“It all comes down to world-building,” says Lake.
And after making his way through the Address Unknown funhouse, Max hears his love interest, Mona Sax, singing it to herself in the shower. Later, a contract killer plays a beautiful rendition of it on a piano, over which the body of one of his victims lies slumped and bloodied. A janitor sings it as he scrubs graffiti from a wall, and you can hear the song blaring loudly from his headphones. You overhear snippets of Late Goodbye throughout Max Payne 2. I wanted it to exist in, and be a part of, the world we created." “In the same way, I didn’t want this song to just play over the end credits. “We have in-game television shows in Max Payne 2 that become a larger part of the world, such as the Address Unknown theme park,” says Sam Lake, creator (and face) of Max Payne, lead writer at Remedy, and co-writer of Late Goodbye. But in an example of developer Remedy’s knack for clever world-building, Late Goodbye is more than just a credits song: it’s threaded into the game itself, and deeply connected to the story. When I think about Max Payne 2, I think of that acoustic guitar and those low, swelling strings. The atmospheric song plays over the end credits, but has always felt like the game’s theme to me. As a Max Payne 2 fan, the opening chords of Late Goodbye by Finnish band Poets of the Fall always give me a shiver of nostalgia.