Highlights

  • A former Avalanche Studios developer defended the Mad Max video game adaptation against criticisms from the film franchise director.
  • Players praised the game's setting and combat, but opinions on its story and characters were varied.
  • The likelihood of Hideo Kojima developing next Mad Max game seems unlikely due to ongoing projects.

A former developer behind the most recent Mad Max game has spoken out about comments made by George Miller, the creator and director of the Mad Max film franchise. While on the red carpet for the premiere of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Miller stated that he would like Hideo Kojima to be the developer of the next Mad Max video game adaptation, if there ever is one.

Mad Max the game was released in September 2015 and received mixed reviews. While it currently sits at an “Overwhelmingly Positive” user rating on Steam, it has a 69 critic average on OpenCritic and a similar score on Metacritic. Players praised the game’s setting and combat, but opinions on its story and cast of characters were varied. Generally, it was agreed that Avalanche succeeded in replicating the unwelcoming atmosphere of the Mad Max films, though some people felt that the open world and locations were a bit too plain and repetitive.

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George Miller apparently fell into the category of people who weren't satisfied with the 2015 Mad Max video game. The director stated that the adaptation “wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be,” despite the film studio giving “all of our material to a company to do it.” Christofer Sundberg, a former developer on the 2015 Mad Max video game and the co-founder of Avalanche Studios, understandably took umbrage with Miller’s comments. The developer shared on social media that the remark was “complete nonsense and just shows complete arrogance.”

Avalanche Studios Co-Founder Defends Its Mad Max Game Adapation

According to Sundberg, the film studio wanted to make the game adaptation linear even though Avalanche was an established creator of open-world titles. The Swedish development studio had already released two well-received Just Cause games and was working on a third, as well as two entries in theHunter franchise and Renegade Ops, a vehicular combat experience with RPG elements. Despite his consternation at Miller’s comments, Sundberg agreed that Hideo Kojima would make an “awesome Mad Max game, but it would be a completely different experience.” And perhaps that’s what Miller is hoping for.

However, the likelihood of Kojima taking the reins of a Mad Max game adaptation seems low, at least in the near future. The esteemed video game director is undoubtedly hard at work on Death Stranding 2, which has just finished shooting and recording with the cast. Kojima Productions is now moving on to the game’s adjustment phase, which will focus on gameplay and graphics and is expected to take a year to complete.

Other game developers defended Avalanche, including Larian Studios’ Michael Douse, who pointed out that the dev team didn’t have early access to Mad Max: Fury Road, the film that came out four months before the game. And due to the aforementioned disagreement over linear versus open-world gameplay, Mad Max’s direction was rebooted a year into development. Despite this, many people consider Avalanche’s Mad Max to be the best game adaptation of the franchise thus far.