History Headscratchers / LANoire

*** I think this is a result of the game trying to mould realistic questioning around it's simplistic gameplay system for interrogations and doing a pretty bad job at it a lot of the time(in my opinion). To use another example from a case you've brought up: During Bigelow's interrogation when Cole asks him about Leitvol, he just points to one of the goons that was shot in the recent shoot-out and says "he's that guy over there". To both the player and to Cole in-universe this should come across as a ludicrous violation of common sense, since you and him both ''know'' that's not true at all. So what do you got to do? Play the bad cop over such an obvious lie right? No, you need to accuse him (or call out his "lie" if you're playing the OG version) and present evidence that ties Leitvol to Marquee Printing. No rationally minded player is going to understand that this is what you need to do. His lie violates the core foundations of the case, it isn't something you should have to accuse anyone over. Another example(and probably the biggest offender if you ask me) occurs in the Fallen Idol case though: Having found a pair of ripped panties in the handbag of the car's passenger, you question the driver, June Ballard, and ask her about said passenger. June tells you that the passenger, Jessica has had a rough day, and wants to break into movies then adds "what more can I say?". Somehow the game expects you to pull the fact that Jessica was raped the prior day outta thin air and understand that you've got to hit "accuse" (or lie) and present the underwear to prove this. The game doesn't even ''remotely'' imply this before this point. You just find ripped underwear in her bag and that's it. Who on the development team honestly thought it was a good idea to expect players to leap to the conclusion that Jessica was raped the prior day, then understand that "what more can I say" is the game's way of hinting at June knowing this but keeping quiet about it (she wasn't even talking about the events that happened to Jessica ''yesterday'' which might make it a little more reasonable; she's talking about what happened to her during the crash and who she is in general), ''and then'' also understand that you need to directly accuse her of lying based on the pure circumstantial crap you pulled outta a wormhole?. This moment basically epitomises the issues with the L.A. Noir's interrogation gameplay (according to the actual Rockstar social club statistics, only around 9% of players get this part right, which shows some serious issue with the game design when over 90% of player base doesn't understand that the game's expecting of them; and bare in mind that this statistic includes EVERYONE not exuding people using walkthrough, and cheating with online sources, ect).

*** I think this is a result of the game trying to mould realistic questioning around it's simplistic gameplay system for interrogations and doing a pretty bad job at it a lot of the time(in my opinion). To use another example from a case you've brought up: During Bigalow's interrogation when Cole asks him about Leitvol, he just points to one of the goons that was shot in the recent shoot-out and says "he's that guy over there". To both the player and to Cole in-universe this should come across as a ludicrous violation of common sense, since you and him both ''know'' that's not true at all. So what do you got to do? Play the bad cop over such an obvious lie right? No, you need to accuse him (or call out his "lie" if you're playing the OG version) and present evidence that ties Leitvol to Marquee Printing. No rationally minded player is going to understand that this is what you need to do. His lie violates the core foundations of the case, it isn't something you should have to accuse anyone over. Another example(and probably the biggest offender if you ask me) occurs in the Fallen Idol case though: Having found a pair of ripped panties in the handbag of the car's passenger, you question the driver, June Ballard, and ask her about said passenger. June tells you that the passenger, Jessica has had a rough day, and wants to break into movies then adds "what more can I say?". Somehow the game expects you to pull the fact that Jessica was raped the prior day outta thin air and understand that you've got to hit "accuse" (or lie) and present the underwear to prove this. The game doesn't even ''remotely'' imply this before this point. You just find ripped underwear in her bag and that's it. Who on the development team honestly thought it was a good idea to expect players to leap to the conclusion that Jessica was raped the prior day, then understand that "what more can I say" is the game's way of hinting at June knowing this but keeping quiet about it (she wasn't even talking about the events that happened to Jessica ''yesterday'' which might make it a little more reasonable; she's talking about what happened to her during the crash and who she is in general), ''and then'' also understand that you need to directly accuse her of lying based on the pure circumstantial crap you pulled outta a wormhole?. This moment basically epitomises the issues with the L.A. Noir's interrogation gameplay (according to the actual Rockstar social club statistics, only around 9% of players get this part right, which shows some serious issue with the game design when over 90% of player base doesn't understand that the game's expecting of them; and bare in mind that this statistic includes EVERYONE not exuding people using walkthrough, and cheating with online sources, ect).

