Rockstar’s Max Payne 3 launched in 2012, taking Remedy Games’ iconic anti-hero, shaving his head, and kicking him through Brazil in a floral shirt. Nine months after launch, Dead Men Walking arrived – a DLC wave defense mode where you and a friend fought off hordes of AI enemies. But there were originally much bigger plans for two players. 

Max Payne 3 was supposed to have a co-op prologue campaign. Taking control of Max and one of his old cop partners from New York, the co-op campaign saw two players shooting and bullet-time diving their way through modified versions of the single-player maps, including New York alleys, the graveyard, the Panama canal, and more.

“The London studio worked on it for about a year before the whole co-op campaign mode was dropped,” a source familiar with the project tells GLHF. “Focus moved over to the multiplayer modes including Gang Wars. Some of the maps ended up in the single-player campaign.”

While it’s not clear why the mode got dropped, there was still lots of work to be completed by the time the team hit the alpha stage. One of the biggest design challenges was how to make the slow-motion dives – a signature mechanic of Max Payne – work with two players.

“It took a real leap of imagination from the lead designer in London to solve the dual problem of needing to avoid all players being dragged into slow motion by someone triggering bullet-time out of sight and not disadvantaging the effect-triggering player by having them move slowly while everyone else stayed in real-time,” the source says. “The line-of-sight chain concept that makes it work was a moment of inspiration.”

The story draft tracked Max and his partner leaving New York after Max retired from the force, ending with the two working as security consultants in Brazil. It seems like the New York section of the single-player was reused work from the canceled co-op story. Co-op would have also taken players to a level set in a bizarre cult compound, as well as a South American gem mine. 

“It was pretty hokey and I don’t know how much of it would have survived to release, but they were trying to stitch some discarded single-player levels from the main campaign together into a new story,” our source says. “It was all a bit cart-before-horse.”

While cancellation was painful for the team, our source believes it was the right call to focus on the single-player and multiplayer modes. “I think you could make a great co-op campaign for Max Payne, but you’ve got to design a game around it rather than try to add it to a single-player game design,” they explain. 

For now, Max Payne is a thing of the past while Rockstar puts its focus on bringing GTA 6 to the world. 

Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.