Rockstar Unveils Iffy Max Payne 3 Box Art
- Thread starter Earnest Cavalli
- Start date
Look again, it's completely obvious. Just listen to the first trailer released last year:BreakfastMan said:
The narration, the music, the story, you name it. That's Max Payne. It takes more than sunlight to take the noir out of something, and Max Payne 3 is definitely going to be noir. Have you even payed attention when they announced that we'll still get to see the graphic novel-style cutscenes? Have you looked at the gameplay trailers showing off that typical Max Payne gameplay, complete with the old health system? In other words, this:
How anyone can conclude that this isn't Max Payne at all just because they took it out of New York (and not even completely!) is just silly beyond belief. Gah, fans sometimes...
It is not just because they took it out of New York! It is not because it is no longer taking place at night! For a game to feel like a sequel to me, it must share similar motifs, themes, symbolism, and atmosphere (in addition to continuing the story from before). Gameplay does not matter as much to me and was not the reason why I liked the first games so much. From what I have seen of the game, it shares few of the similar themes from the first two, none of the atmosphere, and few of the motifs from the last two. Hell, the lead up to the main story does not make much sense!Cowabungaa said:
Look, I can see that you think this game is going to be good. That is fine, and I do not want to take that away. I, on the other hand, do not think it will be. If you think I am trying to rain on the parade of those who want to like this game and probably will, I am not. Neither I am insisting that people do not enjoy this game. I am not going to metabomb the game. I am simply voicing my opinion that I do not think I will like this game.
It has very "Cidade de Deus" feeling to it. I like it. While Max Payne 2's cover is brilliant, I'm not so fond of the first one which looks dated for me.
I think that thinking it's too colourful is a side-effect of playing games this generation which have just brown and gray. Now people complain that Diablo III is too colourful... I'm glad to have colours in my games! I remember when we had EGA and CGA graphics. When we finally got 256 colours with VGA it was like a whole new world! Why do developers have such an aversion for colours these days?
And a Noir setting does not have much to do with dark, N.Y cities. It's about a mood. And Sao Paulo can convey that mood. Wait and see, haters. Max Payne 3 is going to be an amazing game!
And thanks to the developers of this game for not simply making the same game again! It's for people that complain about MP3 having colours or being in another country that we get the same Call of Duty game year after year! It's great that there are still some people in the industry take risks!
I think that thinking it's too colourful is a side-effect of playing games this generation which have just brown and gray. Now people complain that Diablo III is too colourful... I'm glad to have colours in my games! I remember when we had EGA and CGA graphics. When we finally got 256 colours with VGA it was like a whole new world! Why do developers have such an aversion for colours these days?
And a Noir setting does not have much to do with dark, N.Y cities. It's about a mood. And Sao Paulo can convey that mood. Wait and see, haters. Max Payne 3 is going to be an amazing game!
And thanks to the developers of this game for not simply making the same game again! It's for people that complain about MP3 having colours or being in another country that we get the same Call of Duty game year after year! It's great that there are still some people in the industry take risks!
It will have that. I mean sheesh, just listen to what Max says.BreakfastMan said:
Most definitely that. Once again, listen to the narration in that trailer.
It probably will though I haven't seen evidence for that yet. I see no reason for them to change it a lot though.
And that too, which is obvious in all the presented video footage. As has been said many times before; there's more to noir than darkness.
All that is obvious as hell, looking at what's been released so far. So I have no idea what your problem is. I really have no idea how you can conclude that it doesn't have all that.
I'm surprised so many people aren't reacting negatively to the cover. Even if there's no law stating it has to be similar to the others, and even if the cover are is not indicative of gameplay, it's still a disappointingly bad cover. Very generic and boring. The Max Payne 2 cover was spectacular, so regardless of tone or setting, it's sad to get something so generic in the sequel.
Fine. Show me where it does all that. If you can convince me, I will be more than happy to be proved wrong. Though I highly doubt in will have same atmosphere, since whenever you move a series to someplace completely different visually (daytime, sunny, San Paulo compared to nighttime, snowy, New York), the atmosphere will most definitely change, at least in part.Cowabungaa said:
I understand that (though I doubt most of the game will take place at night, judging from the trailers). My problem is not that it does not feel very "noir-ish". My problem is that environment is so different from that of the last game, giving this new one a very different atmosphere from the last two, which I do not especially like. It is hard to deny that a game that takes place entirely in New York, at night, when it is snowing, will have a different atmosphere from one that takes place mostly in daytime, in San Paulo, while it is sunny. It would be like if Amnesia took place entirely in the daytime on a sunny beach. Yes, it still might be very scary, but it won't have the same atmosphere as the original, will it?pilouuuu said:
Just listen to Max's narration. Listen to what the story is about, listen to what he says about himself, his issues, his motivations, friggin' everything. All that should tell you something about the themes, motivations and story continuation and how perfectly in line it is with the previous games.BreakfastMan said:
Is it identical? Dear heavens no, why would anyone want that? If anything, Max Payne is known for it's rich characters, and keeping your characters static and stagnant does not make them any better. Is what we see a natural evolution of the series? Yeah, it is. if you want a remake of the previous games, just replay those.
