At New York Comic Con, we got a special media only peek at live gameplay of Max Payne 3. For those who may be too young, the original Max Payne came out in July of 2001 for the PC with XBox and PlayStation 2 releases to follow in what Rockstar claims as “the birth of the cinematic action shooter”. Max Payne introduced the concept of bullet time into games, which has been copied innumerable times since, especially in titles like John Woo’s Stranglehold, where players were able to slow down time and carefully aim and place each bullet they fired as opposed to the mad run and gun fury in most first or third person shooters. Precision was key.

Max Payne also took a Noir approach to its storytelling which helped set it apart from the games at the time which focused more on being more like big summer blockbusters than gritty crime dramas. Max Payne would eventually spawn both a sequel and a motion picture release starring Mark Walberg.

When we got to see Max Payne 3 in action, the first noticeable improvement is the full facial animations of the characters. Max no longer has the eternal look of pain frozen into his face. Instead, he has a fully animated set of emotions ranging from angst to utter despair. Just because it’s a new game, don’t expect a new demeanor for Max.

Also changed is the graphic novel style storytelling. In the first two games, cut scenes played out like reading panels from a comic book with static images with caption boxes over them while Max’s voice over told the story. Now, everything plays out in engine in full animated glory for the players as they traverse through levels. There will be Hollywood style camera cuts as well as on screen captions of what Max is saying but the game plays much more like a high quality motion comic during these cut scenes rather than flipping through a book.

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