How does hobofying and moving the protagonist break noir conventions?
Typical noir conventions include a formally-dressed hard-boiled detective, and New York (to a lesser extent). The last time I checked, most noir films didn't dress up their protags in torn singlets and year-old beards. Classic noirs usually preferred New York as a location, although that's obviously a gross generalisation.
I prefer Max's second look. It's more typical of the hard-boiled cop look. Max's first appearances was also appropriate, as he still was kind of a family man, albeit a psychologically screwed, angry family man wielding a hammerspace of guns. But the second one was also good because Max and Mona were fully into the "get-jiggy-and-get-shooting" relationship, which wasn't quite explored in the first game. And nothing helps identify that sort of relationship than leather jackets, massive frown lines and chiselled male jaws.
And Mona was very Basic Instinct, which was awesome. =P I'm all for the Hard-Boiled ending, but maybe with the new locale they won't even have to use her or even Bravura. That was the beauty of the announcement - it worked its way around the "what the bloody hell are they going to do with only 2 known supporting characters still living".
I remember back in school I wrote a 1000 word essay on the Max Payne series as a genre study of crime fiction, so don't mess with me when I dig it up XDDD
Little things we should probably expect for now:
G Novel storytelling
Better Bullet-Time (although how further can they take it, really? XD)
Self-deprecating humour ("The paranoid feel of someone controlling my every step. I was in a computer game. Funny as Hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of." Yeah. That sort of stuff would be awesome.)
(Max Payne 2 starts quite a while after Max Payne - after Alfred Woden smooths things over, which logically would have taken quite a bit of time.)
