‘I Got That Completely Wrong’ — Dan Houser Considers Rockstar’s Max Payne 3 a Failure
Max Payne and its sequel, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, are two of the most genre-defining third-person shooters ever made. They propelled Finnish developer Remedy Entertainment into the spotlight as one of the most exciting studios making games. So, it was also going to be a challenge for another developer to pick up the third part of that trilogy. If you have the likes of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption under your belt, though, you might just fancy your chances.
That’s what former Rockstar VP and writer of Max Payne 3, Dan Houser, thought, and while enjoying the process of making it, he now admits that it didn’t quite hit the mark. Despite being well-received critically, the 2012 game underperformed commercially, and wasn’t a huge hit with players. While Max Payne 3 is a great shooter in its own right, some questioned whether it tonally fit with its heavily noir-influenced predecessors, instead trading in the gloomy, introspective weirdness of Remedy’s New York set games for a more high-octane, colourful, all-action approach.
“It was a linear game, so it was a little different from writing an open-world game, a little more structured,” Houser told IGN as part of our IGN30 Icons Series. “I really enjoyed that as an experience. I loved what we did design-wise, the way the game didn't have loads, the way it felt like a 12-hour movie, some of the visual stuff we did with words on screen. I felt we were creating a really cool digital noir experience, and the consensus at the time was that people hated it.
“So I got that completely wrong,” Houser admitted. “I know Sam Lake [creator of Max Payne] well, and he's a very good guy and really talented. I thought we'd done a good job of doing another Max Payne game. Some people liked it; lots didn't. So we got it wrong, or I got it wrong. I failed. My bit was not a success. The game is beautifully made, and it wasn't as successful as it should have been. So I would say a large amount of that failure was on me as one of the people making the decisions and also as the writer, when people really missed his writing.”
Max Payne 3 is certainly different in tone to what came before it, but I still hold a lot of love for it. Max Payne 2 remains one of my favourite games to this day due to the storytelling housed in its murky world, but there’s no denying that Rockstar brought something new and flashy to the table almost a decade later when taking the character to Brazil.
That bullet time still feels as sweet as ever to trigger, though, and if that level of polish can be brought over to Remedy’s upcoming remakes of the first two in the trilogy, then they can’t come soon enough. We last heard about the project over a year ago, when the studio revealed that it was in “full production” and that the "collaboration with Rockstar Games remains close and productive."
Of course, Rockstar currently has its plate very much full with the imminent launch of GTA 6 on November 19. For more on GTA 6, you can read our full interview with Rockstar co-studio head Rob Nelson, how the game will tackle the current political climate, and why Dan Houser says he won’t be playing it.