Why The New Mad Max Game is Missing The Point

Posted by LaForge on July 17, 2014



I recently rewatched the undisputed best of the Mad Max trilogy, The Road Warrior. The looming fourth installment Fury Road and the upcoming 2015 game Mad Max really sparked my appetite for the original desert wasteland. However, something happened while I was watching the film. Thinking of how awesome a game in this universe could be, I became both excited and disappointed in equal measure.

You see, earlier that night, I watched an interview with the game’s lead level designer:

He says that the multiplayer component wasn’t being seriously considered, because you can’t really have two people playing as Max since he is such an iconic character.

Watching the film, I realized that the game developers missed the entire point of why people like Mad Max. People don’t want to be Max. They want to play around in that world. The setting is what’s interesting. It’s so interesting, in fact, that it spawned an entire genre of wasteland fiction called “The Apunkalypse.” Without The Road Warrior, there would be no Fallout, Book of Eli, Rage, or Fist of the North Star.

Also, he says that Max is an iconic character.

Is he? What makes him different from the other survivors? He’s not particularly brave. He doesn’t stick his neck out for anyone unless it helps him get revenge. The only thing I can think of that sets him above anyone else is skill at driving, which he learned from being a cop before the world went to crap.

Max’s character isn’t actually important at all. He’s a stranger in a strange land. He acts as the lens through which we get to see the setting. In The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, Max encounters a unique situation, and the rules must be explained to him so that they are explained to the audience. Max Rockatansky isn’t an iconic character. He’s us.

Still disagree? Well, did you know his last name before this article?

In this scene, is Max’s reaction what keeps our interest, or is it the corpse-filled truck behind him with “THE VERMIN HAVE INHERITED THE EARTH” written on it? Well, here’s a hint, Max doesn’t even read it. He sees this kind of crap all of the time. We don’t.

If we could have the game we really wanted, we wouldn’t be playing as Max. We’d play as a wasteland version of ourselves. Just look at the new vehicles they’re building for Fury Road. Is your first thought really “Oh man, I wonder what Max would think of these?”

I seriously doubt it.

Mad Max isn’t the only movie game that struggles with this. It’s why Enter The Matrix was more interesting than Matrix: Path of Neo, because the first game wasn’t as beholden to the canon of an established character or their progression through the films. Instead, they began with the question “Why do fans like this fictional universe?” and built a game around the answers. Being forced to play as Max to preserve branding would be like being forced to play as Luke Skywalker in Jedi Knight, or Knights of the Old Republic.

And why would you ever want to do that?

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Mad Max‘s pre-alpha demo at last year’s E3 impressed our crew with its gameplay, but does the final game have a chance of distilling the film series’ experience? Time will tell.