If you haven’t yet played Alan Wake 2, here’s your chance to immerse yourself in its terrors for free. Prime members can play it this month on Amazon’s Luna cloud gaming service at no additional charge.
The “fantastic” Alan Wake 2 oozes “psychedelic terror,” as Engadget’s Jessica Conditt put it in our review. The 2023 horror-survival game uses a dual-protagonist motif, alternating between the lost author Wake and the stoic FBI agent Saga Anderson. It “tells a twisted, serpentine story of paranormal murder, shifting realities and demonic possession, with two brooding investigators at its core.” Not a bad way to sublimate the all-too-real horrors of life in 2026.
The Order of Giants DLC for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle also arrives on Luna this month. Ditto for Disney Universe, a knockoff of the Lego game franchise starring the Mouse’s IP.
Setting Luna aside, Amazon also has downloadable PC games that Prime members can claim for free this month. Starting today, you can snag the Borderlands spinoff Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands from the Epic Store. Later this month, you can also claim the highly rated strategy title Total War: Attila (Epic Store, Feb. 26).
Just in time for all your Halloween gaming projects, Alan Wake 2 will be the free to play for members of the PS Plus program in October. The news was announced during Sony’s State of Play presentation.
The recent remake of the game showcases Remedy Entertainment’s skill with tell eerie, surreal interactive stories. And the fans have responded; it’s Remedy’s fastest-selling game to date. If you’re one of those people who hasn’t already bought a copy, now might be the time to join Alan and Saga in solving their supernatural murder mystery.
The new batch of PS Plus games, which also includes the compelling puzzle game Cocoon and Goat Simulator 3, will be available starting October 7. And in case you haven’t gotten enough of Joel, Ellie and the gang, Sony is also adding The Last of Us Part II to the PS Plus game catalog.
Today, October 28, reviews went live for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I reviewed it here at Kotaku, and despite being jaded toward the series for the better part of a decade, I really loved the long-awaited fourth entry. Right now it sits at a strong 84 on review aggregate site Metacritic, which is about in line with where these games typically land. The original Dragon Age: Origins sits at an 86, with Inquisition, the series’ third entry, landing close by at 84. Meanwhile, Dragon Age II, probably the most divisive game in the series, sits at 79. As much as I loved my time with The Veilguard, I knew it would elicit some pretty divergent reactions from folks. There are 10s and there are some more middling scores. You can even find some folks straight-up saying they “do not recommend” the game, like YouTuber Skill Up does while discussing all his problems with BioWare’s latest entry. But what’s the issue? What are folks so split on? Well, everything, it sounds like. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
One of the worst years for cancellations, cuts, and closures in the history of the video game industry has just claimed its next victims, including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. Developers and fans alike are in disbelief. “Great teams are sunsetting before our eyes again, and it’s a fucking gut stab,” wrote Dinga Bakaba, director at Arkane Austin sister-studio, Arkane Lyon.
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Set up in 2006, Arkane Austin helped develop the acclaimed 2012 whale-oil-punk immersive sim Dishonored, before leading development on 2017’s haunting sci-fi shooter Prey. Tango Gameworks, meanwhile, was founded in 2010 and is best known for making the Evil Within series of survival horrorgames, before bestowing a collective breath of fresh air on the video game industry last year with the colorful rhythm hack and slash platformer Hi-Fi Rush. Microsoft shut down both studios today, as well as other Bethesda subsidiaries Roundhouse Games and Alpha Dog Games, citing a need to focus on “high-impact” “priority games.”
“This is absolutely terrible,” tweeted Bakaba, co-creative director at the remaining Arkane studio, in the wake of the news. “Permission to be human: to any executive reading this, friendly reminder that video games are an entertainment/cultural industry, and your business as a corporation is to take care of your artists/entertainers and help them create value for you.”
The Deathloop co-director at the Microsoft-owned studio continued:
Don’t throw us into gold fever gambits, don’t use us as strawmen for miscalculations/blind spots, don’t make our work environments darwinist jungles. You say we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can, we seen it before.
For now, great teams are sunsetting before our eyes again, and it’s a fucking gut stab. Lyon is safe, but please be tactful and discerning about all this, and respect affected folks’ voice and leave it room to be heard, it’s their story to tell, their feelings to express.
