10 Video Games That Started At The End

10. Every Max Payne Game

All three Max Payne games opted to kick things off within the same narrative structure: giving players a glimpse of the final battle's aftermath and then setting the rest of the game in the lead-up to that showdown.

The opening scene in the first game shows Max atop the Aesir Plaza holding a Sniper Rifle as he tells the player, "They were all dead." Lo and behold, it turns out that this scene occurs immediately after Max kills the game's final boss, Nicole Horne, at the very end.

Similarly, Max Payne 2 opens with an injured Max laying with Mona Sax in Alfred Woden's mansion as the police move in, which happens after the final boss, Vladimir Lem, is killed.

Not wanting to upset the trend, Max Payne 3's opening cinematic shows a brief clip of a wounded Max approaching a severely maimed unidentified man, and in the final minutes of the game, this scene plays out again, revealing the man to be antagonist Armando Becker.

In each case, the clear intent is to show players what drove Max to these violent ends, and in each case, it's smart use of a classic framing device.