Krovven wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 05:09:
Here's my problem. People can dig into ANY story and rip the shit out of it if they dig deep enough. Particularly video game stories, because the narrative is broken up by gameplay that is generally played differently by everyone.
Of the action shooters, FPS or TPS, which ones exactly have "great" stories that Max Payne 3 is supposed to hold up to? Stories of action games are there to provide one thing, set pieces for battle. If they succeed without being absolutely ridiculous without the gameplay sucking, it's a win.
Regarding your idea...seriously, that's your story suggestion? You want Max Payne to give up the one singular thing that keeps Max Payne who is, his conscious? His morality of right and wrong? To be a murderer? Working for the same types of scum that had his family killed? Being no better than the people that killed his family?
Don't bother criticising stories when you clearly have no idea what even makes the character a character.
Dude Max Payne has killed hundreds if not thousands of people. He's killed gangbangers, italian mafia, russian mafia, police officers, military officials, police detectives, CEOs, government politicians, private bodyguards, professional assassins, you name it he's killed it. How many of his victims were just average, decent people who were drawing a paycheck and had the misfortune not to call in sick that day?
My point is, how *can* he have a conscience at this point?
And I can easily see him falling into a grey area where he kills bad guys for other bad guys... shit that's all he actually did in MP2 and MP3. Kill one set of bad guys for another set of bad guys. Man of honor among a den of thieves kind of shit. It's noir enough. You can keep max thinking he's being semi-virtuous by having his own code of conduct but still making him a heel.
It's better than listening to him whine emo bullshit for 10 hours.
Edit: MP is trying to find absolution; at first it's rest from the torment of his family's death, then it's absolution from the fucking murder-machine he's become (He tries to find that absolution in Mona, who is a fucking assassin, which is already hinting that for the right price he'll accept being a plague on two legs). In MP3, he tries to find peace at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, before saying "fuck it that won't work" and finding peace in accepting that he kills more people than smallpox. It might work for a period of time, and MP4 is him trying to balance that feeling of peace with his conscience.
Remember- The ultimate responsibility for Max's family's death was the Aesir Corp chick with ties to the government- not some random crime element. The actual system itself is corrupt and that's what got Max's family murdered. So maybe Max goes all Yojimbo and starts pitting bad guy groups against each other in MP4, having to work back and forth between them. If we keep the first half of Max Payne 3 from Rockstar, which I'm fine with because it's a good set up, he's already basically ronin- he's left the NYPD behind. He still thinks he's walking a separate path, but by the end of the game he sees himself as more heel than good guy, and that sets him up for his redemption.
But you're right. Having a static character that never changes over a half dozen games is WAY more interesting than having a character arc.
Edit 2: And before you bitch about invoking Yojimbo and how that's not Noir, Kurosawa was open about adapting a Dashiell Hammett noir film called The Glass Key for plot in the movie.
This comment was edited on Mar 11, 2013, 14:46.