Inside baseball, but if I read ‘immersive sim curse’ from the community, especially from a fellow dev, I swear to God… Please, let’s talk about the *real* challenges instead of rehashing irrational anxieties of the past. Even more inside baseball, but with a very, very wide range, as a wise and sorely missed man said: “Please Stop.”
Harvey Smith, co-director on Redfall at Arkane Austin, called today’s new “terrible,” adding that the team there had been through a lot together. Bloomberg previously reported that the vampire shooter’s troubled development grew out of a push by top Bethesda leadership to make a live-service game, a decision that ultimately led to sky-high attrition and multiple delays. “Your talent will lift you up, and I will do anything I can to help,” tweeted Smith. John Johanas, game director at Tango Gameworks, was also at a loss. “So this is how it ends…” he wrote. “Unfortunately I don’t quite have the words…But at least thank you to everyone who supported us.”
Back when Microsoft acquired Bethesda in 2021, its burgeoning Game Pass model seemed like a potentially great fit for Arkane Studios, whose creatively ambitious projects didn’t always seem to find the audiences they deserved. If Bethesda would never greenlight a Prey 2, maybe a deep-pocketed tech giant would see it as as a worthwhile addition to its Netflix-like subscription gaming library. If nothing else, the newly acquired teams would have no shortage of other holes to fill in Xbox’s struggling first-party lineup.
Adam Boyes, co-CEO at Iron Galaxy Studios, juxtaposed today’s carnage with Microsoft’s bottom line in a tweet screencapping the company’s recently announced quarterly profits of roughly $20 billion. “It hurts dude… it hurts,” wrote back Rich Lambert, head of ZeniMax Online Studios. “Angry. Frustrated. Shocked. Furious. Speechless. Dumbfounded. Perplexed,” wrote Alistair Hatch, another long-time veteran of Bethesda. “I have so much love for the studios affected. The people that made those teams were incredible, hard working, dedicated, and talented.”
People from other Microsoft-owned studios and outside the company have also been horrified by the news. “We took a lot of inspiration from both Evil Within and Evil Within 2 when developing Alan Wake 2,” tweeted Remedy Entertainment game director Kyle Rowley. “They are both excellent horror games and I’m very sad we will not get to see a continuation of the franchise from Tango Gameworks. “Why do I still do this?” tweeted Obsidian Entertainment communications director Mikey Dowling.
“Arkane did solid work and had a highly talented and motivated staff,” Mike Wikan, the former Retro Studios developer who led design on Metroid Prime, wrote on LinkedIn. “Companies need to understand that burning your Creative Production Studios to the ground is NOT the path to profitability.”
Image: Ubisoft, Atlus, Rockstar Games, Mundfish / Shedworks / Nintendo / Claire Jackson / Kotaku, Screenshot: Remedy Games / Kotaku
If you’re stuck on a tricky boss fight or a challenging puzzle, or just want to make the most of your time with a new release, we’ve got you covered. Here are some of the tips we found most helpful this week.
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Massive Entertainment’s upcoming open-world Star Wars game, Outlaws,is coming to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S sometime in 2024. The game doesn’t follow Jedi and deal with The Force, but instead will give us a look into the seedier side of life in the Star Wars universe as it follows the exploits of a smuggler and scoundrel in an open-world format encompassing multiple planets. Let’s take a look at everything we know about the next trek to a galaxy far, far away. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Persona 3 Reload, the from-the-ground-up remake of Atlus’ beloved PlayStation 2 role-playing game, is coming out on February 2. But while the 2006 classic is getting a modern retouching very soon, it won’t include everything added to the original in the updated Persona 3 Portable and Persona 3 FES editions, the former of which is on Game Pass right now for Xbox and PC. So if you want to play one of the best additions to the base game, you still have a chance before Persona 3 Portable leaves Game Pass on January 14. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
If you’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto V or GTA Online via Game Pass lately, you might need to pony up and buy a copy to sustain your criminal enterprise. Rockstar’s crime saga is expected to leave Xbox Game Pass in about two weeks. – Claire Jackson Read More
Image: Mundfish / Shedworks / Nintendo / Claire Jackson / Kotaku
Happy new year! This week the Kotaku weekend guide returns with a brisk list of games for your consideration. Maybe some of these you hadn’t considered playing before, or perhaps others have been sitting on your backlog. In that case, consider this your reminder to get working on that stubborn list of yours. – Claire Jackson Read More
If you’ve been eyeing (or playing) Alan Wake II lately but haven’t yet played any of the other titles in Remedy Games’ growing “Remedyverse” of connected stories, then you might want to take a look at the Epic Games Store right now. During its “Developer Spotlight” sale, Alan Wake Remastered, Alan Wake American Nightmare, Control, and both the standard and deluxe versions of Alan Wake II are all available for some pretty generous discounts. – Claire Jackson Read More
Until very recently, I’d thought that Alan Wake 2 would reside in the #2 slot here, while Tears of the Kingdom would remain my personal game of the year. However, a chance encounter recently with writer Cole Kronman (who wrote this great piece on Xenogears and the games of Tetsuya Takahashi for us) helped me clarify my own feelings. I realized that for me, these two games are in close conversation with each other, strange mirrors of each other’s greatness, and that together, they define the best that 2023’s games had to offer in my mind. I’m not going to spoil plot points for either game, but to engage with why and how this is the case, I need to mention a crucial line of dialogue from the end of Alan Wake 2, one that mirrors the first game’s climactic mic drop of “It’s not a lake, it’s an ocean.” If you haven’t yet finished Alan Wake 2 and want to discover this line for yourself, turn back now.
