Max Payne 3 details - shoulder zoom, Last Man Standing, physics-animations

A recent interview has shed light on some new gameplay and animation mechanics in Max Payne 3.

"We've introduced a left trigger over the shoulder aiming feature where you can zoom in a bit closer and aim more precisely on your target at the expense of your ability to move around quickly," art director Rob Nelson told Gamespot.

"So we added that and we've added a cover mechanic, but those are ancillary additions to the core of the game, which is still very much the run and gun."

Another important mechanic is Last Man Standing. If Max has any painkillers on hand, he won't die when his health hits zero. Instead, he'll have a few seconds in slow-motion to continue shooting, and if he takes down the enemy who delivered the fatal shot, he'll recover a small amount of health at the cost of one painkiller.

Other upgrades in this entry include the ability to stay prone after shoot-dodging, and an emphasis on realistic, real-time reactionary animations.

"We're doing something new with Max where we're doing physics-animation hybrids," Nelson explained.

"Like when he shoot-dodges; that's physics and an animation pose library running together. You need to be able to control where he's pointing, but at the same time he needs to behave realistically depending on his environment, whether he's launching over some concrete divider or crashing into a wall or a bus or something like that.

"He has to feel aware of his surroundings and so that was a big challenge and something we spent a lot of time tuning."

Max Payne 3 is powered by the same engine as Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption, Eurphoria, with a new bundle of tweaks.

"As far as Euphoria [goes] it's basically a set of behaviours that you can tune, and so it's really how much effort you put into that. With Max, we put a lot of effort into the different aspects of Euphoria and how we use it," nelson said.

"So there's the hit reacts for the enemies, we sort of evolve that and make those feel more connected. I think we had a good jump from GTA4 to Red Dead, and you're going to see another good jump from Red Dead to Max, where you want individual shots to react properly you want people to fall realistically.

"That's something that we're always pushing, plus we have bullet cams and things like that in Max we're you're basically seeing these things up close, you're seeing your bullets impact your opponents, so you want that stuff to really show well."

Watch the full interview below. Max Payne 3 is expected on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in March.

Thanks, Shack.