank by name the generous patrons who have pledged to our highest rewards here Caleb she's keifa CH mu movies.com jefferson dos Santos Oliveira Maktoum Saeed Al Maktoum Mohammad Khayat Hetrick bolio Timur to to speak off if you enjoy our content please consider subscribing to our Channel and joining us on patreon thank you you

Channel: GVMERS

Views: 829,962

Rating: 4.9366531 out of 5

Keywords: Max Payne, Max Payne 2, The Fall of Max Payne, Max Payne 3, The Rise and Fall of Max Payne, Max Payne 4, Remedy Entertainment, Rockstar Games, Development, The History of Max Payne, Documentary, Sam Lake, James McCaffrey, Mark Wahlberg, 2008, Movie, Retrospective

Id: -2T_llaF9jE

Length: 47min 3sec (2823 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 27 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/abysmalentity]

What fall? This series never had one.

[u/ConstableGrey]

Max Payne 3 was one of the best third person shooters of its generation, don't know why Rockstar hasn't used its style of shooting again in another one of their games.

[u/Godgivesmeaboner]

The shooting and action in Max Payne 2 still puts most games nowadays to shame. It was way ahead of its time.

[u/Bokthand]

I honestly think MP3 is a pretty great game. The cutscene style got kind of annoying, all the cuts and weird camera/screen effects, and how they hid load times in them so you couldn't skip a majority of every cutscene. Aside from that, I really like the gunplay and what they did with his character. Great soundtrack too.

[u/[deleted]]

Gvmers content always quality. I often wonder where he gets his intel, must be involved directly in the industry

[u/WolfofNothing]

Max Payne 3 was the perfect end to Max's story for me.

[u/MsgGodzilla]

I know it had problems, as many in this thread will explain. But Max Payne 3 was still one of the best 3rd person shooters of all time. Unskippable cutscenes was an obvious massive blunder, but man that gameplay and the story was amazing, even if it was different than the noir style of MP1 and 2.

Max Payne 4 would be my most desired next game from Rockstar.

[u/BillyBean11111]

Max Payne 3 is amazing and I'd love to replay it, but i cannot sit through those unskippable cutscenes

[u/GavinTheAlmighty]

MP3 is a fun, beautiful game with good controls that didn't feel enough like a Max Payne game for me to place it alongside MP1 and 2. If it makes any sense, to me it felt more like "grit" than "noir", more or less completely lacking the self-awareness and humour of the first two. MP3 just took itself WAY too seriously, and it was off-putting.

There's nothing in MP3 like a drugged Max waxing about how he's in a video game, or the Finito brothers, or an assassin talking about killing thugs while receiving fellatio, or a gangster trapped in a comic book character costume with a bomb in it, or anything like that.

I liked the cheesy, corny style of the first two, trying to be a 40s film noir (obviously 1 more so than 2), not a poorly-written ripoff of a Tony Scott movie. I didn't get any of that in 3, and it bummed me out.

It's a good game, and if you like third-person shooters, it's mechanically fabulous. But if what you liked about MP1 and 2 was the tone and style, be prepared that 3 is radically different. Game series have to grow and evolve over time, but it just felt like 3 lost the heart and soul of what made Max Payne fun and different.