10 Video Game Stories That Clearly Ended (And Then Got A Sequel)
8. Max Payne 2: The Fall Of Max Payne
Max Payne 2 is one of the greatest video game sequels ever made, an electrifying action extravaganza which concludes with Max Payne murdering the hell out of everyone who opposes him, while his lover Mona Sax also ends up biting the bullet.
Most importantly, the game ends with Max finally learning to deal with the murder of his family, placing a blood-soaked capper on his ultra-violent journey across the two games.
Series writer Sam Lake later confirmed that he had always designed Max Payne 2 to be the series' finale, so when Rockstar Games - who bought the IP after the first game - went ahead with a threequel without Lake's involvement, it was quite literally a case of bringing a done franchise back to life.
Controversially, Max Payne 3 ditched the series' classic noir aesthetic for the sun-kissed favelas of São Paulo and effectively undid Max's happy(ish) ending by making him an alcoholic drug addict who gets roped into a kidnapping plot.
In fairness, Max Payne 3 was absolutely spectacular from a gameplay perspective, though coming almost a decade after the last game and scarcely resembling its style, it almost felt like a totally different experience with the Max Payne label slapped on it.
Hilariously, in Lake's own follow-up Alan Wake, he included a manuscript Easter egg which seemed to poke fun at the series continuing past its natural end point. He's not wrong.