Payne Residence

"Home is where your heart is. Once upon a time it had been a house in the suburbs. Now, nothing was left of it."

―Max Payne

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The Payne residence was the family home of Max, Michelle and Rose Payne in 1998.

Characteristics

The house was located in the middle of the suburbs on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. It had two bedrooms and a bathroom on the top floor and a living room, kitchen, and foyer on the ground floor. The house was fully furnished and organized while the Paynes lived there, but during and after the Valkyr junkies break-in, most of the house's furniture and pictures were damaged or broken. "V" graffiti with a syringe was also spray-painted on the wall by the intruders.

It is unknown what happened to the house after the deaths of Max's family, but it can be assumed that the house was sold and Max didn't stay in New Jersey after he went back to the DEA. When Max did eventually move back to New Jersey sometime after the events of the Cleaner Case, he lived in an apartment in the city of Hoboken.

Events

On August 22nd, 1998, Max arrived at his house in the evening after work. Upon entering his home, Max noticed many of the interior's furnishings are in shambles and after he heard a cryptic phone call from an unknown caller he headed upstairs. After he got upstairs, he heard shouting as well as his wife and baby screaming. Suddenly a Valkyr test subject came into the room and after Max told him to drop his gun, the man opened fire on the detective. Payne shot the deranged killer and his partner, but he was too late and found his daughter's body in her crib. Max then went to the bedroom he shared with his wife and shot the last test subject, but he found Michelle Payne's lifeless body on the bed she and Max had shared.

Max's family were shot in their home in order to prevent Project Valhalla's existence to be known to the District Attorney or anyone else at the time. Michelle Payne had found documents a few days prior to her death that were related to the project and in order to prevent any further leak of the documents, the leader of the project had used the project's "test subjects" to silence Michelle and her family under the guise of a "field test" on the subjects' behavior in an "urban environment".

A distorted version of the Payne residence was a prominent location in Max's nightmares.