In the final moments of Alan Wake 2 (and potentially earlier, depending on how thorough you are in exploring and absorbing Remedy’s metaphysical horror odyssey), a character says, “It’s not a loop, it’s a spiral.” Alan Wake 2 explores the difficulty and anguish many artists find in the creative process, the way it can sometimes feel like you’re just banging your head against the wall and not making a damn bit of progress, seeing no way out whatsoever as that blank page continues to taunt you.
And yet, sometimes at least, a way out does eventually reveal itself. Sometimes, after we’ve been spinning our wheels for what feels like forever, something in our subconscious will finally crack, a bit of light will shine through, and we will see, at long last, a path forward, knowing that we had to go through all of that internal turmoil to find our way out. What felt like a pointless, exhausting, excruciating loop was in fact a spiral all along. Before spotlighting this at the end by having a character speak the line, Alan Wake 2 hides this idea in plain sight, repeatedly putting you in environments that feel like loops that you have no choice but to run through again and again. Eventually, your persistence pays off, something suddenly changes, and a way out reveals itself. You thought you were going in circles but you were actually moving forward all along; it just took a lot of energy and grit to see that.
I don’t have any particular insight into what the struggle to get Alan Wake 2 made was like for creative director Sam Lake and the other folks at Remedy, but it’s no secret that this is a game the studio had been hoping to make for a very long time. I have to imagine that at times, the setbacks and struggles were crushing, that they felt like defeat. And yet, it’s undeniable that if Remedy had been able to make a sequel to 2010’s Alan Wake some 10 or six years ago, it would not be the game that it is today. Alan Wake 2 is extraordinary in no small part because it is a game that took 13 years to get made, and because, in its creative energy, you can feel the restless struggle, the accumulation of ideas, the desperate search for a way out. Alan Wake 2 is about many things, but perhaps none of them is more crucial to its identity than being about the struggle to make Alan Wake 2.
You’d expect a new Bethesda game would be the biggest RPG of the year, but nope. Instead, it was Baldur’s Gate 3, which officially launched earlier this year to rave reviews. We’ve written a lot about the game already on the site and you should check out those posts, too.
What I wanted to talk about here is how incredible it was to see a turn-based, PC-focused, Dungeons & Dragons game developed by an independent studio and released via early access explode like the latest Call of Duty or GTA.
Everyone I knew was playing it. Everyone online was sharing screenshots. Everyone was talking about all the people they were digitally fucking in the game.
It was wild to watch and a reminder successful games don’t always need flashy years-long marketing campaigns featuring big stars and Super Bowl ads. Instead, sometimes, you can just make a really good game that people want and you’ll sell millions of copies. And maybe end up inspiring a lot of erotic fan fiction.
Any big 2023 video game surprises we missed? What unexpected developments got you all excited this year?
You’ve heard it time and time again—2023 was a huge year for game releases, which made the battle for game of the year (GOTY) at sites and award shows across the globe hard-fought and difficult. Baldur’s Gate 3 won at this year’s Game Awards, other publications have handed the crown to Tears of the Kingdom, and Kotaku’s site-wide list may do something completely different. But what about our staff’s personal GOTY lists, the games that delighted us that maybe weren’t all brand-new titles or big-budget blockbusters, but also were fun little mobile games or shooters that got a second life?
