Max Payne Special Report

Action Vault over at IGN has a special report on Max Payne up today. This awesome review covers just about anything you'd want to know about Max - including having Scott Miller along for the ride during the special report. Check out a bit of what Scott has to say about the game in the report:

On the subject of movie parallels, it's interesting to note that many seem to miss the link between John Woo and Max Payne. Instead, it's not uncommon to see another film with gravity-defying moves, The Matrix, mentioned in the same sentence with Remedy's and 3D Realms' project. Scott Miller points out the movie's true degree of influence. "It seems most people mistakenly give far too much credit to The Matrix as inspiration, and while The Matrix influenced Max a little, much of what is cool about Max was in the design before that movie came out, because John Woo had done it all in his movies long before. Specially, I'm talking about the slow motion lateral dives that Max does, which we call 'shootdodging.'"

In the game's final form, slow motion plays a pivotal role, but this was actually not the case at one point in development until the teams realized the great potential it had. "Early in the game's design, we had the idea of modeling bullets as true physical objects traveling at real-life speeds through the game space," relates Miller. "At the time, this idea was designed to further enhance the realism that we wanted the game to exude. Remedy implemented this idea beautifully, and seeing it in slow motion, as a test, convinced everyone that slow motion needed to be a bigger part of the game experience. It all flowed from there to what we have in the finished game." In addition to its gameplay function, slow motion has also been incorporated into the occasional internal cutscene for added effect. Such moments are seen when Max finishes off certain predetermined characters.

There's lots more to read. This is one of the better reviews of Max Payne out there, so spend some time and check it out. Several other things are discussed, including some ideas that didn't make it into the game, as well as what 3D Realms' relationship to Remedy and the game's development was. Check it out today!

Posted by Joe Siegler on October 30, 2001 at 11:50 AM | Permalink
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