The Max Payne remake is likely years away, but one ambitious modder cranked out an 'RTX on' remaster of the original game's first level

Ray traced lighting, man. I often feel like I can do without its beastly hits to performance in my games, but then I'll see a transformative use of it that makes me want to slam that "RTX on" button. Modder Slasks Psybunker's demo for ray tracing in the original Max Payne (first spotted by DSOGaming) is one such dinger.

Slasks Psybunker seems to have used the RTX Remix runtime to use this, an earlier version of the RTX remastering toolkit Nvidia plans to release at the end of the month. As a refresher to those who aren't fully tuned in with bleeding edge Nvidia graphics stuff, RTX Remix is the tech giant's tool for quickly creating ray tracing-enabled "remasters" of older PC games. The company first showed it off with a ray tracing-enabled version of Portal.

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Max Payne Roscoe Street Station level with RTX effects enabled — (Image credit: Remedy, Slasks Psybunker)

The results are pretty stunning with the RTX Remixed version of Max Payne as well. The game's first level, Roscoe Street Station, gets this really grungy, oppressively dark makeover. Some part of me will always prize the turn of the millennium charm of the original, but Slasks Psybunker's remaster is definitely a cool alternate take.

I'm hopeful that the modder continues this work for the rest of the game. Roscoe Street is an iconic level, but kind of in the same way Oblivion's Imperial City sewer is⁠—I can't quite put my finger on why I love these dank tunnels so much, they're kind of dumpy, but they do set the stage for amazing videogames. I'd be excited to see Max Payne's more scenic areas like the Aesir headquarters or the mansion level get this same treatment.

This mod also might be a small taste of what Remedy might pull in its upcoming Max Payne 1+2 remaster. You know that bad boy's going to have the most taxing, uber-fancy next gen lighting imaginable, but bouncing light rays are hopefully just the beginning. Alan Wake 2 showed us a studio at the height of its art direction powers, while the destructible environments of Control would be right at home in Max Payne's ultra violent world.

In the meantime, you can check out the Max Payne RTX Remix demo yourself on ModDB, or watch YouTube user turnpike's playthrough of the demo.

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.