The connection is obvious, Max Payne and Mona Sax dodge bullets like they're in the Matrix because they're in the Matrix.Funny as Hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.' - Max Payne has already realized he's in a simulation, and that 'game' is really the Matrix. The paranoid feel of someone controlling my every step. Endless repetition of the act of shooting, time slowing down to show off my moves.

Weapon statistics hanging in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye.

'The truth was a burning green crack through my brain.

Max Payne is in The MatrixPeople who die in the Matrix die in reality because your mind makes it real.Max takes enough painkillers to be unaffected by otherwise fatal wounds in an otherwise undiscovered exploit/glitch in the Matrix. His fate - the plot of the game - is set. Is he simply a Death Seeker? Or perhaps his apparently temporary Medium Awareness from the first game was nothing but - ever since the curtain was pulled back in the first game he has always known that he is a character in a work of fiction, and he cannot choose to do anything of his own accord. When Mona attempts to dissuade him from going, he insists that he doesn't care whether he dies or not. Near the end of the game, he meditates at length on the idea of fate and the impossibility of free will while en route to Woden's mansion. Vladimir asks Max whether or not it is fair to morally judge someone who is forced by no choice of their own into a situation in which they can only do wrong (the parallels with the player mowing through wave after wave of Mooks is obvious), and Max at one point thinks about such situations in his own life - being trapped in awful situations because of choices he didn't even realise he'd made at the time (like staying late at work to chat to a friend instead of hurrying home to his wife and daughter). However, throughout the second game, the notion of fate (in a divine sense) is discussed at length. These are never brought up again after he wakes up from his dreams, and they appear to be nothing more than one-shot jokes meant to amuse the player or enhance the surreal atmosphere. Max's Medium Awareness is not, in fact, limited solely to his dream sequences.In the first game, Max has several surreal dream sequences in which he breaks the fourth wall, fully aware that he is inside a video game and a graphic novel.

Tv tropes max payne 3