To prepare for the upcoming release of Max Payne 3, Rockstar Games partnered with Marvel to release a comic that would delve deeper into the title character's troubled past.
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The three-part comic is being written by Dan Houser, Rockstar's vice president of creative, and Sam Lake, co-founder and lead writer at Remedy Entertainment. Remedy was behind the development for the first two Max Payne titles, which Lake wrote. Houser has been with Rockstar for years, and along with his brother Sam, is known to be a creative force behind popular titles like the Grand Theft Auto series.
Max Payne 3: After the Fall represents the first Rockstar game to enter the comic world. It will expand on the backstory of Max, and include his childhood and what happened in the eight years between Max Payne 2 and the soon-to-be-released Max Payne 3.
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Mashable had a chance to interview these two to find out more about Max Payne 3: After the Fall and what it was like developing a character like Max Payne, who has such a dark, tormented past.
Q&A; with Dan Houser and Sam Lake
Where did the idea for the comic come from?
Houser: We are always looking for interesting ways of supporting a game's release that go a little beyond conventional marketing and help expose people to the product in an exciting way. With Red Dead Redemption, we had John Hillcoat rework a section of the game into a movie. With Max, we had an enormous amount of backstory to tell -- the story from the previous games and the years since Max Payne 2 -- and a comic book seemed the best way to do it, given the comic book heritage of the earlier games, and the way comics as a medium let the deal so elegantly with passages of time.
What was it like writing for a comic? How is that different than writing for games?
Houser: It’s different. We needed a quick primer from Bill Roseman, our editor at Marvel, who was very patient with us, but after that it was, if not easy, then something we could grasp. His main advice was very sensible: Let the pictures do the work and try not to over write.
That being said, two of the reasons we wanted to make a comic series were because of two strengths we saw in the genre: It’s great at handling both dialogue and interior monologue at the same time, which works very well for Max, and great at handling flashbacks, which is also very much part of Max Payne and vital for this series as we envisioned it.
How was it working with Sam on this comic and the game? It's obviously a world he has created and is invested in, so was it hard to figure out how to weave your own voice in?
Houser: Sam is a gentleman and someone whose talent I greatly admire, so from a personal perspective, it was a pleasure. From a creative standpoint, it was remarkably easy. We needed help filling in the exact details on the back story of Max -- we wanted to include details that were not covered in Max 1 and 2 and we wanted it to be right. So, I reached out to Sam, and we discussed a lot of stuff; he checked a lot his oldest notes, stuff that he'd not thought about since before beginning work properly on Max 1, and in almost every instance, our visions and understanding of the character were identical. And where I was wrong, he gently corrected me!
In terms of my own voice as opposed to Sam's voice, that I don't know about. We tried to find a tone for Max that we felt was true to the spirit of the original games, but made sense with the modern games, and subsequently, the comics. I have always loved voiceover, and yet none of our other games have very much of it, so that was very exciting for me, personally.
My co-writers, Mike Unsworth and Rupert Humphries, and I read a lot of noir-ish and classic detective novels, especially Chandler, but also some more modern stuff that I felt might fit, such as James Crumley. Watched a lot of Humphrey Bogart movies, along with a plethora of classic and neo-noir, replayed Max 1 and 2 a bunch of times and experimented. We wrote and rewrote lines of dialogue, got a few we liked and that sounded good in-game and built it up from there.
Were these ideas you've had about Max Payne's story that couldn't be included in the original because of budget concerns?
Lake: Not really because of budget concerns, no, but for many other reasons. Max’s childhood certainly plays a role in what kind of a man he is, but that story had no place in the original game. Also, the years in between the first game and the sequel were also sketched to be there, but for Max Payne 2 it felt better to skip those and jump forward a couple of years. That being said, I always felt that there is a long line of gloomy noir-ish cop cases that take place between Max 1 and 2, tracking down serial killers and such, Max working as a NYPD detective with Winterson as his partner.
Alan Wake makes several references to the Max Payne universe? Any chances of the reverse in this comic?
Lake: It was fun to do in Alan Wake, and it came quite naturally, but the comic is a different thing with a very different focus, so no. Just keeping all the stories of the three Max Payne games and all the backstory in there was a very ambitious goal.
What are the benefits of telling Max's story in a comic, compared to a game? What do you think it adds to the world?
Lake: Given the storytelling methods in the games, a comic is a no-brainer, a perfect way to expand the universe.
Max Payne's game has obvious film influences. Are there any graphic novels that influenced you when writing this story? Any other media?
Lake: From my part, mapping out Max’s childhood felt like a crucial piece that’s been left untold so far. It really goes to the classic hero’s journey, told over and over again in many forms. At the beginning of the first game, Max is at peace, a happy man, but if you think about it, there had to have been tragedy in his past already for him to be equipped to deal with horror he must face, otherwise it would crush him.
The first issue of the comic will be available for digital download today from Rockstar, and they plan to hand out print copies free at some events. Max Payne 3 will be out May 15 for XBox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Do you think a game like Max Payne benefits from a comic addition? Let us know in the comments.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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