Articles

Q & A with Sam Lake

Details

Published on Monday, 10 August 2009 23:18

Written by biXen

As most of you surely will know Sam Lake is the writer of Max Payne and Max Payne 2. If I recall correctly this was a little Q & A the fan sites got to ask him before the release of Max Payne 2.

What key improvements make you think 10-15 hours of gunplay will be fun again about 2 years after your first game?

Heh, easy! Physics combined with improved Bullet Time. It’s like Bullet Time was designed for this from the start - the two elements just bring the best out in each other (but then, hey, we told you this was a love story :). Other than that, the AI has been completely rebuilt and the enemy reactions have improved a lot. And if that’s not enough, the new story makes that last episode in Max’s life seem like a picnic.

I love the suspense music I've heard so far in the game, will the music and cinematic sequences stick until the end this time?

Personally, I love the new soundtrack. We went for even more “movie soundtrack”-like music with the sequel and it works really well. When it comes to cinematics, there’s more of them, they are more evenly distributed all around the game, and they look much better thanks to motion-capture. The answer is yes.

Are there any plans to assist the mod community this time around too, especially with this new exciting gamemode "Dead Man Walking" in the game?

That’s a given! The tools will be released in the near future. The level editor has been remade and it’s a much better tool this time around. It will be great fun to see what the mod community makes of Dead Man Walking, it should be great for mod purposes, you don’t have to worry about story issues as it’s all about gameplay.