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For me, 2023 was a year of branching out. Despite still plunging hundreds of hours into Overwatch 2 comp, I forced myself to try and get better at The New York Times’ Connections word game, and challenged myself to give turn-based RPGs a go for the first time ever. I dabbled in horror, in humor, in learning some hubris. Some of these games are expected, some may surprise, but they are all my top games of 2023—in no particular order.
New York Times’ Connections
Image: New York Times / Kotaku / Vladimir Gjorgiev (Shutterstock)
A few months ago, the daily New York Times’ Connections puzzle was a consistent hit to my self-esteem. Back then, I constantly wasted my finite chances to arrange the sixteen words into four different buckets based on their linguistic connections, and it irked me to a point where I seriously questioned my own intelligence. Was I, actually, a dumb-dumb? But after a week or so of struggling, I started to make important connections (eh? eh?) in my head, and the daily puzzle became a fun way for me to wake my brain up every morning. Now, I look forward to sending my sister a text featuring beautifully organized, colorful squares, and noting how often we figure out the groups in the same order. It took some time, but I’m proud to say I’m a Connections girly now.
Overwatch 2
Image: Vicky Leta / Blizzard
Despite everything I’ve been through as an open-queuing Overwatch 2 competitive player (who is also a healer main), I could not quit Blizzard’s hero shooter in 2023. Just call me Jack Twist. Blizzard gave us some pretty solid in-game events and collaborations this year, and the new heroes added more spice to the game, which made it easy to consistently return to it again and again and again, even when my rank never made any sense. No matter how much I hate on Overwatch 2 and the powers-that-be at ActiBlizz, it’s still my most-played game of the year by a country mile
Alan Wake 2
Image: Remedy
Once in a while, a game comes along that is so vibey, so incredibly curated, that it’s apt to call its creator an “auteur.” Sam Lake, Alan Wake 2’s writer and director, gave us a horror game imbued with the anxieties of a creative, dripping with blood from occult rituals, and bathed in the eerie neon glow of an alternate-reality Manhattan. From the opening sequence to the pitch-perfect ending and the surprise musical number in-between, Alan Wake 2 is perfection. It’s a game that will be remembered for decades to come, a beacon of beauty in what can too-often be a sea of sameness. Or more simply, as the kids say, this game fucking whips.
Halo Infinite
Image: 343 Industries
Halo Infinite had massive Spartan boots to fill, and it struggled to do so at launch. But two years later, the FPS has earned its flowers, offering a full-fledged Forge builder, new maps and modes, and consistent upgrades that keep it fresh. Halo Infinite is my go-to “brain off” shooter, a frustration-free FPS that lets me feel, briefly, like I’m in college again. The silly physics, the absurd weapons, the over-the-top announcers—it all offers up a low-stakes, high-fun experience that’s like snacking on a bag of Sour Patch kids (watermelon, of course). Kudos to 343 Industries for providing so much communication and support to a game that we were all so hard on—now I just wish we’d get some more campaign content…
Diablo IV
Image: Blizzard
This year was a really big one for me when it came to branching outside of my genre comfort zone, and it started with Diablo IV. I’ve never really played top-down RPGs, but the moment I saw the hellish, moody landscape of Blizzard’s latest game in the franchise, I was hooked. The hack-and-slash combat, the sexy devil lady, the endless quest for better loot, it all scratched an itch I never really knew I had. Sure, I eventually stopped playing as other games released and drew my attention, but the future promise of more content for an already-great game means I will inevitably return to Sanctuary.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Image: Insomniac
No, Spider-Man 2 never wowed me, but it did keep me pleasantly, blissfully entertained for a couple dozen hours. Maybe it’s because I wanted to find every New York City landmark with ease, swinging from Rockefeller Center to Madison Square Garden so fast I’m almost angry at the memory of how many times I’ve schlepped through the city on foot. Maybe it’s because Insomniac has perfected how their Spider-Man world looks and feels, making for a virtually unimpeded gaming experience that goes down like a well-chilled shot of mezcal. Whatever the reason, whenever I needed a break from the highs and lows of first-person-shooting, I turned to Spider-Man 2 for a palate cleanser.
