Final Thoughts: LA Noire

In my previous post I gave my immediate reactions to the first hours of LA Noire, a 1940's detective story that follows the career of WWII vet Cole Phelps as he rises through the ranks of the LAPD. I was hesitant to write about the game at such an early stage, knowing that any declaration I made would be premature and vulnerable to change, but I wanted to get my impressions down early, since I knew it was a particularly long story.


The first topic of my 'Impressions' article regarded the revolutionary facial capture technology Rockstar implemented into Noire, and while I was immediately averse to the photo-realism of characters' expressions, shock turned to immersion as I became more attuned to reading faces and interpreting their statements. The range of movement and variation in the facial animation is truly remarkable but often it comes at the expense of visual continuity. There's a pretty distinct drop in character models from the neck down, and this discrepancy is the source of my disquieting sense that the inhabitants of old-time LA were Terminator-esque murder robots wearing the faces of my neighbours and co-workers. This would be forgivable if the facial technology delivered on its promise of the ability for the player to read subtle facial cues in order to judge the authenticity of their response, however more times than not a lying suspect gives himself away by stammering through his response and then staring, wild-eyed around the room in cartoonish exaggeration. I had assumed this caricature-like behaviour would disappear as I climbed higher up the difficulty curve but that was rarely the case. The interrogation premise LA Noire offers is a refreshing, ambitious and truly interesting gameplay mechanic but it's mostly tossed aside to help the player along, and if that's the case it could have used less demanding technology and conversely, could have offered a more cohesive visual style.

You're saying you didn't abduct Mr. Thompson to use his head like a puppet?

The other issue I addressed in the previous post was the fear of exploiting fancy new tech at the expense of story, something Noire seemed to avoid by driving the story through Phelps' investigations. However the further the game develops the less the story advances based on your detective work. Instead flashbacks and side-stories become the driving force of the narrative and as a result your agency becomes redundant. Even your proficiency as a detective becomes irrelevant, as the issue of correctly charging the guilty party turns out not to matter in the least. As a result Noire falls into the same traps as most video games do, dividing the story from the gameplay to such an extent that the experience is similar to taking a break from watching The Usual Suspects every few minutes to play a couple games of Guess Who. It's disappointing, as LA Noire was incredibly close to providing a truly engaging new genre for the industry.

 

It was Andy! He's proud of himself too, just look at him!

Looking between both of these LA Noire articles I've written, they're comically bi-polar. I want to clarify that while my amendments seem to bash the game into the ground, Noire is by no means a bad game. It's different from any other game you'll play this year and I still believe it's vastly more fun than Heavy Rain, it's most direct counterpoint. It doesn't change the landscape of video games, but it also makes for a pretty cool interactive film noir. I like LA Noire, but I'd still take John Marston over Cole Phelps any day of the week.