How Rockstar Should Bring Back Max Payne

How Max Payne Can Solve It

So how can Max Payne of all things break the Rockstar mould?

Well, there are several directions that Rockstar could tackle this. Option one is a complete overhaul and reboot of the franchise.

Max Payne is young again and just starting out as a cop in the NYPD.

It is rare that Rockstar games get to explore the role of a genuine member of law enforcement with even L.A. Noire’s Phelps being a shady individual who cheated on his wife. Rockstar loves a protagonist with skeletons in their closet, but that doesn’t mean they have to take the phrase literally.

Option two is to “recast” the role of Max and totally build the franchise back from the ground up. The idea of another forty-something white male protagonist is just incredibly dull at this point. Thankfully, the name Max is perfectly gender neutral and doesn’t limit itself to any race or background. Max can be whoever they want them to be.

The third, and possibly most cliche route, is to have the game focus on Max's protege. A younger individual that heard tales of the once-legendary Max Payne, who wants to learn from the best.

Rockstar could even pull the old Metal Gear bait and switch with the player taking control of this newbie for most of the game until their untimely death with the latter part of the story dedicated to Max once more.

A complete reboot would be a chance to explore some of the other themes brought up in the series. For one, Max had several hallucinations due to his substance abuse which manifested in often religious imagery in the first two games. Some of these were caused when he was injected with a large dose of Valkyr from the Aesir Corporation.

Many times during his hallucinations, Max would perceive the world as a comic book or a video game. There were some allusions to this style during the third game’s flashbacks where the screen would flicker almost like hitting an old TV or text would be highlighted to accentuate them.

By bringing back that comic book aesthetic would really give Rockstar the chance to flex its artistic side with previous incredible work from Ian Bowden and Roxie Vizcarra. There is also an opportunity to fully absorb the Norse and religious imagery present in the earlier stories and go absolutely wild with it.

There are so many exciting possibilities in bringing back this Remedy Entertainment classic but it is safe to say that a serious shakeup needs to happen at rockstar before that can happen.