Preview Max Payne 3 (Part One)

Dear Habrochane! I present to you the first part of the translation of the preview of Max Payne 3 from the July issue of Game Informer.



A bald man with a beard, on the cover of a magazine, barely resembles the hero with whom we experienced the events of two parts of this successful game. He has aged a lot after the tragic events of Max Payne 2, he has gotten stronger and has acquired new scars. If it were not for the logo on the cover, you would hardly have recognized it.

This is the first experience of Rockstar Games in the development of the game in this series, as it was previously responsible for Remedy Entertainment, but Rockstar has bought the rights and now the franchise is on her conscience. “It’s not so easy to work with a franchise that you didn’t work with initially,” said Rob Nelson, the art director of Rockstar, with us. “You must not only save the game’s features, but also let the series evolve. We are not a Remedy, but we respect what they did. ”

“We are trying to keep all the elements that players love eight or nine years ago, but our main task is to make these elements influence the player now. It is very difficult, because we need not only to continue the story of the game, but also to create a new world that modern gamers will love. We have a series on our hands, from which people expect a lot and, you know, this is a huge pressure, ”Nelson tells us. “We challenge ourselves, we follow our instincts, trust our intuition.” At Rockstar’s New York office, we (GI journalists - translator’s note) were the first to see the game in action. If you expect to see a banal sequel, then get ready to be surprised. In the third part, Max will find himself in places where he has never been to visit, but at the same time the game will retain its proprietary gameplay, which made the series a reputation. Like any other Rockstra game, MP3 is made with great love, and a bit of bigotry.

Urban jungle

Rockstar Games, like no other publisher, wants its games to be able to get the most out of the game’s culture. Whether it is the crazy Liberty City, the campus of the Bully suburban school or the hot desert of Red Dead Redemption being developed - the heroes are almost always the perfect reflection of the setting. The company is known for creating so amazing and developed worlds that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish them from the real ones. Dark and depressing New York, the atmosphere of a classic noir, cinematographicity, a cut-scene in the form of a graphic novel - this is the first two parts of Max Payne. However, Rockstar Vancouver decided to throw Max as far as possible from the Big Apple - in the fast-growing Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paulo, with its population of 20 million people.

“Recall such films as“ City of God ”and“ Elite Squad ”- in Latin America there are really tense situations, this is the perfect setting,” says Vice President of the Rockstar development department Geronimo Berrera.

This setting is a real testing ground. Ghetto Sao Paulo is one of the most dangerous places in the world. In addition to the drug trade, one of the most famous urban gangs, Primero Comanda da Capital, settled here. This gang is responsible for numerous prison riots, robberies and kidnappings. Add to this the corrupt police and the shocking statistics: every 75th resident has a weapon with him. Not surprisingly, the main cause of death among young people is murder. They don't live in Sao Paulo - they survive there, and that makes it a great place to play. "You are waiting for giant skyscrapers with expensive penthouses, standing right in the middle of the slums," - Berrera does not let up. “São Paulo is full of helipads on the roofs of buildings.” For the rich, air travel is the safest. It is also full of private security agencies. ” Rockstar explored São Paulo with her usual meticulousness: more than a dozen workers were sent there to take pictures, gather information and soak up the atmosphere of the city. They even brought along 3D scanning equipment, which will make every little thing in the game look authentic.

“We had a lot of problems at customs with this equipment,” recalls Nelson. “We scanned hundreds of people, worked with casting agencies, we explained to them what we needed and they sent us hundreds of photos. People came in their everyday clothes and we scanned them. ”Berrera believes that paranoid attention to detail is an integral part of the design. “This is exactly what you need,” he says. “Bringing together the key elements - technology, development, history. That's why our games look right.

')

New type of noir

Many have a question: “What the hell is Max Payne, the former detective of the police in New York forgotten in Sao Paulo?” As in any good noir story, we will be damned uneasy about truth. The developers immediately fell silent when the conversation turned to spoilers, but still we managed to find out something:

After the events told in MP2, for Max is fixed notoriety. Alcoholism and addiction to the painkiller turned him into a completely depressed person. Having lost his job in the police, Payne’s next 12 years of life turn into a solid drop to the bottom. The developers describe this period as the “lost years" of Max’s life. We do not know the details, but one thing is clear - this period has exhausted our hero spiritually and physically. Alcoholics call their lives “the bottom” when it cannot be worse. Max reaches his bottom in Sao Paulo, the city to which he moves to get away from his “demons” who were chasing him in New York. With the help of dubious connections, he becomes the bodyguard of one of the most influential families in the city. Work throws Max into the dark world of the slums of Sao Paulo, he becomes a participant in a series of events that could cost him the only thing left for him - life. Immediately very unusual to see the new Max - pumped up, bearded and bald-headed, wading through the maze of the streets of São Paulo.

This world is definitely far from the rain-flooded streets of New York, but the developers believe that the new setting for the noir game is no less suitable than the one that made the previous games so memorable. “Some will say that Max Payne should be black and white and take place in New York,” says Berrera, “but noir is a style, not a place and a certain color scheme. Noir is not only saxophones and big shadows - it is a world view that loses its colors. Here's what we do: we refresh Max. ”





upd: The second part of the article is here .

upd2: Added some pictures. Everything is clickable.