Viewfinder
Screenshot: Kotaku / Thunderful
I first tried out Viewfinder at this year’s Summer Game Fest, and I was floored by its beautiful approach to puzzles. As a very impatient person, I often shun puzzle games, as I can’t brute-force my way through them, but the brilliant visual tricks Viewfinder plays were like a balm for my jittery nerves. Its forgiving rewind feature let me fix my mistakes without punishing me for them, which only gave me more runway when it comes to my dwindling patience, as I felt like every fuck up was a gently teachable moment (despite what you may think, I was a pleasure to have in class). Viewfinder is a work of art as much as it’s a game, with each frame feeling like it could be hung on a wall. I adored this game.
Starfield
Image: Bethesda
Starfield isn’t the future of video games. It doesn’t reinvent the Bethesda wheel, nor does it offer something that feels so demonstrably novel that it was worth all the incredible hype it was getting in the years leading to its release. It is, however, a solid-ass game to get lost in for hours at a time, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. In a year where I lost my grandfather and my dog and where the world felt more cruel than usual, I find solace in mindlessly completing silly little side-quests or trudging across distant, barren planets. Starfield allowed me to get lost when I most needed it, to disconnect from the noise of social media or my own grief for a little bit so I could return to both semi-refreshed, ready to take on another day. Like Skyrim, it’ll always be there when I’m looking for a little free serotonin, and that’s worth a place on this list.
Baldur’s Gate 3
Image: Larian Studios
It took me a few months to get onto the Baldur’s Gate 3 bandwagon, and it only happened because I was violently sidelined by a winter cold that whooped my ass. But once I booted up Larian Studios’ award-winning RPG, I was immediately lost to it, spending 25 hours’ worth of time scouring Faerûn within just a few days. By now you’ve undoubtedly heard the reasons why BG3 is a once-in-decade kind of game—it has a fantastic cast of characters that rivals Mass Effect’s, it offers incredible immersion that makes combat and traversal a delightful playground, its world envelops you like a hand-woven tapestry pulled from the stone wall of a castle. It’s been years since I’ve felt so wholly taken by a game and its universe, but Baldur’s Gate 3 has done it.
There you have it, my personal list of the best games of 2023. What do you think?
It’s a quiet week for major releases, but a big week for savings and DLC from some of the biggest games in the land, like God of War Ragnarok and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.
God Of War Ragnarök DLC: Spend 19 Minutes In Valhalla
Here are some of the tips and guides we found most helpful this week.
In case you still needed to do some last-minute Christmas shopping for the gamers in your life (or for yourself), Microsoft has temporarily slashed the price of its most powerful gaming console, knocking the cost down by $100. – Levi Winslow Read More
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s Indigo Disk DLC adds a handful of new monsters to catch, one of which is, as fans had theorized, an evolution to Dipplin called Hydrapple. This means one of Applin’s diverging evolutionary lines finally has a third form. But if you’ve had a Dippllin since it was introduced in The Teal Mask DLC, you might be curious why it hasn’t evolved into this new form in the time between the two expansions. That’s because Hydrapple’s evolutionary method hadn’t been added to Scarlet and Violet until now. Here’s how to evolve your candy apple dragon into its final form. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
God of War Ragnarök’s new, free DLC Valhalla is out now, and it’s a pretty great combat showcase that has the added benefit of giving Kratos some much-needed therapy. But if you’re unfamiliar with the punishing, repetitious nature of the roguelike genre or just haven’t booted up Ragnarök lately, it can knock you on your ass. Worry not, because we’re here to give you some general tips to help you face your demons. So grab your axe, blades, and spears, and let’s walk into Valhalla together. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Alan Wake 2, Remedy’s survival horror sequel, came out in late October, but if you’re already longing for another trip through the spiral, I have good news: “The Final Draft” update has arrived, and with it a new game plus mode and new story content. Not convinced? Then just watch this trailer and try not to lose your mind at the 30-second mark. – Claire Jackson Read More
Oh hey, we’re just burning through December, aren’t we? Well if the 2024 release calendar is lookin’ rather slim to you, might I interest you in some new additions to Sony’s PlayStation Plus service? This month includes quite a few tempting offers. – Claire Jackson Read More
