Remedy Entertainment and Max Payne are back together – and the reunion is coming in the form of a full remake of the first two action games of the hard-boiled series.
The news arrived Wednesday in the form of a press release signed by both Remedy, the series’ creators, and Rockstar Games, the franchise’s current rights holder after the license was transferred between companies in the early ’00s. The two companies have entered into a publishing partnership through which Rockstar will fund a remaster of both Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne as a single, combined gameplay pack.
Both games will be recreated using Remedy’s proprietary Northlight game engine, which was last used in Ars Technica’s Game of the Year 2019, Check† In addition to a PC launch, the resulting two-game pack will be a current-generation console exclusive to Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. This means the game could potentially flex the same ray-tracing muscles as in Control Ultimate 2021. Edition, also exclusive to the current generation. No date has been announced for the game and “The project is currently in the concept development phase,” the press release said.
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Coincidentally, this news comes on top of Remedy’s existing publishing deal with Epic Games. That deal guarantees the companies will team up to launch two multiplatform games “in the same franchise:” One game will have a triple-A range and the other smaller. No date has been set for either Epic-related games since that announcement in March 2020, and neither company has made it clear whether the franchise in question is brand new or based on an existing Remedy IP-like. Alan Wake†
Remedy has not announced a target storefront for the PC version. Based on Rockstar’s recent track record, the game will likely appear on the Rockstar Games Launcher as at least an option, if not an exclusive.
The last time Remedy spoke formally about her relationship with Max Payne was in 2018 leading up to Check2019 launch. Studio lead and payne co-creator Sam Lake confirmed that shaking the series license in the early ’00s meant that Max Payne 2 was the last game Rockstar wanted Remedy to deliver. Almost a decade later, Rockstar started producing Max Payne 3 as an internal project with a distinctly different scope (although this third game at least kept Payne’s original voice actor).
As I wrote in a 2012 review of Max Payne 3 for the now-defunct iPad magazine The Daily:
At times, the game unleashes Rockstar’s talent for compelling character relationships, but for the most part, those have been swept away to make way for a maze of crime syndicates and dirty cops. That plot won’t provoke a second playthrough; neither the score more points replay mode nor a stunning average take on online multiplayer. That said, the set pieces, shootout choreography, and satisfying firefights make this one of the best story-driven single-player games in a while, and the plot and dialogue are far from crap. Still, the way Rockstar stretched a 2-hour plot over a 10-hour journey makes one thing clear: linear material isn’t Rockstar’s bag yet.
This came after Rockstar’s fuzzy attempt to turn around in 2008 Max Payne in a Hollywood franchise. Mark Wahlberg’s Vehicle remains one of Rotten Tomatoes’ worst-grossing films of all time.
Remedy has yet to clarify whether the gameplay or dialogue for both games will be revised in any way to meet modern expectations. Although both original Max Payne games remain beloved as relics of the PlayStation 2 era – complete with hard-boiled dialogue and the use of a still-new “bullet time” mechanic from movies like the matrix– other third-person action games have flown far beyond those standards in the decades since.