I'll say it again; noir is about more than the clichés we all know, despite the trailer even having those, just look at the copious usage of shadows from blinds. And have you also missed the New York bits in that second gameplay trailer? The nighttime and evening bits from Sao Paulo? It's all there, and pretty damn obvious.
No, noir is about a lot more than that, just look up film noir and neo-noir on Wikipedia. It's about certain themes, a certain mood, certain character types, all things Max Payne 3 has just as much as Max Payne 1 and 2.
You just make a huge deal about it being sunnier than the previous game, and I have no idea why.
The issue is not so much "it's not noir" as it is "it's not Max Payne noir". The genre is not perfectly tight, there's room for variation - and simply saying, "well, it's still technically noir" doesn't really fly for a lot of people.scotth266 said:
OT: It's dull, more than anything. Game looks good though, although I'm also rather skeptical of how much I'm going to believe it's a Max Payne game. I can believe it's the same character, but at the moment it feels like he's been transported to an alternate universe to his own.
We'll see.
I have no problem with this box art other than it's fairly atypical. Not that "Black and white with bright red to highlight" is any less fucking typical.
Also, New York will be a big part of the new game. I don't remember the source, but it was in one interview. I think half the game will explore San Paulo, and half of it will explore what happened that made Max Payne snap and move away from New York. I for one is psyched for this game. The line "This is a hell of a hangover" sealed the deal for me in the trailer. It's genious how one line like that can create so much imagery of a vacation gone terribly wrongCowabungaa said:
Which is something people said about the general game play footage as well when the trailers came out. I will respond to this criticism the same way I responded before: Rockstar has done good noir games before (GTA 4 is basically noir the way the storyline plays out, and LA Noire has NOIRE in the title) so I think the game's noir elements will be fine.Woodsey said:
No, it's not going to be the Max Payne 3 the fans apparently wanted but people are jumping the gun (similar to the whole DMC scenario) by judging it before they've even got their hands on it. While Rockstar takes a more neo-noir approach to their art, the Payne character and "feel" could easily remain: what little I've seen in the trailers of his character swiftly brings up my memories of the first game, so that's a good start.
In the end, it's entirely a matter of opinion as to whether this box art is good, and we'll have to wait and see whether the game lives up to its legacy. I like the box art (though the thug is kind of generic). I wish that the OP had separated the actual news part of the post from the opinion part better (especially in the title and subtitle, which is entirely subjective). It just comes off as a rant more than anything, and while I like it when the writers on the Escapist voice their opinions after the story, I don't like them BEING the story, y'know? That was what my original post was about more than anything.
EDIT: Basically, my original post was meant to be about what Jumplion pointed out about.
Ha, you might want to make that point to someone else. (I hate every facet of GTA IV. It is appalling. And you're really stretching to call it noir.) Likewise, LA Noire's actual noir is... well, the main menu feels noir. (And Rockstar didn't write or make most of it anyway.)scotth266 said:
But yes, these are all, obviously, off-hand observations.
I'm not exactly a fan of the game play in that one, myself. However, the story follows the noir format: tormented, anti-hero protagonist. At least one femme fatale (the first woman you can hook up with, who burns you later on... and the other one, who is in a crime family). And a whole lot of bad things happening to people who don't really deserve it (no matter what, an innocent person dies towards the end because of your decision.)Woodsey said:
It does like to put on the silly hat every once in a while (HELLO MY JAMAICAN FRIEND), and it has several layers of satire, but the core of it says noir.
Didn't really know about LA Noire, just sort of assumed the noir in it was okay since I haven't heard anything negative about it. I actually have it installed, I was gonna check it out and review it later
I actually prefer the artwork that you linked to. There's far more going on. The girl is clearly in danger, her situation providing an obvious motivation for Max, whereas in the official version she could just be on holiday. In your linked artwork Max has been injured previously but has managed to bandage himself up again, an indication of going from one fight to the next. He is clearly very pissed off, an alcoholic drink in his hand perhaps to numb the pain or simply to steel himself for the long road ahead. The wiping of his mouth on his sleeve is a nice touch as well, it looks like he's prepared to spring back into action the moment he's finished scowling and drinking.Inuprince said:
Frankly the official artwork is boring.
What you did there, I see it.Major_Tom said:
Game still looks interesting, but I'm not surprised, honestly. The first two games were Remedy projects - although Rockstar backed Remedy financially for MP2 - and the franchise is entirely within Rockstar's control, now. I was pretty sure we'd see something like this; Rockstar switching things up to a gritty-yet-colorful palette and messing with the standard narrative delivery to start implementing more conventional cinematics.
I figure someone in a focus group somehow thought MP1 and 2 felt slightly niche in their lasting appeal and decided to mainstream things up a notch. Still, this being Rockstar and their being kings when it comes to plot delivery, I'm not too worried as far as story and gameplay are concerned.
I figure someone in a focus group somehow thought MP1 and 2 felt slightly niche in their lasting appeal and decided to mainstream things up a notch. Still, this being Rockstar and their being kings when it comes to plot delivery, I'm not too worried as far as story and gameplay are concerned.
Why are they dragging up this old news? I thought everyone already got over the fact that Max Payne got a fresh new setting. It's not like the box art is anything different from all the trailers, demos, etc. that we've already seen.