izigame.me

"You keep lying to me and I’ll send you and your baby to jail."
Cole Phelps.
Yes, this phrase is in the game.
L.A Noire is one of those lost gems of the seventh generation, where on one hand, genre-defining games practically ceased to exist and simplification and homogenization settled in strongly (fortunately not permanently), on the other, there was still room, within the not-so-absurd mainstream budgets, for original intellectual properties and not-so-bold but undoubtedly interesting experiments like this one.
Like the entire line of games released by Rockstar at the time, L.A Noire represents the studio's attempt to gamify a film genre. GTA 4 brought a drastic and dark change to the franchise, increasing the dose of cynicism and reproducing a genuine crime drama. Red Dead Redemption brought spaghetti western epics in a form and competence never before seen in the medium, and L.A Noire brought the dark, old-fashioned police movies of the 1940s.
Since the seventh generation was dominated by short, linear, and cinematic games, this ambition seemed more than adequate. And it was a time when Rockstar still seemed willing to produce new IP's.
Nowadays, it’s easy to dismiss the game as a simplistic and canned attempt to tell a narrative at the cost of player agency and mechanical complexity. But regardless of that, it’s undeniable that the production has a certain unique charm and competence, making the game irresistible at first glance. Especially if you like the genre.
The setting has that vintage romantic sheen, with a good dose of nihilistic realism and irony from the hard-boiled detective films of the 70s. It's a stylish, rich, and mostly well-executed/written/acted, combination of mature cinematic eras formatted within a timeless genre.
Our Boy Scout war veteran, humble, dedicated, smart, and intelligent Cole Phelps is a classic hero who only wants to do good for society according to the law, have a happy and decent life, and climb the career ladder. The caricatured and romantic portrait of the American dream that hides dark and disturbingly humanizing secrets at its core.
A comical example of righteousness and clean masculinity, but strangely reluctant to assume the glories of being a war hero and a little predisposed to threaten to break the legs of anyone remotely related to the cases...
Rockstar's worlds are too cynical and sarcastic for such a figure to thrive.
Phelps is the perfect protagonist for this type of story.
Technologically speaking, L.A Noire possibly had the best and most realistic animations at the time and featured an innovative face capture system.
The latter, specifically, hits the uncanny valley so hard nowadays that it sits between a Lovecraftian abomination and something produced by artificial intelligence. It's not all bad, of course. And you get used to it a bit, considering the rest around it is extremely well done, but it’s undoubtedly a distracting detail that hasn't aged well.
The sound work and the details in all departments are still commendable. For such a simple game, it's notable that they took care to ensure every little piece was made with care.
Who needs more elaborate combat and movement mechanics when climbing stairs and shooting looks so good on screen?
It’s important to point out the following: L.A Noire is about narrative.
Between clue gathering, interrogations, car and foot chases, hand-to-hand fights with suspects, epic shootouts, and lots of yelling and property damage, you’ll follow a story according to the script and only on rare occasions will you have any say over how things will or won't unfold (and even then, not much).
Play according to the tune and you won’t have problems. Enjoy the game for what it is instead of thinking you’re playing GTA in reverse.
If you know other games from the company, you know how they tell their stories. They own the church. And heretics are not allowed.
Imagine L.A Noire as an overproduced adventure game.
You have a good dose of gameplay, but it happens on rails, supplemented by context. In the fashion of the time.
The cases always end up being solved one way or another. And the only thing that changes is how well you'll be ranked.
There might be some freedom in the conclusion of them. You can avoid unnecessary detours and miss a good dose of details, but nothing that will interfere with the progress of the narrative, just a broader understanding of the context.
You can also mess up everything when interrogating suspects and witnesses and feel like a complete idiot who did a poor job. It's part of the experience.
The investigations and interrogations are fun, although they follow the same scripted tone as the rest of the narratives.
You feel the strings pulling all the time and simply interpret that as a questionable way of "involving" the player with the episode's story. It's not actual investigation, it's pretending to investigate.
Not that this is a problem, it's just that for a game where you play as a detective, little of the experience of playing it is actually about being a detective. It's more about feeling like a detective on a playful level and not a mechanical one.
It’s better than watching a cutscene i guess.
The game organizes its structure episodically like a TV series. Each chapter averages 40 minutes to 1 hour. The organization of the game in chapters/cases creates a convenient and fun way to play pieces of the story.
Since most of the cases are self-contained narratives, you don't have the same problems you would if you tried to play a GTA mission out of context.
It's a surprisingly suitable example of structure for the narrative molds and rigid mission designs found in all the company's games.
Basically, the systemic chaos of the game's sandbox was discouraged or removed, and the focus was completely turned to solving the cases.
Some people believe that making a game with a cosmetic open world is unnecessary and redundant, since the game is essentially a linear experience. But it's clear, after all these years, that the recreated city of Los Angeles in the game has an exuberant charm and a versatile structure for building missions within well-established mechanical constraints.
It works more or less like games like Mafia. You have the open world, but you don't have much reason to wander around. Which doesn't mean it's unnecessary. Or ugly to look at.
You feel more immersed in the world when you have a world to look at. Even if you don’t have much interest in looking around every corner and the use they make of it isn’t particularly deep.
Moreover, it’s obvious that all this culminates in a grand climax. A complex and extremely dangerous case, involving details from the early cases and ghosts from the protagonist's past and several other characters. A bombastic, revealing conclusion full of poetic justice and dramatic ironies.
The game ends on a deliciously perverse and mature tone that would embarrass almost all narratives of the time and owes nothing to the greatest classics of the genre portrayed there.
It's a unique game made in a way we'll probably never see again. It's not an exceptionally incredible game, and surely, I would prefer to watch an HBO series, but still, it's a fantastic experience.
Definitely recommend it.
P.S: There is a black and white mode in the game.