However, throughout the second game, the notion of fate (in a divine sense) is discussed at length. Vladimir asks Max whether or not it is fair to morally judge someone who is forced by no choice of their own into a situation in which they can only do wrong (the parallels with the player mowing through wave after wave of Mooks is obvious), and Max at one point thinks about such situations in his own life - being trapped in awful situations because of choices he didn't even realise he'd made at the time (like staying late at work to chat to a friend instead of hurrying home to his wife and daughter). Near the end of the game, he meditates at length on the idea of fate and the impossibility of free will while en route to Woden's mansion. When Mona attempts to dissuade him from going, he insists that he doesn't care whether he dies or not. Is he simply a Death Seeker? Or perhaps his apparently temporary Medium Awareness from the first game was nothing but - ever since the curtain was pulled back in the first game he has always known that he is a character in a work of fiction, and he cannot choose to do anything of his own accord. His fate - the plot of the game - is set.
- "The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. Weapon statistics hanging in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. Endless repetition of the act of shooting, time slowing down to show off my moves. The paranoid feel of someone controlling my every step. I was in a computer game. Funny as Hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of." - Max Payne has already realized he's in a simulation, and that 'game' is really the Matrix.
- The connection is obvious, Max Payne and Mona Sax dodge bullets like they're in the Matrix because they're in the Matrix.
- Following this line of thought, Max might eventually fully realize how out of place his super powers are and eventually have his mind freed by the Matrix hackers. A guy like Max would be a valuable asset to the resistance fighters, not to mention that it might free him from the burden of many of his best friends and his loved-ones being killed.
- It's not likely, but theoretically possible. The more mundane explanations are that he blames himself for her death, which is not unusual: he was seconds late to stop the killers from murdering both his wife and his daughter. His guilt has festered for three years without an outlet. He even addresses it in the second game, referencing the choice to stay late and talk to a friend (Alex) instead of heading home. If he had gone right home then, he would have been on time. It's survivor's guilt: he can't help but blame himself for the choices he didn't even know he made, and it manifests as a crazy desire to punish himself for being late. When he kills his old self in the second hallucination in the first game, the double yells "Murderer! You killed her!", but he's talking to himself. And then his (future) self guns down his (past) self, completing the punishment cycle. It's a psychological miasma. Both explanations are possible.
- I actually think "Murderer! You killed her!" fits well with the first theory. It's one of the various lines that pop up periodically in the dream sequences; if you put two of those lines together you get:Max: Murderer! You killed her!Michelle: Max, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to!
- Also note that all of Max's grief and guilt seems to coalesce around Michelle, with the baby not seeming to factor in. Might be easier to explain, if he killed one but not the other.
- I actually think "Murderer! You killed her!" fits well with the first theory. It's one of the various lines that pop up periodically in the dream sequences; if you put two of those lines together you get:
- There is another explanation of Max feeling guilty for Michelle's death: if you examine some of the items in the (second?) nightmare level, you'll hear a dialogue between them where Michelle tells Max she encountered some thing related to vikings at work (which is obviously Project Valhalla traces). However, he just brushes it off for "later" and Michelle is killed soon afterwards. Had he looked into the matter back then, he may have prevented her digging into it too deep and avoided Aesir's wrath.
- Returning to the original interpretation that Max killed Michelle, the end of the first dream sequence is different to the other representations of the fight, in that it ends with Max facing camera, firing three bullets, and yelling, "Murderer, you killed her!" Michelle took three bullets in the chest, so if he's remembering more than halluucinating, and it certainly seems that way, because this is the dream where it isn't quite so surreal and you can 'remember' other things.
- But then, what about the V-Heads you face in the prologue? Unless somehow they were hallucinations (and if they were, there'd be no reason for the cops not to look into the possibility that Max killed his wife), they were in his house. In Chapter 3, Max locates a document on a computer in Nicole Horne's lair which mentions that they doubled the dose for "all remaining tests subjects" and dumped them off at Payne's house. "All remaining subjects" couldn't mean Michelle Payne.
- Of course, since we see the game from Max's POV and if we assume that Max is not a reliable narrator and we are in the mouth of madness, he could concievably have imagined that report to try and explain the fiasco at home.
- Ah, but if Max is such an unreliable narrator, how are we to believe that Michelle is dead at all?
- If the junkies were just hallucinations or invented memories, there would be no bodies found in the Payne home. If there were no bodies but those of Michelle and the baby in their house, the police would have definitely investigated the possibility of Max being the murderer. Modern forensic techniques make it quite possible to determine whether a victim has been killed by a particular gun, and had Michelle been confirmed to have been shot by Max's Beretta, he would have spent the next decade behind bars. The only way this theory (Michelle killed the baby, Max killed her, then blocked the memory) can therefore be true is that the police deliberately covered the case up, either to save their own face or because someone (like the Inner Circle) pulled some strings from the shadows.
