Remedy Entertainment and Max Payne are together again—and the reunion is coming in the form of a full-blown remake of the hard-boiled series’ first two action games.
The news arrived on Wednesday in the form of a press release signed off by both Remedy, the series’ creators, and Rockstar Games, the franchise’s current rightsholder after the license passed between companies in the early ’00s. The two companies have entered a publishing partnership that will see Rockstar finance a remaster of Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne as a combined gameplay package.
Both games will be remade using Remedy’s proprietary Northlight game engine, which was most recently used in Ars Technica’s 2019 Game of the Year, Control. In addition to a launch on PC, the resulting two-game package will be a current-gen console exclusive on Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. This means the game could possibly flex the same ray-tracing muscles seen in 2021’s Control Ultimate Edition, also a current-gen exclusive. No date for the game has been announced, and “The project is currently in the concept development stage,” according to the press release.
A new deal to numb older Paynes
Coincidentally, this news comes on top of Remedy’s existing publishing deal with Epic Games. That deal guarantees that Epic and Remedy will work together to launch two multiplatform games “in the same franchise:” One game will be triple-A in scope, and the other will be smaller. No date for either Epic-related game has been set since that March 2020 announcement, and neither company clarified whether the franchise in question is new or based on an existing Remedy IP like Alan Wake.
Remedy has not announced any target storefront for the PC version of its Max Payne remasters. Based on Rockstar’s recent track record, the game will likely appear on the Rockstar Games Launcher as at least an option, if not an exclusive. (We hope that Remedy will steer this project in a better direction than another recent Rockstar remaster debacle.)