Re: RARA-AVIS: Max Payne

From: Jeff Lander ( jeffl@digital-beach.com)
Date: 11 Dec 2001


The game is pretty much a standard shooting game with some hard-boiled wrappings. It is pretty linear with one action-packed shootout after another in New York with all its gritty looks. Story is the basic revenge for killed family and told mostly through the comic style cels mentioned plus some in-game cut elements.

Games are still just beginning to add more storytelling and dramatic elements. The systems are really just getting powerful enough to do interesting stuff but creating that kind of content is very time consuming.

There have been some less ambitious attempts to get noir type adventure stories done in games. None have been frankly very compelling. As an example the Chandler "graphic adventure" from Simon and Schuster called "Philip Marlowe Private Eye" is frankly really bad.

I have been working on this end of integrating storytelling with games for a while and some real interesting projects are closer to seeing the store shelves. There is a sort of LA Confidential/Chinatown style cop game coming out late next year. The follow up will be more of the episodic hard-boiled private eye series in the classic Chandler sense.

Finally things are getting pretty exciting for interactive storytelling.

-Jeff

At 09:47 AM 12/10/2001 +0200, you wrote:
>On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, Karl W. Reinsch wrote:
>
> > You are probably thinking of Max Payne - http://www.maxpayne.com
> > (warning - site requires Flash)
>
>A Finnish game in origin. I don't know how hardboiled it is, but there
>are clearly some noir elements in its visual style. The makers must've
>read at least Frank Miller's Sin City and Batman comics.
>
>Juri

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