Trivia / Max Payne 3

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• Approval of God: While the fan reaction to the Rockstar-developed third game was divisive to say the least, Remedy's Sam Lake (who wrote the first two games, and whose face served as model for Max's in the first game) was actually quite happy with Rockstar's take on it, although he admitted that had Remedy made the third game, it would have been very different.
• B-Team Sequel: The third game was produced and developed by Rockstar Games, with Remedy advising.
• Defictionalization: The UFE patch was sold for a limited time, so the only way to get one is to have one made by a patch maker.
• Hey, It's That Sound!: Some of the enemy characters' pain and death vocalizations will sound familiar to those who have played Grand Theft Auto IV, as these sound bytes were borrowed from the pedestrians of this earlier Rockstar title, as well as from Niko Bellic himself.
• Lying Creator: Rockstar claimed that the constant cutscenes were in order for consoles to load the next part of the level without needing a loading screen, but when the game was released on personal computers with much faster hardware, it was found that the game would not allow you to skip these cutscenes regardless if the next part had loaded or not. Some of this was eventually patched out, but many unskippable cutscenes still remain.
• Multi-Disc Work: The Xbox 360 version of the game was split into two discs, with the first disc containing the multiplayer and story mode, and the other disc including the second half of the story.
• Saved from Development Hell: The third game was originally announced in 2009 and expected to release that same year, but after the initial unveiling nothing was shown from it until 2011. This allowed the developers to make a few adjustments based on fan reactions, such as keeping Max's original voice actor James McCaffery, adding a few levels set in New Jersey for nostalgic purposes, and keeping Max's classic look for the first half of the game.
• Sequel Gap: 9 years between the second and third games. Also counts as a Time Skip since Max has also aged in real time since the second game, and has an appropriately more jaded worldview.
• Troubled Production: The third game started development as a project by Rockstar Vancouver with a planned released date of "Winter 2009", but after its reveal it fell out of sight for two years before resurfacing. During that time, accounts of mismanagement and employee mistreatment such as the Rockstar Wives letter put Rockstar under controversy, and allegations from an ex-employee state that the game went through no less than three complete rewrites and had the developers putting in 16 hour work days with no days off. In the end, what started as a single studio endeavor became a project that required the full attention of Rockstar's worldwide studios to complete. It is estimated that 3 cost Rockstar $105 million USD to make, more than Red Dead Redemption and roughly equal to Grand Theft Auto IV.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to unconfirmed insider reports, the third installment was to be set in The New Russia back when its development was starting out in 2005-2006. Its setting was shifted to Brazil after its original developer, Rockstar Vienna, was shut down and the game's development moved to other Rockstar subsidiaries.
  • Early information about the third game mentions Max being able to take an enemy as a Human Shield, his painkiller addiction having effects on gameplay and Max having a different voice actor, with his face still being based on Timothy Gibbs from the second game. The former feature was removed completely from the final game, and Max's painkiller addiction is only a story element. Due to fan outcry, Rockstar brought back Max's original voice actor James McCaffrey as both voice and face model.
  • Looking through sound files for the game reveals that Max has lines for many gameplay events, including picking up ammo, guns, collectibles, generic lines for picking up painkillers, using painkillers, shooting civilians, holding painkillers at low health, having low ammo, having no ammo, having no pills, and much more. Some of these were later used in the Dead Man Walking DLC.
  • Multiplayer has unused content for several game modes were cut, one of which appears to have been a variant of the Payne Killer mode themed around Captain Baseball Bat Boy and another that involved drivable vehicles. Other unused multiplayer content includes character models of the curupira from the Amor e Damas in-game TV show and monochrome versions of characters from the older games.

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