Remedy Entertainment’s highly successful 2001 video game, Max Payne, was one of the first to feature the bullet-time effect popularized by The Matrix. This completely changed the combat mechanics as players had the option to slow down the time to have better accuracy. Many modern video games have this feature but Max Payne did it more than two decades ago, and it’s all because of the legendary director John Woo.
In a past interview, Petri Järvilehto, the director of Max Payne, explained that he was inspired by John Woo’s original Hong Kong action films and was determined to do something related to slow-motion in the game. Initially, the slow-motion effect was a scripted element. However, they later decided to change it, giving players the option to slow down time manually.
John Woo’s Films Inspired The Bullet Time Mechanism In Max Payne (2001)
In 2018, the director of Remedy Entertainment’s Max Payne, Petri Järvilehto, appeared for an interview with GameDeveloper. During the conversation, Järvilehto talked about the revolutionary Bullet Time mechanism that made Max Payne a massive hit. He revealed the inspiration behind it,
I was a huge fan of John Woo’s original Hong Kong action films as we really wanted to do something with slow-motion in the gameplay – It was really hard to get right though. We tried a huge variation of combinations, things like you enter a room and wham! Everything goes into slow-mo as the bad guys notice you. And as you take the bad guys up, the game only speeds back to normal once the combat is over, etc. These were all experiments where the game (or the level designer) was driving the Bullet Time effect.
As the titular character, players were able to use the bullet time mechanic during firefights, which slowed down the time to a speed at which bullets and other projectiles move slowly enough to be seen clearly. This mechanism gave players more time to shoot and plan. This mechanism could be triggered manually. However, initially, Remedy had different plans.
The Bullet Time Mechanism Was Changed Just 8 Months Before The Release
During the same interview, Järvilehto revealed that Bullet Time was initially a scripted element as the game would slow down the time on its own during gunfights. However, when he was showing the mechanism to Sam Lake, he realized that giving players a manual button to slow down the time would be a better approach,
Something like 8 months before the ship date, I was showing off the recent work and we were planning out how to demo the game with Sam. I kept playing the game and slowing it down manually just prior to combat and then speeding it up in the middle of the combat – Doing that over and over and suddenly things started to click. Since the game defining the slow-mo moments didn’t work, what if we’d give the player all the control and just forget about trying to use it like a scripted element.
Using Bullet Time as a scripted element was far more complex than they initially thought, Järvilehto explained that it was like trying to run underwater. After changing the mechanism, things got a lot easier and they knew that they had created something magical.
Thanks to the Bullet Time mechanism, Max Payne (2001) is widely regarded as one of the best action games of all time. It is confirmed that Remedy Entertainment is developing remakes of Max Payne and Max Payne 2 for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S, with Rockstar publishing.
Are you excited about the remakes? Share your opinions in the comments!
