Charlie Bewsher: Ideas to incorporate competitive and cooperative multiplayer into the Max Payne series have been around since the first game you can actually see some of those roots taking shape in the form of Max Payne 2s Dead Man Walking mode so it was never a question of if we would do multiplayer for Max Payne 3, but what we could to do make it something really special. We wanted to create something that would fit seamlessly alongside the single player campaign, and that maintained all the key elements that make Max so distinctive to play, from the combination of finely tuned shooting mechanics to the emphasis on movement, to the highly cinematic presentation and of course, Bullet Time. In addition, we want to build relationships between players and break away from the sense of anonymity thats so prevalent in todays online shooters.

Our flagship mode, Gang Wars, is where youll immediately notice this work. Gang Wars essentially takes events from the single-player campaign and uses them as a springboard to dive deeper into some of the events surrounding what you experience in the single player game. Players take on the roles of the various factions at war with Max and each other during the course of the game, such as the New York crime families, the gangs of the favelas, paramilitaries like the Cracha Preto or the elite police known as the U.F. E, and creates a branching story thats unique to each match.

Each match of Gang Wars pits two factions against each other and consists of five rounds, with each round shifting dynamically based on the events of the previous round. For instance, if the first round is Team Deathmatch and one player really dominated the match, the next round might be a VIP-type mode where the rival team must hunt down and kill that player. The rounds are all tied together with customized motion-comic cutscenes, narrated by Max, in which individual players are called out for their accomplishments.