Sam Lake

I'm doing it now.

Yes! If someone would only let me.

Max Payne kind of looks like me, or used to, I hope not so much these days. He thinks a lot, often in metaphors. I think a lot too. I can’t do bullet-time.

The people here. Free coffee.

For writing, we use the traditional screenwriting process: a pitch, a synopsis, a scene outline, and a screenplay. Lots of drafts of each and obviously lots of back and forth with gameplay and level design. Iteration and feedback loops are absolutely vital.

In this line of work, you never stop learning. Each project teaches you a lot. And I hope that each new one is better in some ways than the previous one. For AW2, there would definitely be less dark forests and more gameplay variety.

It’s bigger than a lake. The lake is just a hole to get to the ocean. It’s boundless, our world is just an island in that ocean.

This was great, guys, thanks a lot for all the great questions. This was fun. Let's do this again!

It's 11 PM here in Finland. Time to go.

In part having fun, but there is a deeper reason as well. To me all the stories we make are connected and linked in weird ways, part of the same multiverse. It was not so much killing off Payne as establishing Wake, where he is in his career as a writer, wanting to change things. He kills off his popular character, and it leads into a crisis. Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes, but because of the outcry of the fans brought him back later on.

Stephen King stories obviously. For me, the stories of Brett Easton Ellis, Neil Gaiman, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves.