Renegade DEA agent and former NYPD officer Max Payne attempts to hunt down the ones responsible for murdering his wife and child, as well as framing him for the murder of his partner, Alex Balder. As the story unfolds, he gains a number of "allies", including a Russian mafia gangster, called Vladimir Lem, and Mona Sax, a female vigilante who is out to avenge the death of her twin sister, Lisa, and manages to bring down the ringleaders in a major drug operation for a narcotic called V, or Valkyr—after the mythological figures in Norse mythology.