Max Payne 3

Max Payne 3 is a PC third-person shooter written by Dan Houser, Michael Unsworth & Rupert Humphries, developed by Rockstar Studios and published by Rockstar Games in 2012. Set nine years after the events of the second game, Max finds work as a private security contractor in São Paulo, Brazil, but becomes entangled in a quest filled with death and betrayal. Max Payne 3 received highly positive reviews from critics, who praised its gameplay, narrative, and action themes, though some criticism was aimed at the change in style from its predecessors, its linear design, and depiction of São Paulo.

Part I

Intro

• This place was great. Really comfortable. I'm just gonna get settled in.
• Listen, if you still think I can do a job, what have I got to lose? Apart from the weight... Very funny, ha-ha. Yes, that is a fake laugh, you jerk.
• So I guess I had become what they wanted me to be. A killer. Some rent-a-clown with a gun who puts holes in other bad guys.
  Well, that's what they had paid for so, in the end that's what they got. Say what you want about Americans, but we understand capitalism. You buy yourself a product, and you get what you pay for.
  And these chumps had paid for some angry gringo without the sensibilities to know right from wrong. Here I was, about to execute this poor bastard like some dime store angel of death. And I realized, they were correct;
  I wouldn't know right from wrong if one of them was helping the poor and the other was banging my sister.

Chapter I: Something Rotten in the Air

• And what kinda town was this? One where I didn't speak the language and they didn't water down their drinks. So, for now, we seemed to get along just fine.

Max Payne: Nothing like a view of extreme poverty to make a penthouse cocktail party really swing.

Passos: I guess they call it "trickle-down economics".

• The family we were protecting were local celebrities. Rich parasites with delusions of humanity. The kind of people who end up in glossy magazines or body bags depending on how their luck runs.
• [after trying to play a piano in the penthouse] It wasn't the time and I was still a little rusty, but the tune was coming together... just as this 'new start' of mine was about to come to a shuddering halt.

Chapter II: Nothing But the Second Best

• A couple days later, it was back to work ferrying the boss's broad and his dipshit of a brother out for the night so they could recover from their brush with mortality. Then again, what did I expect? These were the kind of people who went to nightclubs in helicopters.
• Marcelo Branco: I've been working far too hard -- like a whore during Fleet Week, as my roommate used to say.

Marcelo: Say, Max, you're a man of the world. What do you fucking do it, man?

Max Payne: About what?

Marcelo: What do you do about life?

Max Payne: Look at me, I'm standing in a nightclub, listening to music I can't stand, I'm five thousand miles from home, I'm armed and I'm drinking. You don't wanna listen to advice from me, amigo.

• I hadn't see it coming, but that wasn't surprising; it's hard to keep your eye on the ball through the bottom of a glass.
• I knew this was gonna be a bad idea, but in the continued absence of any good ones, I decided to go with it.
• A couple of more seconds, and I'd have given some poor street cleaner a crappy start to his day. Now? I had a ride to catch.
• There was a goddamn army of these goons. Clearly, somebody wanted these girls bad. Or maybe they assumed that Branco's security team consisted of more than a drunk American has-been and a Brazilian never-was who should've paid more attention in flying school.
• [about Passos] We were two failed cops failing miserably at being bodyguards. He approached everything with about as little preparation as I did. Maybe that's why we got along.
• Things were turning pretty ugly in this town. The boss's girl was gone, and part of me wished I was, too.

Chapter III: Just Another Day at the Office

• I had been shot more times than I could remember, but this felt different. Maybe fate was sending me a message. Trying to tell me my luck was finally about to run out. Or maybe I'd just severed an artery and was just bleeding out like any number of fools who got shot playing with guns. Either way, I was failing fast.
• At least one of us had a gun now. That raised our chances of survival all the way from 'nil' to 'slim'.

[Passos kicks a discarded soccer ball into a nearby net.]

Max Payne: Dumb sport. Agh...

Passos: Hey, careful, my friend. That's blasphemy in this town.

Max Payne: Who the hell do you think that was, tried to gatecrash our little wine and cheese party?

Passos: I have no idea. This is São Paulo, brother. Could be anyone.

Max Payne: Anyone with access to high-powered sniper rifles and trained killers...

Passos: That's pretty much everyone.

• I didn't know what to think anymore; this town had more smoke and mirrors than a strip club locker room.
• I might've written the book on dumb ideas, but Passos sure wasn't afraid to pull from it.

Passos: Any sign of the money?

Max Payne: Nope. Just people shooting at me. Our surprise guests brought a lot of friends.

