While he rightly observes that a trailer, especially nowadays, is no measure of a movie, it must be reassuring to see the more hallucinatory side of Max Payne emerging on the big screen, even in the form of CGI demons that yank their prey out of windows. At least this isn’t your average crime thriller, even if it does represent another attempt to pass hard-man dialogue through its star’s slightly unsuitable vocal chords.

“The advantage for us was that many of these things were seldom seen in games but often seen in movies, so it was fun to tap into that material,” says Lake. “We have this saying at the office: ‘some call them clichés, we call them classics’. Making a movie’s a totally different thing because you’ve seen those things already, so many times.” Let’s hope, then, that the makers of Max Payne are enjoying a reversal of that process, using videogame fantasy to break the mould of the pedestrian, PG-rated cop movie. “I’d like to think so, definitely,” smiles Lake.

If the worst happens, chances are it will only fuel the demand for what people really want: Max Payne 3. Remedy is still hard at work on its remarkable-looking psychological thriller Alan Wake – but so long as there’s a desire to see Max reload his guns, people will sow rumours. It’s something Lake himself wonders about. “It would be nice to know exactly what people love about it, but these things aren’t that clear. Something worked well there, and people remember the character. I remember articles at the time talking about Tomb Raider, saying that to have this thirdperson approach made many male players feel protective about Lara – there was this extra motivation to keep her alive. It seems that we managed to do something similar.”



Does a third game have a place among the likes of Stranglehold (Vanhatalo: “You could tell they put a lot of love into that game”), Gears Of War and Resident Evil 5? “I’m quite certain that at some point there’ll be another Max Payne,” says Lake. “He has a good home with Rockstar and I’m sure they’ll do something impressive with him when the time is right. We worked with Max for seven years and, to be honest, for a couple of years afterwards that felt like more than enough. He’s a gloomy guy to spend your time with. Now, though, there are times when you start to think about what kinds of stories you could do with him. You can’t help it.”

Another five years on, few have risen to Max Payne’s really quite simple challenge: to make a game that doesn’t just point its camera at a person, but looks at them, creating more than just a player-inhabited shell. Games like BioShock are lauded for their storytelling yet continue to swirl around a vacuum, or at best a figment reflected in the words of others. Despite the best efforts of Heavenly Sword to fill the void, we’re still confronted with releases such as Fracture, games whose heroes are so bland that they achieve a kind of negative value. By continuing to create what Lake calls “strong leads”, Remedy might well, as its name suggests, retain the cure.