Why is everyone so short?
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?
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