• I had a hole in my second favorite drinking arm, and the only way we were likely to get Fabiana back now was in "installments". Whoever our uninvited guests were, I was about done playing soldier.
• Looking back, it was strange how the cops never showed up. But things had a habit of only making sense to me looking back, long after I'd run out of time to fix them.

Chapter IV: Anyone Can Buy Me a Drink

• I had been sitting at the bar for about three hours or about five years depending on how you looked at things. I tried not to look at things. I tried not to think about when it was that my existence became less about the things that make up people's lives and more about the holes that losing those things leave behind. But I wasn't doing a very good job at it.

Tony's Second Lackey: Don't take that from this punk, Tone!

Tony: I ain't taking nothing from him God hasn't already deprived him of... But I might start! Any time...

Passos: Max fucking Payne! How you doing, man?

Max Payne: I'm doing about as good as I look.

• [on shooting Tony] I don't know why I did it. Guess I never liked seeing girls get hit. But from that moment, I was dead in that town.

Passos: I ain't waiting to see who else shows up! C'mon!

Narrator: I thought about saying "the cops", but this was no time for bad jokes.

Passos: Why are you living like this?

Max Payne: Like what?

Passos: You know, scratching around? Sitting in bars all day?

Max Payne: Maybe I just haven't found the right guy to put a bullet through my head yet, I just don't know.

• When had I ever needed to invite trouble in? It always found me, no matter where I hid.
• Brewer: My boy, don't be afraid of the fires. You think they'll hurt ya. You think they'll char your skin and char your bones... But it'll make you clean in the long run! The joys of hygiene!
• Up and out. Scramble away from what's left of your life over dead bodies and a few loose roof tiles.
• Gunfire over Hoboken. Felt strange to be at the center of it again. The target, that is. Like an old comedian hearing one last round of applause.

Passos: You want a camel coat, bro?

Max Payne: I'm fine with the leather.

Passos: There's plenty here going begging.

Max Payne: This don't show the blood so much.

• Passos: Yeah, I can see why you don't wanna leave this place, Max. It's real charming.

Chapter V: Alive, If Not Exactly Well

Max Payne: You know, if I'd been doing my job properly... We wouldn't be out here in the middle of nowhere looking for some broad who got pinched on my watch.

Passos: That's what we tell ourselves. It's all our fault.

Max Payne: No, I'm serious. By the time they grabbed the girls, I was half-cut. I ain't slipping, man - I'm slipped. I'm a bad joke.

Passos: Max, we work private security. We're all ex-soldiers, ex-special forces, ex-cops, ex-good guys. We all have our reasons why we became "ex". Maybe now we can put things right, okay?

Narrator: So that was it, was it? Say the magic word and be absolved of your sins. If only shit were that simple, I'd have done it years ago. Me, I'd been stuck in the past so long, I'd forgotten what year it was.

• Here I was, some hopped up gringo a long way from home, making trouble the only way I knew.

Part II

Chapter VI: A Dame, a Dork, and a Drunk

Rodrigo Branco: I was born into great fortune. Sometimes, it feels like I have done nothing apart from being a rich man in a poor country. The men I talk to, they only see money. Now, my wife... I am not naïve. She does not love me for my body.

Max Payne: Well, despite your good fortune, you're still a decent man.

• Rodrigo Branco: Do you think a pile of shit feels popular because it's surrounded by flies?
• Rodrigo Branco: Strange. You pay a couple million dollars and you expect to-- to push a button to-- to be able to make all your problems go away. All I got was some useless junk and a bit of false confidence. I'm done, Max.
• The real security guards had been run off, paid off, or bumped off. That left us. It wasn't a fantastically comforting thought.

Gabriel Angus: I just... I didn't think I'd have a day like this when I wake up in the mornings.

Max Payne: Wish I could say the same thing.

• Seemed like breaching the perimiter had been no more difficult than strolling through the front gates. But hey, who needs a Trojan Horse when the alarm is down and your standing army is a dame, a dork, and a... drunk?

Rodrigo Branco: Max! Try not to completely destroy the place?

Max Payne: Let's just concentrate on staying alive. Sir!

• Poor girl was dead. Shot through the head by some hero fighting the rich, one lonely secretary at a time.
• I knew there was another way in upstairs for the helipad. The little luxury runaround that kept the rich looking down on the poor literally as well as metaphorically.
• Look at me. I'd been contracted to protect two people. One was being held in some hole, the other was sitting at his desk with a bullet in his head, and the company that had its logo on my paycheck was melting on top of my head.
• So much for a lazy Sunday afternoon. My next trick would be a high-wire act with a fiery pit for a safety net. It was nice that no one was shooting at me for a change, but I'd take shot in the head over a slow roast on a spit any day of the goddamn week.

