Gotta say, I'm fairly reassured by those magazine scans. It looks like it does still largely take place in Brazil, but we're going to see the events between him being a somewhat restored NYC cop and a ruined private security agent in Brazil. Considering the main theme of Max Payne has always been him losing everything, this should work quite nicely. I'd glad we get to experience that, rather than simply starting the game as this bum like everyone assumed.
The key thing is that aesthetically the game now looks pretty awesome and completely in the vein of Max Payne. Pretty much all the screenshots have a distinctly shadow-filled noir atmosphere, and some of them look like they could have come right out of the preceding games. We're inevitably going to see some daytime stuff, but it seems clear that it's going to be less rather than more — and even there it looks a lot more dreary than the 2009 shots.
Hope rising. 
