How the Game "Max Payne" Was Created: 10 Interesting Facts About the Game (13 photos)

Max Payne is one of the most iconic series in the history of video games and the main noir detective of the entire medium. A modern crime drama, skillfully playing on the player's feelings with the help of a plot and verified gameplay, has secured the title of legend no worse than Doom or Half-Life.





1. The story of the game "Max Payne" begins with a hot Finnish guy Samuli Suwahoku, who was interested in programming and created graphic presentations back in his student years. But after graduating from university, he realized that graphic presentations would not build the future, so he gathered a group of like-minded people and decided to start working on computer games, creating the company "Remedy Entertainment".



The company's headquarters were located in Samuli Suwahoku's apartment, and the staff did not even number 10 people. But the guys were confident in their goals and began developing their first game - "Death Rally", which was a top-down racing game.

The guys started sending out a demo version of the game to various publishers, and one of them responded. These publishers turned out to be the company "Apogee" ("3D Realms"), which was already known as the publisher of such games as "Wolfenstein 3D" and "Duke Nyukem 3D".





Death Rally

When the project was given the green light, Samuli Suwahoku invited his friend Sami Jarvi (aka Sam Lake) to the team as a scriptwriter. Looking ahead, I will say that it was Sami Jarvi who would become the model for Max Payne himself. And yes, he was the one who came up with the noir style of the game, as he is a big fan of Humphrey Bogart, the star of noir films.

2. After "Death Rally" was released, the Finnish guys thought about creating a new game. Moreover, they had three ideas, namely another race, a strategy game, or an isometric shooter.

The founder of "Apogee" Scott Miller liked the idea of ​​a shooter, but he rejected the idea of ​​isometry, saying that the game must be three-dimensional. As an example, he cited the game "Tomb Raider", justifying his idea by the fact that the game became a worldwide hit.



The guys liked this idea and Samuli Suwahoku again connected Sami Jarvi (Sam Lake) to write the script.

3. The plot of the game revolved around a New York police officer who challenged a major drug syndicate. Also, it was decided to make the game in a noir style with notes of Scandinavian myths (a striking example is the bar "Ragnarok" and the drug "Valkyrin").



As for the name, the game was originally supposed to be called "Dark Justice", which described the concept of the game. But Scott Miller said that putting the game concept in the title is a bad idea, since if the concept is changed, the name will no longer be relevant.

Scott suggested to the guys the idea of ​​using the main character's first and last name in the title, as they themselves did in the case of the game "Duke Nyukem". The Finns liked this idea. All that was left was to come up with a name for the protagonist.

4. Before coming up with a name for the character, Scott Miller had already given the Finns the idea of ​​calling the hero Max, to which the guys from "Remedy Entertainment" agreed. All that was left was to think about the last name. And in the end, they came up with the idea of ​​giving the hero the last name Heat.



But then weapons consultant Ossi Turpinen suggested to his friends the idea of ​​changing the hero's last name to Payne. This name would better reflect the essence of the hero, because the word Payne is consonant with Pain, thanks to which the main character's first and last name would sound like "Maximum pain". The guys liked this idea.

Nevertheless, the name "Max Heat" also found a place in the game. This is the name of an adult magazine that we can find during the game.

5. The main feature of the game "Max Payne" is undoubtedly "Bullet time", that is, slowing down time. But the most surprising thing is that initially nothing like this was planned for the game.



It all happened almost by accident. The Finnish guys showed Scott Miller their developments, in particular, they showed him how opponents die in slow motion. Scott Miller liked what he saw so much that he suggested that the guys make the ability to slow down the main feature of the game. And they supported this idea.

6. Initially, it was planned to use cutscenes to immerse the player in the plot, but this would have cost the studio a pretty penny, and the budget was not very large. Then screenwriter Sam Lake suggested using a comic-style narration with photographs instead of cutscenes. The rest liked this idea, because it saved the budget, and it would also help the developers navigate more easily during the creation of the game.



7. Due to budget savings, it was decided not to take professional actors to shoot in comic-style cutscenes. Most of the characters in the game were played by those involved in its creation. Well, screenwriter Sam Lake (Sami Jarvi) himself played the role of the main character - Max Payne.



And now everything fell into place, because when I first played this game, I just didn’t understand why Max was always grinning in every cutscene.



Well, during the creation of the second and third parts of the game, the company's budget became larger, so they hired professional actors.

8. Despite the fact that the model for Max Payne was screenwriter Sam Lake, his voice was completely unsuitable for this character. As a result, actor James McCaffrey, known for the series "Law & Order" and other film projects, was invited to voice over. Incidentally, he also voiced Payne in other parts of the game. Moreover, in the third part, he also became a model for capturing Max Payne's motion.



9. Initially, the developers wanted to implement multiplayer into the game, but due to the slowdown, multiplayer seemed impossible. Nevertheless, it was implemented in the third part of the game.

10. The developers decided to have a little fun and created an interesting Easter egg with rats, which I, unfortunately, did not know about before. The point is that at the very beginning of the second chapter you need to throw a grenade into a hole in the wall. In this case, rats armed with pistols will start attacking you.



Also, in the first chapter you can find an obvious reference to the series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Behind one of the doors we will see a corpse with an aspen stake stuck in it. And next to it we see the inscription Buff. The dead man clearly did not have time to finish writing the name of his killer.