Remedy announces Max Payne & Max Payne 2 remakes

Remedy Entertainment will remake the original Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, doing so in partnership with series publisher Rockstar Games.

Now, as then, Rockstar will publish and finance the games – OK, so technically, Take Two sister brand Gathering of Developers published the first on PC and Rockstar handled the console ports – while Remedy Entertainment will get to work with all of the development work, rebuilding the studio’s breakout hit games within their in-house Northlight game engine. That’s the same game engine used to develop Control and the upcoming Alan Wake 2. All of this will be “in line with a typical Remedy AAA-game production.”

Of the deal, Rockstar founder Sam Houser said, “We were thrilled when our long-time friends at Remedy approached us about remaking the original Max Payne games. We are massive fans of the work the Remedy team has created over the years and we can’t wait to play these new versions.”

Remedy CEO Tero Virtala commented, “Max Payne has always held a special place in the hearts of everyone at Remedy, and we know the millions of fans worldwide feel the same.”

Max Payne was the game that put Remedy on the map for an awful lot of gamers. Released in 2001, it brought the ‘bullet time’ slow-motion effect from The Matrix to video games, applying it to a gritty neo-noir third person shooter. Remedy Entertainment creative director Sam Lake leant his face to the character, what with the studio not being able to pay for actors.

Max Payne Remake Announced

Max Payne brought Bullet Time to video games.

Lake’s visage was replaced by actor Timothy Gibbs for the sequel Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, which was set two years after the first game’s events and received plenty of acclaim once again.

The odd one out in the Max Payne series is Max Payne 3, which was developed by Rockstar after Remedy moved on to other projects with other publishers – namely the Xbox exclusive Alan Wake.

What will the Max Payne remakes look like? Will Sam Lake return to the role for them? It will be a while before we find out, because the remakes are now only in the “concept development stage”.

Remedy is a very busy developer right now. Following the success of Control in 2019, they’ve embarked on a wide-range of projects with a wide variety of partners. They’re working on Alan Wake 2 with Epic Games, a Control sequel and a co-op spin-off codenamed Condor with 505 Games, and another mysterious game codenamed Vanguard in partnership with Tencent.

Source: Remedy

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