L.A. Noire

That's just the AV club in general. They're impossible to link to. Google the title.

Given how similar the two franchises are and how the game videogame uses a bunch of real-life actors and their faces for the game engine, why the hell aren't they basing it directly off the game?! Hell, it would probably help to boost it's ratings, if anything!

I've been thinking about how much work the game put into accurately recreating 40s Los Angeles and yet they had to fill billboards and radio spots with fictional ads. 70-year old ads would definitely have a nostalgia appeal, and if they'd wanted to go down that road, they could have gotten product placement deals with legacy brands.

On the other hand, licensing would be a nightmare, so I'm not surprised they didn't, but I'm also a little surprised there aren't any community mods to swap out the fake ads with real vintage ones. Probably wouldn't be too much work to grab a collection of ads from the late 40s and do a find and replace for textures and audio files.

Considering all of the other issues this game had, fake branding that I can't imagine many people would notice is the least of its problems.

Interrogations have been changed.

Truth/Doubt/Lie has been changed to Good Cop/Bad Cop/Accuse.

Butbutbutbutbut memes though◊!

It's STILL not gonna make any sense. LA Noire was one of those games where you had to learn early on that you're not the player, but Detective Cole Phelps, LAPD, a guy who tends to get too pushy and aggressive with the questioning at times. Or worse, how the evidence you've collected and presented as an accusation makes sense in your mind fails to work because the game script didn't account for it. Which is honestly more often than I'd like.

It's a shame. On paper the premise of being a police detective who often encounters CSI-style scenarios and shoot-outs is one that sounds amazing, but in practice is severely restrained by necessity of a rigid script, and how AI has a long, long way to go before it's anywhere near ready for even basic two-way conversations.

IIRC, the trick is to be Detective Cole Phelps, over-enthusiastic lie detector who thinks everyone is guilty of everything but frequently waffles on his reasoning.

• Witness: And then we went to the coffee shop.
• Phelps: THAT IS A LIE AND YOU KNOW IT.
• Witness: What? Why would you think that?
• Phelps: I have no idea. It actually makes sense to me. Please, continue.
• Witness: I only had a single cup.
• Phelps: I KNOW YOU JUST MADE THAT UP AND HERE'S THE PROOF!!!
• Witness: What? No, I didn't. What proof could you possible have?
• Phelps: I got nothing. Pay no attention to me. Anyways, that doesn't really sound right. Are you sure that you're telling me everything?
• Witness: I'm sure. I had a cup of espresso coffee, nothing else.
• Phelps: Well, I'm afraid to tell you that just isn't right. You're lying.
• Witness: (nervous) O-of course it is. What else might you already know about that I would have drank?
• Phelps: I found the tea bag. You had raspberry ginseng!
• Witness: You've caught me in my lie! How are you so good at this?!

So far as I recall, accusing someone of lying and then backing out from presenting proof of the lie carries no consequences and you can usually tell if it's the right choice from the way Phelps and the witness react to the choice. If it's wrong, backing out takes you to the previous Truth/Doubt options without screwing up your selection.

edited 10th Nov '17 10:40:03 AM by TobiasDrake

Correct. Usually the dialogue will also suggest specifically what part of the statement you are trying to disprove which is a good way to figure out if you're on the right track.

One of the biggest problems was you couldn't combine evidence either. Yeah, these two on their own don't prove anything, but there's a contradiction if you put them together.

Of note, trying to figure out where the script intends you to go with this investigation is an unfortunate consequence of investigation-based gaming. The Ace Attorney series has this problem too.

Its probably more a play testing issue than anything. In writing heavy games where dialogue impacts gameplay A LOT, you probably should be willing to revise and rewrite to follow how players are interpreting the information.

LA Noire is well written (mostly) for a film or tv drama, but not when the audience has to activly participate.

I just cheat now. Already finished the game. :p

Detective games have that problem in general because by design they have to be heavily narrative: the player is essentially unlocking the story bit by bit until the deductions come together and they unlock the conclusion.

But it's a challenge, because it's expensive taking into account all the ways a mystery can be solved and developing dialogue, animation, etc for those paths - especially in a game so scene-heavy as LA Noire.

The best way of dealing with this I've seen is the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games, where collecting clues and making deductions is its own separate process, where every possibility of the collected clues is assembled altogether and you can explore deductions that turn out to be false before switching tracks. The game also tells you when something is up, but not whether you have the necessary clue to refute it (so the question becomes less "I wonder if they're lying" and more "can I call them out on this?").

It still limits you to the things the game specifically designates as "clues," though. The unofficial clues are still essential for picking which ones are true and which ones aren't. That said, it still has its problems...

edited 11th Nov '17 10:27:43 AM by KnownUnknown

So, L.A. Noire isn't backwards compatible but 2K expects me to pay $40 for the Xbox X version?

Hahahaha, no. Sorry. Not paying $40 for a game I already own.

This game is set after World War II in 1947, which I think is an intriguing period because it's after the war but not in the 1950s. The war would still be fresh and the world would still be starting to convalesce. That's a period that I'm not cognizant of being focused on much in fiction.

This period has me thinking about this sort of noire detective game, set in the same period of "after the war but before the 1950s", but in another place: capitalist Berlin.

Edited by fredhot16 on Nov 3rd 2018 at 12:37:28 PM

Notorious and The Third Man both make use of those time periods.

Noire emerged as a genre as a result of the unease created by the war and its aftermath.