George Carlin famously said “a house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.” At its core, Lego Fortnite is the same. Epic’s new collab with Lego has become an absolute phenom since it launched December 7, seeing a daily peak of around 2 million concurrent players. Like all good sandbox survival games, it’s driven by the need to gather, store, and organize piles of stuff. But not all stuff is created equal. Some stuff, like wood and granite, is readily available. Other stuff is harder to find. This guide is concerned with the latter, giving you insight on where to find the hard-to-find materials like knotroot, flexwood, and more. – Mo Mozuch Read More
Curious about Alan Wake 2 but never played the first? Well if you’re a PC gamer, I’ve got some good news: Grab a copy of Alan Wake 2 on the Epic Games Store during its holiday sale and you’ll get a free copy of the 2021 remastered version of the first game. – Claire Jackson Read More
Yeah, so that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III campaign wasn’t great. The multiplayer though? That’s a different story. And if you’re at all curious about some shooty fun between friends across some classic maps, good news: You can play the game for free from December 14 to 18. – Claire Jackson Read More
Baldur’s Gate 3 shadow-dropped on Xbox after winning Game of the Year at The Game Awards, and Larian Studios is already pushing out updates and hotfixes as the dust settles. If you’re playing the fantasy epic on your Xbox, you may be at risk of losing your saves, and Larian is warning players to update their system to avoid the issue. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Last year, I caused a bit of a ruckus by saying the fashion at The Game Awards was indicative of the industry’s identity crisis. I lamented the t-shirt and blazer uniform and begged the men of the industry to do better. And though I said this not long before the 2022 awards show was set to kick off, it was clear that even in those few days, gaming’s biggest names scrambled to make sure they pleased one relatively unknown woman from New York.
Ahead of this year’s awards, I offered unsolicited fashion advice to try and ensure the awards ceremony felt as glitzy and as glamorous as host Geoff Keighley wants it to be. I even dressed a few of the attendees myself. But despite all that, I wasn’t sure what kind of looks we’d see when The Game Awards 2023 livestream kicked off on December 7.
This year, I attended the awards in-person, and had quite a few people tell me face-to-face that I singlehandedly made the attendees step up their fashion game. There was so much style both on and off the stage at the Peacock Theater last night, with dozens of people donning sequins and sparkles and Barbie-pink gowns and bright suit sets and funky accessories and sky-high heels. It truly was a feast for the eyes. Hell, Geoff dressed so well this year that someone dropped an f-bomb on stage over it.
So, I decided, just like last year, to gather some of the best-dressed attendees of The Game Awards 2023. Some of them were on-stage, many were off, all were fabulous. Click through to see who made the cut. You’re all beautiful.
If you were feeling nostalgic for old-school Max Payne, the perpetually grimacing star of Remedy’s iconic third-person shooter of the same name, take heart. There’s now a mod for Max Payne 3 that brings back the character’s unforgettable OG face—based on Remedy Creative Director Sam Lake—squint and all.
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For the uninitiated, Max Payne is a 2001 third-person shooter developed by Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind Alan Wake, Control, and Quantum Break. The game featured the likeness of Sam Lake, a Remedy staff member who became known for lending his very structured face to the game’s protagonist. But Lake’s time as Payne’s face soon ended, as both Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne and Rockstar Studios’ Max Payne 3 changed course, with the former NYPD detective being modeled after actors Timothy Gibbs and then James McCaffrey in those sequels. However, modder AlexSavvy has now released a Sam Lake mod on Nexus Mods that puts Lake’s memorable mug back into Max Payne 3.
AlexSavvy
The mod “brings back the original look of Max Payne from the first game” so you can basically play as Sam Lake’s Max Payne in Max Payne 3. That game was pretty graphically sophisticated in its time, so making this mod required AlexSavvy to alter the fitting of every single costume to match Sam Lake’s body, and also model all the different hairstyles Payne sports throughout the game’s narrative.
The modder sought to fully preserve all existing facial expressions and wounds, and also brought back Payne’s Hawaiian shirt and leather jacket combo from the first game. In total, the mod replaces some 98 in-game models and 66 textures to reconstruct Sam Lake’s likeness. As ever, even a seemingly simple mod can require a ton of work.
If early feedback is anything to go by, AlexSavvy nailed it. Certain Max Payne fans have always had a bone to pick with the character’s changed appearance in Max Payne 3, and while it may have taken over a decade, now they can finally enjoy the game as the Max Payne they know and love, who happens to look a lot like Sam Lake.
