How Rockstar Should Bring Back Max Payne

Rockstar’s Current Problem

This leads to the biggest elephant in the room: The current problem with Rockstar’s narratives.

For over a decade, Rockstar has been recycling the exact same plot over and over again. No, I’m not just talking about GTA V and L.A. Noire coming out for the billionth time. I’m talking about the “one last job” yawnfest the audience has been fed repeatedly.

Rockstar seems to have gotten lost in a loop of casting their “heroes” as reluctant former bad guys that need to get back in the game to pull off a "final mission" and then they’re done for good.

John Marston needs to take out an old gang-mate, Bill Williamson, to return home only to find the government keeps forcing him to go after more and more ex-members.

Cole Phelps, an ex-soldier now in the LAPD ends up trying to redeem himself by solving one last mystery.

Michael De Santa, former bank robber and con-man brought back into a life of crime for one last heist for the FIB agent, Davey.

Arthur Morgan, desperately looking to find a home for his gang with Dutch leading them on, you guessed it, one last job to get enough money to hightail it out of there.

And here we have Max Payne, disgraced former cop going on one last hurrah to make-up for all of his previous misdeeds. It’s like all Rockstar script meetings start with “an aged white man who doesn’t want to be bad anymore gets sucked back into his old life”. Yawn.

This isn’t to say that those games do not feature incredible stories overall. However, it feels like receiving a wonderful gift wrapped up in the same mouldy old wrapping paper that's been in the loft for years.

Still thoughtful and exciting, but ultimately leaves a rather bad taste in the air.

Max Payne is Rockstar’s chance to reinvent themselves, to use one of their oldest tropes and characters as a metaphoric revamp for the company and their story structures.