The chaotic, state-of-nature propensity for violence exhibited in George Miller’s classic post-apocalyptic action film Mad Max has always seemed a perfect fit for videogames. So it makes sense that since its release in 1979, the film has had an enormous influence on what is now firmly established as a unique genre of games. The dusty, dried-out world of Fallout paid homage to Max with numerous illusions and overt references, from designing the game’s basic leather armor to mimic Mel Gibson’s original costume to making the player’s lovable canine companion, Dogmeat, the same breed as the hero’s pooch. Gearbox’s Borderlands and id Software’s Rage introduced the vehicular combat suspiciously absent from Bethesda’s reboot of the post-apocalyptic RPG. So then the question naturally arose as to why a straight Mad Max video game had never surfaced.

Well, a recent article in the Australian Financial Review states that “after resisting the impulse for years, and watching imitators clean up, Miller is now finally going to make Mad Max, the game.” The filmmaker expressed his enthusiasm for the game offering “four-dimensional storytelling” to complement the new Mad Max films that are also in the works. “A game can literally become the equivalent of a novel,” Miller said. “That is the thing that people like me who write screenplays envy about novelists: that you can actually stop time and explore little cul de sacs. Whereas in a movie, you’d love to stop and examine that character, but you can’t.”

Miller is developing the game with Brendan McNamara, creator of L.A. Noire, a game dubbed by some of its fans and critics alike as an interactive movie, and its now defunct Australian developer Team Bondi. 

–Yannick LeJacq

[via PC Gamer]

Image: Steampunk Movies