Many of you may know Max Payne 3 was not developed by Remedy Entertainment, but was a collaborative effort between various Rockstar Games studios. Remedy is currently in the last phase of finishing up Quantum Break. The studio’s creative director and writer of the first two Max Payne games, Sam Lake, was asked to comment on his involvement in the creation of the game during a lecture held at the Cité des Sciences et de L’industrie in Paris.
He mentioned that the developers at Rockstar Games asked the folks at Remedy to play the game during production in order to provide feedback. Lake liked the game, especially because it felt like Rockstar was applying their own original style into the Max Payne universe. He was actually afraid of the idea of seeing Rockstar just trying to mimic Remedy’s style, instead of doing their own thing. Luckily, Max Payne 3 was still Max Payne, but was very definitely Rockstar’s own version, and a re-imagining of the franchise.
Lake continued by mentioning that he can safely say that, if done by Remedy, Max Payne 3 would have been completely different, but according to him what Rockstar did was the right creative way of approaching things. Lake also explained that he thinks that Dan Houser (who wrote Max Payne 3) is a “phenomenal writer,” and after the development of the game, when he was working on the graphic novel, he went to Lake to ask him about Max’s childhood, then he used the insight he received to create the story.
During Gamescom, I personally spoke with Lake about this topic as well. Back then he already praised the way Rockstar had developed a sense for the character and were trying their best to please the fans.