Max Payne: Why did you come to kill Rodrigo Branco?

Soldier: We came to kill you! Because of what you did to us! You killed so many of us!

Narrator: What reason did this poor bastard have to lie? He would be dead from shock or loss of blood in half an hour, even if I didn't leave him there to burn.

• I was a mess. Rodrigo Branco was dead. Fabiana was held hostage. I had no idea who was behind any of this. I felt like a fool. I was a sweaty, grey-haired mess. This place... Well, this place was gonna kill me, too. I could see that now. I decided that I was gonna die sober, not drunk. At least then, I would see who shot me.
• It was time to take back control from whoever was out to get me. And if I didn't flush them out, at least my mid-life crisis would confuse them enough so they did something stupid. It was the only hope I had. I knew I wasn't thinking straight -- I'd been drinking and popping painkillers for years. I had a liver like a french goose and skin like red leather.
• Well... It wasn't perfect. In fact, it wasn't much good at all. But it was gonna have to do. At least I was... facing in the right direction.

Chapter VII: A Hangover Sent Direct from Mother Nature

• So I guess I was finally about to go and experience the other side of São Paulo firsthand -- the bit people try to ignore. The unpleasant memory they try to obliterate with cocktails and helicopters and parties and lines of blow, like rich fools the world over. I was off the sauce for the first time in years and knew I was due a hangover sent direct from Mother Nature.
• Way I see it, there's two types of people: Those who spend their lives trying to build a future, and those who spend their lives trying to rebuild the past. For too long, I'd been stuck in-between, hidden in the dark. What was I really doing, walking in there with my bad haircut and ridiculous shirt? Was I there to make something right? Or was I just using a messed up situation to indulge myself, grasping at some desperate delusion of control? Maybe the two went hand-in-hand more than I cared to admit.
• First day off the sauce and, somehow, I'd still ended up in the gutter.
• Well, they weren't gonna help me. And who could blame them? I was a dumb American in a place where dumb Americans were less popular than the clap.
• It looked like there was a bar up ahead. The irony was not lost on me. I figured sobriety was no use to me dead.
• Wilson Da Silva: I'm a cop. I mean, I'll fight corruption. I'll stand up to the rich and dumb, but if I go up that hill right now? I'll be dead in three minutes or less. Maybe you, too, Max! You're in the jungle now!
• It was Monday afternoon, and I'd already been thrown out of a party, gone to a strip club, and got into a bar fight. This latest mid-life crisis was certainly ticking all the boxes.
• I was trying to decide whether to crash this party or to turn back when my natural grace and finesse made the decision for me.
• That much security, it had to be Serrano's pad. Since I was in the neighborhood, I figured he wouldn't mind if I dropped in and thanked him personally for his "hospitality". It wasn't like he wasn't expecting me.
• Here I was again, with all hell breaking loose around me, standing over another dead girl I had been trying to protect.

Chapter VIII: Ain't No Reprievement Gonna Be Found Otherwise

• We were only married a short time. By now, she had been dead longer than I knew her. I still hadn't really forgiven myself for the Mona business, but I knew that was just grief. The insanity that comes with losing the life you had built. Michelle... I missed her with every part of my being. I hated the world for not killing me with her, and I hated myself for allowing this to happen to her and our little girl. But I knew I had to leave town.
• I started to wonder if my luck was about to run out when I realized it had, a long time ago. That's why I was here.
• Passos: We gotta get out of here, man! I don't respond well to being blown to bits!

De Marco Thug: You're Max Payne! [referring to Passos] I thought he was fuckin' Max Payne...

Max Payne: Confusing, huh?

De Marco Thug: Hey, you make one more move and this guy, whoever the fuck he is, is gonna get fuckin' dead. Look, man... Give yourself up and De Marco might have a change of conscience, huh? Ain't no reprievement gonna be found otherwise...

Max Payne: I don't even know who he is.

• [referring to a security guard] Some poor bastard quite literally on the graveyard shift. Must've been wondering why there were more bodies above ground than below. All I can hope for is that he didn't even hear the shot that killed him.

Passos: You okay?

Max Payne: Sure! Right up to the moment my head gets blown off...

Hitman: Freeze!

Passos: As opposed to what, disco dance?

• I had to admit, I almost felt bad for the guy. Sure, he had lived a bad life, but I of all people knew that living with this grief would be payment enough for any sins. Still, perhaps not so bad that I was prepared to dig my own grave and let these goombahs kill me without even getting some dirt on their hands.
• De Marco Thug: Your body ain't gonna bury itself. Dig, motherfucker!

