While there’s a debate to be had around how well the original Mad Max films have aged, the 2015 reboot film cemented the franchise as being one rich with story to tell, with more movies promised to come and a game that released alongside the 2015 film.
Now that we’re finally at the next Mad Max movie with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, talk of another Mad Max game has come along with it. In an interview with GAMINGBible, the series director George Miller was asked about the potential for a new game.
Miller’s response was positive in that he’d love to see a new game, but that he felt the 2015 game “wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be,” and would only entertain the idea of a new game if it could be done at “the highest level.”
For Miller, that level would be if famed game director Hideo Kojima would take on a new Mad Max game. Though Miller isn’t getting his hopes up, as he’s aware Kojima keeps himself quite busy.
That Miller would disparage the 2015 game was a bit of a surprise to many a fan. The 2015 Mad Max game from Avalanche Studios is one that a lot of players look back on as misunderstood for its time.
Avalanche Studios founder, Christofer Sundberg, particularly took exception to Miller’s words. Taking to Twitter, Sundberg began, “This is complete nonsense and just shows complete arrogance.”
“They did everything they could to make this a complete linear game after having signed up with a developer of open-world games. I’m sure Hideo Kojima would make an awesome Mad Max game, but it would be a completely different experience.
After the first year of development they realized that they had forced us to make a linear experience rather than the open world game we pitched. We threw away a year of work and got to hear that “players wants autonomy in this day and age”. Well, no shit…“
https://x.com/CHSundberg/status/1793611234249482268
Sundberg continued in two more tweets, saying that he could provide plenty of “true” stories around what happened to Mad Max from a commercial perspective, and cited its financial failure was mainly down to poor timing.
“It was a hell of a great game, but released in a terrible release-window, which we could not convince the publisher to do otherwise.” Perhaps most upsetting for fans of the game, Sundberg reveals that its poor commercial reception resulted in plenty of DLC that was ready to go being left on the cutting room floor.
“As we were forced to release Mad Max on the same day as MGS, they blamed us for the bad sales and cancelled a bunch of awesome DLC that was just sitting there waiting to be released.”
Back when Mad Max launched on PS4, we at PSU gave the game a 7/10, saying “While it’s a jack of all trades and master of none, there is a distinct charm inherent with Avalanche Studios’ take on Mad Max.”
Whoever ends up making the next Mad Max game, whether that’s Kojima or someone else, fans of the franchise will surely all agree there’s huge potential to make something really great in that universe. Hopefully there’s someone out there able to surpass Miller’s ‘Kojima-level’ expectations.
Source – [GAMINGBible, Christofer Sundberg on Twitter]