L.A. Noire Preview

When Rockstar Games releases a new title, the gaming world sits up and takes notice.  With an impressive resume that includes:  the GTA series, Bully, and the Red Dead series; Rockstar isn’t content to rest on their laurels.  I have played all of Rockstar’s releases and strongly believe that their games continue to innovate and push boundaries.  I do not like westerns, but so strong is my belief in Rockstar, that I pre-ordered Red Dead: Redemption without hesitation and thought it was the “Game of the Year.”  Now after a fairly long delay, Rockstar is finally set to release their newest magnum opus, L.A. Noire, on May 17^th. Hell yes I have pre-ordered this game and eagerly await its release.  Although originally announced as a PS3 exclusive, L.A. Noire will also be released for X-box 360.  The title will ship as one disc for PS3 and three discs for the 360.  I have been following this game’s development for years.  I get the strong impression that if I gush about it one more time, my friends and family are going to hog-tie and ball-gag me until the release date. That being said, I have no doubt that this game will turn the industry on its ear and change the landscape of modern gaming for years to come.

STORY: L.A. Noire is a gritty detective story set in the circa 1940’s “City of Angels.”  Los Angeles is growing and changing rapidly, and so is crime, vice and corruption; this is a rich and fascinating period of history for the city to be explored by a game.  You take control of Officer Cole Phelps (acted by Mad Men’s Aaron Staton) as he works his way up the different beats of the L.A.P.D.: patrol, traffic, homicide, vice, and finally arson.  Each new rank you attain will give you a new partner to assist Cole in the investigation, evidence gathering, and interrogation that make up the backbone of the game.  Every crime scene needs to be carefully inspected for evidence.  Find a piece and you can rotate it in your hand with the left analog stick until you locate the “sweet spot” and gain even more info. Even though crime-solving is a core element of game-play, this IS a Rockstar game, so you know there will be open-world vehicle chases, fighting and gun-play mixed in for good measure.

SETTING: Some of the truly ground-breaking elements of L.A. Noire will be found in the game world of 1940’s L.A. itself.  Painstaking research has been undertaken by the developer to learn about the city during that time period in an effort to recreate it in the game.  Old city plans and photos of buildings from archives have been referenced.  While admittedly not perfect (many of these historical records have not survived over the years) this is as close as you will ever get to driving around and exploring 1940’s Los Angeles.  Navigating this world from the past promises to be fun, educational and epic!  Not only is the city of L.A. in Noire grounded in reality, but many of the crimes you will investigate are based on real crimes of the era, the most famous being the “Black Dahlia” murders.

TECHNOLOGY: Probably the biggest technological leap that will be on display in L.A. Noire is facial animations.  Facial animations have long been fairly dismal in video games.  While graphics have made huge leaps in recent years, facial animation always seem lacking a bit.  So much of human communication is non-verbal:  eye shifts, facial tics, and other body language play such a big role that we often take them for granted.  Animation that does not capture these tiny nuances looks like just what it is: animation.  L.A. Noire will use a new technology called MotionScan to bring the game’s characters to life in a way never before seen in the industry. MotionScan was developed by a company called Depth Analysis.  The following is a quote by Oliver Bao, head of research at Depth Analysis:

“MotionScan allowed us to bring a sense of humanity to the game that has yet to be achieved up until now. As a player, we can interact with and look at each character in the eye throughout the game and essentially believe in their performances,” he says.

“We sit the actors in a chair with 32 cameras around it,” he says. “It’s kind of like doing a constant close-up, and the videos are captured in-sync. We capture the audio and body positioning at the same time with body markers so the whole performance is done in one go.

“The 32 cameras organize into stereo pairs, so each pair works as a 3D scanner. Each take allows you to scan a patch of the head, and then by merging the 16 patches together you get a full 3D head model.

“We do quite a bit of filtering to make sure that it looks temporally smooth, and we also do quite a bit of compressing down to make sure that it fits onto our game disk. That’s quite a challenge considering that the video data rate that we get before compression is one gigabyte per second and we compress that down to one kilobyte per second for running in-game.”

MotionScan is the leap forward in technology that will allow L.A. Noire players to interrogate suspects, then evaluate the truthfulness of their answers and statements based on how they react on screen.  A three-button system is used to determine your reaction to suspect statements.  Each button represents you believing, not being sure, or thinking a statement to be untrue; thereby triggering Cole’s dialogue and questioning tactics. Push a suspect too hard and they will clam up and be uncooperative.  Catch them in a lie and have some evidence to back it up, and they might fold like an umbrella and tell you what you need to know.

L.A. Noire will also be using Lightsprint’s “Real-Time Global Illumination” technology to make the game images and graphics more photo-realistic.  Put all these new technologies together into one game and I think it becomes very clear we are all in for something very special.

ACTING TALENT: In addition to Mad Men’s Aaron Staton acting (in light of MotionScan I don’t think the term voice-acting really does justice to what these actors are doing) fanboy favorite John Noble, from Fringe and Lord of the Rings will also be in Noire.  It has been reported that L.A. Noire features over 20 hours of acting.  A sixty minute film composed of scenes from the game will be screened as a film entry at the Tribeca Film Festival.

DLC: In addition to what looks to be an amazing game on the disc, Noire will also feature plenty of DLC including:

‘The Naked City’ (Bonus Case), where Phelps investigates the apparent suicide of a fashion model.

‘The Sharpshooter’ that enhances a character’s aim with pistols and rifles.

‘A Slip of the Tongue’ (Bonus Case), where a car chase leads to an epic fraud investigation

‘The Chicago Piano’ machine-gun (U.K. only)

As well as Microsoft offering the ‘L.A. Noire Rockstar Pass Add-On’

I am more excited for this game to drop than any other title this year and have the very highest of hopes.  Alas, the wait is almost over.  I have posted a few links in this article, but there is so much content to view online already.  Check out the Rockstar website and L.A. Noire Facebook page for more info and videos than you will know what to do with.  We have a team of Comic Booked videogame ninjas waiting to devour this game on release and to bring you a full and comprehensive review.  Be sure to check it out when it goes live.  Thank you for reading, and happy gaming!

Tags: Games, LA Noire, Previews, Robb Orr, Rockstar, videogames

About the Author

Written by Robb Orr

Robb Orr is a comic bibliophile and game aficionado from the “Emerald City” of Seattle, WA. He hopes to win enough favor to gain pet status after the upcoming and inevitable monkey apocalypse comes to fruition.

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