• [while playing the piano] This was the place, if not the time, to play my dirge. It didn't come out right, but I wasn't in much of a state to do anything apart from kill people. Maybe that's the only thing I'm good for in any circumstance.

Max Payne: This place looks about as good as any to make a stand.

Passos: At least the coroner won't have to go far to go to work.

Chapter IX: Here I Was Again, Halfway Down the World

• Here I was again, halfway down the world and still looking at the bodies of women I was supposed to protect. Only difference now is, I didn't understand the language.
• I'd failed Rodrigo and I'd failed Fabiana. In that awful nightclub, the stadium, the docks... I'd been given enough chances to make this right, and I'd blown it. Perhaps this was my punishments from the Fates -- keep reliving the same mistakes for all eternity.
• I'd already lost the ransom money, got the hostage killed, and I was only just getting started. This was turning into another fine example of private security work.
• I was still alive, and still not all that happy about it. Why did the easy way out never come? Maybe I thought I didn't deserve it.
• I was guessing these guys didn't spend their spare time studying the Geneva Convention.
• These bastards made the NYPD look like the Hare Krishnas.
• These charmers weren't there to make a couple of arrests; they were bussing them out by the dozen. But who was I to cast judgement on proper police procedure and justifiable use of force?
• I had gone from out of luck to unarmed and shit out of luck. Another reminder -- not that I needed one -- that any low point can always go lower, as my new friends were about to find out.
• I decided I might as well follow them. I was lost and they were going somewhere, and it was the closest I was going to get to a plan.
• After a couple of hours of lying in shit, you learn to appreciate what you've got. And right now, all we had was each other. I was a wreck and Giovanna, well... I knew what she had seen, no amount of drugs or therapy could erase. That kind of pain follows you around forever. The constant shadow of a wasted life.

Chapter X: It's Drive or Shoot, Sister

• When half the local police force and a crew of paramilitary psychopaths wanna send you upstairs, I reasoned the crowd was as good a place as any. At least when we got shot, maybe some kind soul would take a video and put it on the internet.

Max Payne: Just try to stay calm, alright? I know this is fucked up...

Giovanna: I'm pretty calm. I'm also pregnant.

Max Payne: ...you gotta be shitting me.

Giovanna: Me and Raul? Pasos, you call him... We just want to live somewhere away from this shit.

Max Payne: I understand. I wanted that too, a long time ago.

Giovanna: What happened?

Max Payne: Just didn't work out that way.

Giovanna: Sorry to hear that.

Max Payne: Maybe things will be different -- for you two, I mean. Passos is a lucky guy.

• Short of riding in on a parade float, we couldn't have made our arrival more obvious.
• A barely recovering alcoholic and an unarmed pregnant woman. We were hardly a SEAL team. I put our life expectancy at five minutes. If we were lucky.
• Our day had started with us hiding in filth, and gotten progressively worse. My luck was running true to form. Or, rather, I was running true to form.

Max Payne: You ever driven a bus before?

Giovanna: Of course I haven't.

Max Payne: You ever shot anybody?

Giovanna: No!

Max Payne: Well, it's drive or shoot, sister. And right now? I reckon I'll be better at the shootin'.

• I was just about to leave for the roof when my savior and friend, the man whose unborn child I had just killed for, decided to leave without me.

Part III

Chapter XI: Sun Tan Oil, Margaritas, and Greed

• It was the middle of the day, and like any self-respecting idiot, I was half-cut.
• Everybody's drunk and tanned and listening to house music. Most of 'em have plastic surgery and they're all doing blow... I guess it is kinda like Jersey, huh?

Marcelo Branco: I didn't know you were married.

Max Payne: Yeah, well, my wife passed away.

Marcelo Branco: Good. No, not good. Bad. Real bad. But good because now, I can get you laid. A lot. It is great to be single, eh?

• The fire was sucking oxygen from the room. I didn't care if I got shot the second I got out of there; I needed one more gulp of fresh air before I died. It was like the need for a wake-up whiskey after a two day bender.
• So this was the famous Panama Canal. We could've gone to the moon while I was passed out and I wouldn't have noticed.
• There was something firing these guys other than good old fashioned socialist zeal.
• I was on a ghost ship in a ghost canal. The whole thing creeped me the hell out.
• [after trying to play the piano] And the band played on.
• I spotted Passos and Marcello. If I had known back then that they'd been up to no good while I was fighting my way through a band of violent paramilitaries and a worse hangover, I might not have wanted to get over to them so bad.
• On a boat full of drunks and bullshit artists, I'd been the cabaret act. Shooting whatever came in front of me was easier than coming to terms with that reality.

