As someone who loves the first two Max Paynes, and enjoys the third; the series should be left alone. With the way Max Payne 3 ended, there’s no good way to revive that franchise.
Look at the games Remedy have been making since splitting from Rockstar.
I really enjoyed Control and the Alan Wakes for the plot and narrative decisions. That’s who Remedy have become, story focused with emphasis on world building. MoCap actors, FMV segments, parallel world building via audio logs and journals, etc while keeping the lessons learned from the Max Payne series for the gameplay combat loops.
All the Max Payne games are mechanics centric; tight gunplay and bullet-time combat. They also have decent-to-solid plots, but I didn’t replay MP2 dozens of times because I wanted the Mona-Max arc’s dopamine hit, nor pathfinding through NYC apartment mazes. Nimble combat against formidable and fair AI is the core part of that series.
It wouldn’t be what you want it to be, and that’s okay that it’s in the past. Remedy have worked an EU and are leaning into that instead, and have done well consistently.
I play Max Payne (2 is my favorite) for the story, characters and game play. They’re all great. I think I disagree with just about everything you’ve said.
I wonder what folks’ reaction will be. Will they pull a GTA Definitive Edition and fuck it up with a bad AI uprez? Will gamers still feel entertained by a one-note gameplay mechanic? I love MP, but I recently replayed 1 + 2 and they feel quaint by today’s standards. The bullet time thing would be a nifty little tech demo in 2024.
505 is one of the weirdest publishers to me, and probably the publisher I have played the most games from if I don’t include series with tons of games in them. Payday 2, Journey to the Savage Planet, Terraria, Backbreaker, Don’t Starve, Sniper Elite V2, How to Survive, Rocket league, Brothers. I can’t think of another publisher who has put out that many big games from different IPs.
In this instance, we can see ray-tracing versions of Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind and Half-Life 2, complete with higher definition assets.
So if you take old games and put in high def models and textures, and use raytracing, they look better? Who woulda thunk.. at least if modders are involved, the'll probably do a better job than official software houses.
As long as the younger generation taking over are well versed in the history of the series and in touch with what people have loved over the years to not run off into another FF13 or FF15 (before they started damage control before release to shoehorn in a single “moogle”)?
That said, I think what I really want is a game run by someone at the top with an epic vision for the experience who can make sure everything from combat to mini games are feeding into the grand scheme of the game.
The funny thing is, for all the acclaim Hades got, I felt it was pretty weak as a roguelike. It was just the combat system, with no room to get creative with it, like lots of other roguelikes would allow for.
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