- Someone mentioned above that it's possible that Michelle was herself dosed with Valkyr, which caused her to accidentally kill the baby. What if the junkies in Max's house were additional test subjects brought along by whoever administered said dosage to Michelle, in order to, for example, compare how the drug acts on people of different sexes, body types, ethnicities etc.?
- Of course, since we see the game from Max's POV and if we assume that Max is not a reliable narrator and we are in the mouth of madness, he could concievably have imagined that report to try and explain the fiasco at home.
- Valkyr makes its users feel extremely paranoid and causes increased aggression and violence. Max took some valkyr and killed the police officer at the beginning. He went on a rampage and killed everyone in the subway station. He can't dodge bullets, he just imagines that the innocent and unarmed civilians are terribly incompetent mobsters (this would explain why there are so damned many of them). He imagines they were robbing a bank to justify this act. Still in his bloodlust, he kills Alex, imagining that he was framed and someone else did the deed. Max just wanders around shooting people for three days, taking more and more valkyr and imagining himself to be taking down crime syndicates, discovering conspiracies, spinning more and more complex webs of coincidences and impossible feats of vigilantism. He finally comes off his three-day high cuffed in the back of a squadcar. (Note that this is the only part of the game which is not a flashback; even the climactic scene at Aesir Plaza takes place 'a few hours ago'.)
- Perhaps the painkillers Max takes contain Valkyr. They certainly aren't ordinary painkillers, considering the amounts of damage they help him survive.
- It's actually heavily implied that Interfectum, the painkillers from the second game, contain - or are derived from - Valkyr.
- The Movie seems to use this explanation, with Max taking Valkyr after swimming out of a freezing cold river to prevent freezing to death, becoming a drug-fueled One-Man Army experiencing Apocalyptic visions at the end. He does seem to tap into it a bit before using the drug.
- Very close. The angels (actually meant to be Valkyries) are one of the hallucinations experienced by those on Valkyr.
As for him being the Big Bad of the next game, in Max Payne 1 Vlad was an ally of Max's, but in Max Payne 2 he turns out to be the Big Bad. Woden may go through the same cycle; he's certainly the only candidate, since (if he's alive) he'd be the only major character left other than Max himself. Vlad also seems to hint that Woden was responsible for Max's wife's death. Supposedly, this was because he sent her the incriminating evidence against Van Horne, which is what prompted Van Horne to kill her. But perhaps there's more to it than that.
- Jim Bravura is stated to have survived as well.
- and Mona, in the True Ending
- Safety spoiler about Woden; Woden -does- survive an Aesir machine-gun attack on the Inner Circle.
- and Mona, in the True Ending
- Partially Jossed. Alfred's nowhere to be found in 3. But if there's ever a Max Payne 4, who knows?
- This is generally a no-brainer. The only nit is that "Dick Justice" is actually a TV series adaptation of the events in the first game. That's pretty much canon.
- Dick Justice existed during the first game, though. Hey... Maybe it got a Retool that was Ripped from the Headlines?
- BBBB's aelements also have much to do with Max, with the Friendly Rivalry between BBBB and Bike Helmet Girl mirroring Max and Mona's. The animated BBBB episode has him turn old and deal with a kidnapping, just like Max.
- However, this couldn't include Address Unknown, as the existence of the funhouse attests.
- The TV shows may be real, but that doesn't mean he's really stopping halfway in a level - y'know, knowing that dozens of armed criminals that want you dead are around the corner - to watch TVs at random, or even to take the stress off momentarily. I believe the TV shows are points where Max is wondering how the characters of the TV shows would fare compared to him, or (in the case of newscasts) speculating how the current events of his life would be interpreted by the press. The fact most of the content of the shows is nowhere NEAR what he's experiencing is probably just mentally subconscious snarking on his part.
- His tombstone is an Easter Egg in Max Payne 3, although it's not clear when he died. And considering his epitaph and the fact Max notes that it's surprised there was enough to bury, it pretty much confirms his death by 'splosion.
- It must be said, however, that Gognitti is canonically pretty damned hard to kill for a supposed Non-Action Guy.
- A cold dark night in the shadowy underworld of New York City alone with an empty pack of cigarettes with TV Tropes ruining my life. Vinnie is an expy of Caesar from Bound? Close, but still not enough Untamed Volume Speculation for Wild Mass Guessing – until the realization was pushed an inch further toward the ledge.
Vinnie isn’t an expy of Caesar from Bound, Vinnie Gognitti is Caesar from Bound.
- Or Max is a amateur writer who imagines his life as noir film. And all the characters are people in his life: Mona is a girl he's into, Vinnie is a gangster who harasses him (so Max imagines him as a pathetic, wannabe gangster), Alex is his friend in real life, BB is a annoying co-worker, Jack Lupino is this drug dealer who rambles about occult shit, Nichole Horne is his mean boss, and Jim Bravura is his landlord. Max in this reality is basically a least successful version of Sam Lake.
