Preview:
http://www.next-gen.biz/features/max-payne-3-preview
WELCOME TO SAO PAULO
One of the first questions that emerged after the game’s announcement was: why São Paulo? Why take Payne out of his New York home and into Brazil’s vast metropolis? “We saw a lot of diverse environments that we could stick him in,” answers Nelson. “It’s a huge city and there’s a major disparity between rich and poor. Learning about that, finding out how massive the place is, has been fascinating.” Importantly, Rockstar claims to have put the same amount of research into the city as Remedy did with New York, drawing out a similar number of first-hand materials (the original Max Payne was one of the first PC titles to use digitised photos as texture maps). Several members of the development team travelled to Brazil for weeks of photography and filming, immersing themselves in local society. When asked about the surprising elements, Nelson finds it hard to pick out just one or two examples. “I think the elite police forces that they have there – the BOPE – were quite interesting; they’re pretty serious dudes. And the music they’re into there, the clubs they have… every corner you turn round there’s cool stuff to discover.” A key aim, then, has been to capture the variety of the architecture and the culture. “We can’t really re-use a lot of assets,” says Nelson. “Every stage is going to be different from the last one. Brazil is a fascinating place to set a game – there are plenty of unique aspects to the setting that we’ll reveal over time. We’ve got a lot to work with.” And, according to Nelson, the process is continuing. “The research is constant, it’s anything that we can get our hands on, pretty much all the way through development. Everyone gets really interested – we’re always swapping things we’ve learned, trying to make sure we’re accurately recreating the place. We take it really seriously.”
(...)It’s a brooding, ostentatious setup, clearly inspired more by tech-savvy stylist Michael Mann than John Woo (...)
geiel!
The third way is that we’re bringing back Max’s classic narration, which not only helps move the story forward, but adds to the atmosphere of the game. We want people to move seamlessly from cutscene to gameplay without pauses in the flow or big breaks in the overall look and feel, and this seems to be the right way to go.”
Importantly, what Max Payne 3 doesn’t feel like is a standard corridor shooter with identikit bad guys spawning endlessly out of open doorways. Each encounter we experience feels specifically staged and works within the context of the environment and the story.
So this looks to be what Rockstar has always promised – Max Payne re-interpreted and re-energised for the contemporary shooter fanatic. The lynchpin of the project is the combination of bullet-time with procedural animation, overlaying its heavypunching storytelling with an adaptable, tactical system with bags of visual clout. It’s going to be a game about feel and mechanics, of user interface and violence. To compete on these terms today, it needs to be astonishing at what it does. Considering what Rockstar has achieved already, the signs are that it won’t let the game go until it is.
Bin ja schon sehr gespannt, was sie aus meinen beiden Lieblingsgames machen!
