My Thoughts on LA Noire [PC Version]

Why is everyone so short?

 [Originally written on 27th June 2020]

I turned to this game because I wanted a change, a departure from action packed, shoot-em-ups like Far Cry 4 or sport heavy games like FIFA. I knew you had to solve cases in this LA Noire, and you would have to actually employ your mental abilities for this, but I had no idea I would have so much control over the investigations.

It’s 1947, and you play a detective named Cole Phelps who’s working in the LAPD. The game felt simple enough at first. Simple, but amazing, because I realized I’ll have to judge the truthfulness of suspects and witnesses from their facial expressions. I wondered if artificial NPCs who are nothing but lines of code, would be able to communicate enough information from their faces for me to establish the validity of their accounts, but when Cole Phelps’s interrogation actually began, I was amazed at how effective the NPCs’ facial expressions were, almost like an actual human was sitting there, not a coded NPC.

This is thanks to the MotionScan technology used in this game. All the characters are played by actual actors whose faces were superimposed on the bodies of the NPCs, which makes for realistic expressions.

I felt like a real detective interrogating witnesses, investigating crime scenes and deciding who to charge for a crime. Prior to this, the only crime investigation games I had played were the hidden object ones where there is a mish-mash of objects in a scene and you had to find some special ones out of those to conduct your investigation on. Those games had a guarantee that you would find all the objects at some point and will proceed with the investigation. LA Noire has no guarantee. Like a true detective, I had to scour the crime scene thoroughly to ensure I had collected all the clues that would aid me. Like a true detective I dreaded the interrogations because there was always a chance I would meet someone who was too good at hiding his true intentions behind his expressions, and hence I would not be able to extract the necessary information out of him, which could prove costly later on.

Owing to MotionScan, the voice acting matches perfectly with expressions and has a highly positive effect on the overall gameplay, lending to the credibility of the game and the characters therein. I actually felt sympathetic to Cole when he was demoted.

Having established the impeccable quality of the gameplay, we move on to the story. Set in 1947, with occasional flashbacks into the past of Cole Phelps, the story begins slowly but picks up the pace and intrigues the player by the time Cole gets to work with the Ad Vice department of LAPD. The web of politicians, high ranking officials, movie stars etc. is liable to be quite dense in a city like Los Angeles, and it is indeed woven beautifully. The player gets to experience it first hand through Cole as he gets embroiled in something much bigger than himself.

The overall look and feel of the game also successfully carry the player back to 1940s LA. I don’t know how historically accurate the game is, but I guess it keeps anachronisms to a bare minimum as my untrained eye didn’t spot  any chronological mistake, not that I was consciously looking for one, but it all seemed pretty authentic to me. Vintage cars, electric wires hanging densely over my head in plain sight, public telephones for police use, projectors with film reels, old songs on the radio…at one point I even had a mind to watch some old Hollywood movies. Speaking of which, the sign in LA Noire reads ‘HollywoodLand’, and not ‘Hollywood’, so, again, I think Team Bondi and Rockstar were pretty careful not to stray from history.

There are a lot of collectibles in LA Noire – golden film reels, newspapers, police  badges – and I was not even aware that I had to collect the film reels and the badges until I stumbled upon the first ones. There are also landmarks and hidden vintage vehicles all across LA that you can collect. Honestly, these collectibles felt like a distraction to me, except the newspapers because they reveal some details of what goes on in LA behind Cole’s back and serve as stories you may or may not choose to believe as you progress through your own story. At many points, I could connect the case I was working on to a newspaper story I had read earlier. These stories offer you a sneak peek behind the scenes, sort of like trivia items.

LA Noire really satiated my appetite for investigation and interrogation. This was a game I could play without having to worry about my HP, XP or ammo. Just plain old police work in a city that holds countless scams, frauds and thefts in its belly; and while you uncover them, you reveal something bigger going on behind the curtains.

I have just one question, though - why is everyone so short in this game?