It’s been ten years since the Max Payne trilogy concluded. All three games are available to play on Xbox Series X/S thanks to backward compatibility, and if you jump into the third entry, you’ll hear a soundtrack composed by celebrated noise rock group Health. The band is back for Max Payne 3’s 10th birthday, but we’re the ones getting the present: new music.
Announced by Rockstar, “a new version of the iconic soundtrack” is in the works. It’ll be released on limited-edition vinyl, but you don’t have to own a record player to hear it — it’s headed to digital platforms like Spotify too. There’s no release date for the soundtrack as of yet, so those interested should “stay tuned to the Rockstar Newswire” for now.
The soundtrack itself contains some pretty celebrated songs. Health’s “signature melancholy noise rock sound” was taken to some new places when the band composed for the game. One of the Max Payne 3 tunes, “Tears,” is still regularly played at Health’s live shows. The anniversary soundtrack will “also debut previously unreleased tracks from the game,” so if you think you’ve heard it all before, you haven’t.
As nice as this soundtrack news is, many fans remain disappointed at the lack of a remake for Max Payne 3. Remedy, the studio behind Alan Wake and Control, has teamed up with Rockstar to remake Max Payne 1 and 2, but that leaves the third game out in the cold. Here’s hoping that can be ‘remedied’ in the future.
In the meantime, we’ve been celebrating the Max Payne games with a series of deep dives into the themes of each entry. The original Max Payne shoots to the heart of how video games work with innovations like bullet time, and the sequel chooses what it must preserve and leave behind. The remakes don’t have release dates yet, but those analyses should be a good way to get ready for their arrival.
