LA Noire, the newest game by Rockstar, has built itself a lot of expectation with its revolutionary motion scan technique and its sheer size, supposedly taking up a full 25GB layer of a Blu-Ray disc (3 DVDs on the Xbox 360). Promises of new graphical fidelity and a huge new narrative built around the already successful Rockstar open-world model captured the attention of many video game players and even drew some from the cinema crowd, and the all-around hype has placed the game near the top of the list of most anticipated games of the year. At the time of this article, I’m not even halfway through the game’s story and still making my way up the ranks of the police force, so I don’t have a full game to reflect on. However here is my take on the game so far.
Expectedly the first thing to catch my eye was the facial capture. Character models emote and react so believably it was actually a little unnerving the first time it popped up. It felt a little like Robert Patrick’s assimilating T-1000 in Terminator 2, in that there is an unsettling sense that an artificial character is somehow trying to pass itself off as human. However that quickly dissipates and gets replaced by sheer immersion; Rockstar has long been applauded for creating true-to-life, engaging characters and LA Noire probably does this better than any game before it, not only for its realistic facial animation but also in its characters’ personalities and subtleties (Many of the people you meet in GTA or Red Dead Redemption, for example are caricaturized, and played for laughs). I guess the more appropriate equivalent would be the rotoscoping featured in Waking Life or A Scanner Darkly, which similarly filmed live actors and built animation around it. It’s a distinct visual style that, like the tech in both of those films, enhances the experience and defines it as unlike anything you’ve seen before.
The general visual design of LA Noire is likely overshadowed by the motion capture technology however it is not to be ignored either. 1940’s Los Angeles is a pretty beautiful place with all its pastel colours and old American charm. Driving across town in an old Chevy, listening to the golden age of radio is just as immersive as Dr. Dre beats blaring from your low rider was in San Andreas, and though Noire removes control of your in-car audio it doesn’t lose anything for it. Unfortunately it seems like there are some persistent visual hiccups that come in sacrifice of the facial graphics, and while environmental pop-ups, odd shadows and jagged animation appear from time to time it doesn’t diminish the experience much because of the game’s entire visual flair. This is the perennial argument for stylistic visual design; style wins over realism almost every time.
My main concern with LA Noire since its announcement has been the fear that fancy new technology would replace great story and narrative-driven gameplay, however it appears that I had nothing to worry about. The story to the game is probably the most focused of all of Rockstar’s games, forgoing much of the developer’s sandbox format. While you are still free to go almost anywhere on the map, LA Noire immediately begins the next case upon completion of the current mission. It changes the structure from an open-ended, branching story to a tightly wound chapter-based one. Immediately, the change feels a little restrictive since there’s no opportunity to simply wander the streets between jobs taking in the atmosphere, but it also excises a lot of the frivolity of buying homes and shopping, etc. It’s a smart decision, keeping the gameplay centred on the task at hand, and developing your character around detective work. On the subject, the actual casework is well-crafted and interesting. Each case begins with a crime scene, where you must gather clues and evidence in order to find locations and suspects to investigate. All of your options and opportunities are based on how much information you can extract from each environment. Once you meet a suspect you enter a conversation and your interviews and interrogations are all based on determining the validity of their statements. You have the option of accepting their testimony as true, doubting it without proof, or declaring it a lie with the evidence to back it up. Choosing correct will extract valuable information, however getting it wrong will have the interviewee clam up and refuse to speak. It sounds formulaic but the characterization and immersion in the story make it feel incredibly important and rewarding to successfully carry out an interrogation.
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