- Confirmed. Max Payne is Alan Wake's story. In the beginning of Episode 2 of Alan Wake, the player can find the manuscripts of Max's final moments.
- Actually, only half-true. Wake didn't write Max Payne as far as we know, but he DID write a near-exact knockoff called Alex Casey, which is what you can find and read excerpts of.
- this troper would say that you can still say Alan wrote Max Payne, even if the names are changed, I would say that the "The Sudden Stop" is what Remedy's "real" Max Payne 3 would be as opposed to the apparently canceled Rocktar developed Max Payne 3.
Basically we’re seeing the story of Max Payne 3 from his point of view. There could be missions like chasing Fabianna’s kidnapper at the Penthouse party or fighting his way through the hotel ruin to save Max and the Final mission would be a shoot-out between him and Crachá Preto/ the UFE who are trying to kill him and Giovanna before they can leave the city.
Their games are both made by Rockstar, they both have similar brooding personalities, and they both utilize bullet-time (dead-eye) in their gunfights.
Remember how you could come across a gangster who had been staked and Buff written next to him? That was actually Faith framing her for it, after she escaped Sunnydale, before heading to LA.
The Inner Circle was a front for the Patriots, allowing them to conduct experiments with Valkyr on soldiers, among other things. They discovered that Nicole Horne was selling some of the bottom for her own personal gain, and one quick and dirty frame job later, sent Max on his mad shooting spree to bring down Aesir Corp. The resulting power vaccum allowed Vlad to attempt to monopolize the Inner Circle. The Patriots manipulated Max into serving as their foot soldier yet again, with predictable results. After the firefight in the Woden Manor, Max was the only survivor, and seeing as he still knew nothing about the Patriots, and was a potential asset to them with his nano-machine induced bullet time and nigh invulnerability, they decided to manipulate him into a position as a bodyguard in South America, from which they would be able to extract him whenever they felt like it.
- Max did talk about Mona, but focuses more on his fling with her. He did express not wanting to fail saving women anymore, but it could be understood as referring to the Daphne incident.
There's obvious holes in this theory, such as the graves of Vinnie Gognitti and Detective Winterson being in the cemetery in New Jersey as well as the Max Payne 3 comics. However, I believe that it's a valid interpretation of 3's story and would explain things like Max going through the same character development he did during 2 (learning to accept his grief and past mistakes so he can move on with his life), as well as why he never directly brings up the events of 2 aside from when he views the graves of the aforementioned Vinnie and Winterson; every other reference to 2 could be interpreted as referring to something else entirely.
Alternatively...
This is pretty much the logical interpretation of 3's story and its version of Max (if you don't consider it character assassination), but I figured I'd put it forward as an alternative to the above WMG.
- One plot line or mission pack may be Max settling the score with the New Jersey mob, and the game may take some inspiration from John Wick. Although Max has stated that he can't return (or at least doesn't want to) to New Jersey due to the price on his head for killing Anthony DeMarco, some matter may force him to do just that or the contract on Max might start following him beyond the USA. Max Payne might get fed up with it, play Anti-Hero and take out (incidentally or deliberately) the New Jersey Mafia, similar to John Wick mowing his way through a Russian Mob to settle the score with Anthony Senior. This plot thread may open with Max enjoying his relaxation at the beach in Bahia only to have his vacation crashed by contract killers who have tracked him to Brazil. To keep the tone Lighter and Softer, this journey to resolve the price on Max's head also lets Max find even more resolution to his Dark and Troubled Past and this game will end with most of Max's baggage all sorted out.
- Mona is back, but presumably there is no more interest in a relationship as Max has become content with being a lone ranger. They'll be content with being close friends with Max no longer being on the force and being an Anti-Hero himself. Presumably, she (or another character) will be interested in contacting Max as Max stopping Victor Bronco and his schemes in Brazil may have had some far-reaching impact. With Mona Sax lacking a grave in the cemetery of Max Payne 3, there's a chance she could make a return. Mona Sax may be a playable character with her own Another Side, Another Story missions and perspective rather than only being available for a select few chapters.
- Optionally, Raul Passos can have his own mission set and story perspective as well to further develop the character and show off his combat expertise.
- A series of missions may take place in Los Angeles to give Max another underworld to fight through as with New York, and helping bring greater attention to the economic hardships here. As with Max Payne 3, Max may be exposing dirty cops while helping good cop characters do what is right. Some nods to Grand Theft Auto V and the city of San Andreas are bound to happen.
- John Wick may cross paths with Max Payne. Both characters seem to live in a universe where shoot-outs in the underworld are almost accepted as a way of life and assuming that both characters are still alive post-John Wick: Chapter 4, they may somehow cross paths and tell one another all the stories both heard about one-another, with John being impressed that Max shot his way through the armed guards of so many underworld bosses and Max telling John about the rumors he has heard.