Wilson: Let me ask you again, Max -- what do you think you were really doing in Panama?

Max Payne: I was drinking.

Max Payne: What about me?

Wilson: You? You're the fall guy, the American, running around, acting like the action hero, killing lots of people... You were a stroke of genius.

Max Payne: That ain't how it is...

Wilson: You were an angry ex-cop. You were sitting in a bar with a history of violence and a history of a bad temper; you were perfect!

Max Payne: Me and Passos went to the academy together!

Wilson: Did you?

Max Payne: I don't fuckin' know!

• Wilson: Wanna do something good? Wanna get yourself killed in a good cause? Then I need you to check something out for me.

Wilson: I'm only a cop, Max.

Max Payne: So you keep saying.

Chapter XII: The Great American Savior of the Poor

• I wasn't too excited about the acoustics in this place; couple of gunshots would sound like I'd walked in here with a goddamn marching band. It wasn't pretty, but I guess none of what was about to happen was gonna be.
• I was convinced the Brancos had gotten the wrong man for the job, but maybe Da Silva was right; I was the stooge. The bad joke everybody got but me.
• The Imperial Palace Hotel was a five-star, bona fide shithole. I needed to find out why guests were checking in by the busload and checking out by the bagload.
• I knew this thing was bigger than me. Bigger than the Brancos. But I only had a glimpse of the whole picture. Like looking in the mirror and, for an instant, seeing what everyone else sees. A bad caricature of a better man.
• [while playing his own theme on the piano] There it was -- the soundtrack to my life. And, for a few seconds, came harmony. Finally...
• When you've lived the kind of life I've lived, reality comes at you through a different lens.
• I didn't understand everything, and I never would. But I understood enough. Sometimes, a complicated problem is best tackled with a simple solution.
• Even I could guess what "demolição" meant. That building was condemned in more ways than one.
• These vermin had gone into a place where life was cheap and found a way to get rich off of it.

Neves: What the fuck is your problem, man?!

Max Payne: My problem? My problem?! Wanna know what my problem is? You're turning humans into glue! That's what my fuckin' problem is!

• No, "Come with me, Max, to Brazil! Be a chance to play the fall-guy in a plot that my boss's brother's hatching to profit from the selling of human organs. Yeah, it'll be perfect for ya!"

Passos: You wanna die? I came back for you! I did my best! I'm having a kid, Max. I gotta go.

Max Payne: Fuck you!

Passos: Sure. Later. Now? Let's go.

Chapter XIII: A Fat Bald Dude with a Bad Temper

Passos: I-'m-- I'm sorry I dragged you into this. I know, uh... I know it was very wrong...

Max Payne: It's alright, it's done. And hey, I'm having myself a fun old time, maybe this is how things had to be. Figure I might as well die in the sunshine as die in the snow.

Wilson: A weapons dealer, a murderer, this was known. A dealer in human organs? This wasn't known.

Max Payne: A proper gentleman.

Wilson: Sure.

Max Payne: So, you gonna bring him down?

Wilson: Yes, because I want to lose my wife and my children and then get killed myself -- all that, after watching him walk free.

Max Payne: Tell me what has to be done.

Wilson: Well, officially, there's nothing I can do.

Max Payne: And unofficially?

Wilson: Well... we can always try something a little more creative.

• I guess our little stunt helped other civic-minded people raise valid concerns about community relations.
• If someone had told me six months ago this was where my life was headed, I'd have ordered a double of whatever they were drinking, drunk it, and then blown my head off.
• Another dark, rainy night. Another police station. Another futile crusade for amends. Time moves forward, and nothing changes.
• I still didn't know how I'd gone from drinking myself numb in New Jersey to looting corpses in Brazil. But this was where I was -- five thousand miles from a home I couldn't go back to on another suicide mission to clean up a mess that wasn't even mine.
• My eyes and throat burned, but at least I could breathe. I was trying to work out what direction I was headed in when I discovered some more Brazilian architecture not designed for the American physique.

Max Payne: I don't think we've been properly introduced.

Bachmeyer: I know who you are.

Max Payne: Then you should've killed me in the office when you had the chance.

Bachmeyer: There's still time, meu camarada!

• Like so many times before, I'd found myself alone, locked on a path of destruction. It was at my worst when I was at my best.

• I felt like the avenging angel. I looked like a fat bald dude with a bad temper.

Chapter XIV: One Card Left to Play

• Looking at it one way, shutting down the airport for their escape was a weird sort of "compliment". But one I didn't need.
• News Anchor: And now, your local forecast: Boy, it's dark in some places, but it's sunny everywhere else.

External links

• Official Max Payne website