Max Payne 3 Dan Houser interview: on redefining a genre

How do you think the structure of the game (non-linear, back and forth with Max's past and present) helps support this story? Why not stick with a more traditional structure?

I think the non-linear chronology is a fairly traditional structure for other media, just not one that has been used that often in games. Thanks to the technological break through of being able to completely remove all loading screens between levels, we were able to jump between locations using some traditional cinematic editing techniques, which are pretty much unheard of in games to turn the transition between levels into part of the story. This let us structure the narrative in a more interesting way, using Max's memories as the driver of the story, and crafting a story and a game that is about Max's journey towards some kind of self awareness. The various flashbacks have been timed in such a way as to shed light on the things Max is experiencing at that moment in time - the game is about Max's emotional journey into the gutter, and his realizations about that journey, so events from the past are only relevant when Max remembers them. As with a lot of what we do, it is the combination of technology and design that makes this sort of thing possible. Thanks to the combination of a totally seamless, loading screen-free structure, incredible high resolution graphics, stunning facial animation, incredible character animation, cutting edge motion capture and so on, we are able to tell a story that is more nuanced and complex than would have been achievable previously. Of course, we do our best to live up to that opportunity, but it is the tech that is the star of the show - it helps us bring the story to life in way that simply was not possible before.

Max Payne has been falling for as long as we've known him, starting with the first few minutes of Max Payne and the death of his family. When we come upon him in Max Payne 3, he's pretty clearly at rock bottom. All anyone really knows about Max Payne is his, well, pain and self-loathing. But what kind of guy is he and what kind of story are you trying to tell in MaxPayne 3? Redemption? Him falling further into the gutter?

What kind of guy is he? He's a fairly typical ex- NYPD cop. World weary, corrupted in some ways but still with a core belief in right and wrong, a loner who has seen a lot of people close to him die. He's seen, and unfortunately, done bad things, and had his romantic optimism blunted by the streets and by the weaknesses within his own character. He comes from a world of childhood trauma and personal loss and he's never really moved past that. he wants to be a good person, but he does not know why any more and does not have a reason to stop drinking. At the same time, he's brilliant physically, as he was always was and part of him still yearns for a quest, a damsel in distress or some other simplistic and easy to understand scenario in which he can act like a heroic good guy once more, even though last time it did not turn out so good.

If so, how did addiction inform the way the game was designed? How did it impact Max Payne's look and temperament? How did Payne's past shape these addictions in terms of your narrative?

From a narrative standpoint, it is entirely central to the game - the story depends on it, and it is built into the story, and the entire flow of the game is built around it. from a visual design perspective, we wanted the visual effects to give the impression of a blurred somewhat hazy look that would give a sense of someone stoned on booze and heavy painkillers. At the same time, we wanted Max's hazy drunken perspective to also feel vaguely similar to when he is in Bullet Time, as if Bullet Time, which is when he is at his best and almost super human, is also something of an addiction to him - like the moment when he feels most himself. From a mechanical perspective - the drink not particularly - he still has a steady hand, but the painkillers are very much part of the game design. It is playing the game (and the previous games) that has, to some extent put him in this state.

I really enjoy the visual presentation of the game, especially how the game seems to sort of twitch and jitter between colors and perspectives a lot, both in cutscenes and gameplay. My assumption is that it's the gamer viewing the world through the eyes of a man heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol. That essentially, Payne is a mess and this is how he perceives the world. Is that accurate? How did you come up with this treatment? Can you explain how you decided on the idea of color separation and camera movement and when to use it? What impact do you think it has on the way gamers may absorb the game's story?

Thank you. Yes - it was partly to give the impression of a middle-aged, functioning but somewhat addled drunk. One of our earliest phrases on the game, in terms of production design and developing a tone for the game, was ‘digital noir.' We wanted to make a noir-ish game not just in terms of narrative, but also in terms of look, but, partly as were simultaneously working on a classic noir (LA Noire) and mostly because we wanted the game to feel very contemporary, we were determined to find a look that felt noirish and also contemporary, and alluded to Max's comic book panel heritage.

So after a long period of experimentation, our production designers came up with three parts of the look - odd bits of text on screen, distortion effects and the 3D comic book panels - which could be used together or on their own. Then our programming team had to figure out how to make this stuff actually work in real time, which was enormously complex. We then did multiple passes working over the game frame by frame and word by word and placed each of the effects where wanted them to highlight things and the animators put them in in several passes. It was a massive amount of work, but it gives the game a unified and unique look, and, we hope, will help players absorb the story in a slightly different way. It was something that was only possible in a linear game, because of the absolute precision it requires, so it was exciting for us to work in such a way.

Do you think an interactive medium allows you to address things like addiction in a more meaningful way then more traditional media? Why or why not?

I'm not sure there is anything quite like addiction. That being said, any medium can find a way to tackle any issue, if that is what the creators want to do, and they can all do so well or badly. All mediums have strengths and weaknesses and advantages and disadvantages. Games are relatively young as a medium, but that does not mean you cannot address any topic you want to, you just have to find the tone and the mechanics to do so, just as you would in music, or film or literature.

In this game, however, we are not tackling the issue of addiction, but we are looking at the character and actions of a man who has problems with substances, but also a lot of other problems. There is a subtle but important difference, not because we don't think addiction is interesting or important or we could not tackle it or games are not worthy of it, or any of that, but simply because it was not what we set out to do in Max Payne 3. It's a shooter about a drunk, somewhat morose, widowed ex-cop, trying to find some kind of peace with himself. It is not a game about the realities of being a drunk in terms of the need to drink. It is game about being Max Payne. Making a game about alcoholism, or drug addiction or sex addiction or any habitual, compulsive behavior could be fascinating, and entirely possible, but I probably would not recommend choosing the genre of a shooter to do it! The challenge of designing a game about addiction would be adequately expressing through mechanics and consequences of those mechanics the conflict within any addict, in which they desperately want to do something and simultaneously desperately don't want to do that same thing, and both choices seem somehow a matter of life and death, but those would be the same challenges faced by any medium - it's just how you would address those that would be different.

Why have a game starring a character with such an obvious character flaw? Wouldn't it be easier to create a game with a less imperfect lead?

Well, by the standards of our other games, he's positively angelic! We like flawed people. We've never made a game about an unambiguous villain, and we're not going to make a game about an out and out hero. Flaws provide friction, and friction and conflict is what drives stories, so for us, it would be harder to make an interesting game about a more perfect person. In the case of Max, you have a guy who wants to be a good guy, a hero, but his special skill, his talent, is running into a room full of bad guys and shooting them all dead. A man who has spent his life killing, even in the service of his idea of what is right or wrong, is going to be extremely damaged. That seemed the only way to approach this game and it is who this character is.