*** I think this is a result of the game trying to mould realistic questioning around it's simplistic gameplay system for interrogations and doing a pretty bad job at it a lot of the time(in my opinion). To use another example from a case you've brought up: During Bigalow's interrogation when Cole asks him about Leitvol, he just points to one of the goons that was shot in the recent shoot-out and says "he's that guy over there". To both the player and to Cole in-universe this should come across as a ludicrous violation of common sense, since you and him both ''know'' that's not true at all. So what do you got to do? Play the bad cop over such an obvious lie right? No, you need to accuse him (or call out his "lie" if you're playing the OG version) and present evidence that ties Leitvol to Marquee Printing. No rationally minded player is going to understand that this is what you need to do. His lie violates the core foundations of the case, it isn't something you should have to accuse anyone over. Another example(and probably the biggest offender if you ask me) occurs in the Fallen Idol case though: Having found a pair of ripped panties in the handbag of the car's passenger, you question the driver, June Ballard, and ask her about said passenger. June tells you that the passenger, Jessica has had a rough day, and wants to break into movies then adds "what more can I say?". Somehow the game expects you to pull the fact that Jessica was raped the prior day outta thin air and understand that you've got to hit "accuse" (or lie) and present the underwear to prove this. The game doesn't even ''remotely'' imply this before this point. You just find ripped underwear in her bag and that's it. Who on the development team honestly thought it was a good idea to expect players to leap to the conclusion that Jessica was raped the prior day, then understand that "what more can I say" is the game's way of hinting at June knowing this but keeping quiet about it (she wasn't even talking about the events that happened to Jessica ''yesterday'' which might make it a little more reasonable; she's talking about what happened to her during the crash and who she is in general), ''and then'' also understand that you need to directly accuse her of lying based on the pure circumstantial crap you pulled outta a wormhole?. This moment basically epitomises the issues with the L.A. Noir's interrogation gameplay (according to the actual Rockstar social club statistics, only around 9% of players get this part wrong, which shows some serious issue with the game design; and bare in mind that this statistic includes EVERYONE not exuding people using walkthrough, and cheating with online sources, ect).

** This is a permanent issue throughout the interrogations yo be frank, and the game is often times wanting the player to make leaps of logic where it's not necessarily obvious if you should be making them or not. Or, to be a bit more specific, the game expects you to understand that you need to cut of a step in the thought process to make a piece of evidence work. To use an example from the same case; Cole finds a photo frame in Adrian Black's bedroom that has a concealed message from Adrian's secret lover, Nicole. During the interview with his wife, Cole asks about the photo, and Mrs. Black says that it's from Adrian's business trip to Seattle. The way she speaks and her expression makes it clear she's not being truthful, and sure enough you have to present the concealed message to prove it. This seems fair enough, apart from the fact that there isn't any logical reasoning behind the idea that Mrs. Black is actively lying. The game's logic is "She's lying about the photo + the photo has a concealed message from her husband's lover = the concealed message proves she's lying", which completely cuts out the middle stepping stone of the message being something she has knowledge of. Now, this is hardly an illogical leap for players to be expected to make, but this is just one early and rather easy to side-step instance of this kind of thing. But this kind of thing, where the game expects players to not question the middle ground between two pieces of logic which could very easy turn a lot of people off from thinking that's the right answer (in this instance a player could easily think "this isn't proof that she ''is'' lying about the photo, so maybe I should doubt it instead"), happens a lot through the game.

*** Other times though, the game is just asking one thing of you but expecting something entirely different. Another rather early example of this happens in the case ''A Slip of the Tongue". Having found out the identity of the mastermind behind the stolen car racket, you go and confront him about it. He, of course, denies it and passes the conjectural circumstances off. He tells Phelps that he'll need some proof evidence if he's going to accuse him. The player is expected to know at this point that you need to present a piece of proof that shows his motive for doing it in the first place, aka, evidence related to his gambling debts. This is not proof of any kind, it's a motive, yet the player is supposed to know to present to him as the damning evidence that he is the racket mastermind. Not only this, but the player needs to select "lie", then present the proof of his debts, even though his statement is literally just him saying that Cole needs something more then conjecture to prove his accusations. There isn't any lie in there (yes, I'm aware that the Remastered Edition changed the option names. Even so, it isn't at all telegraphed properly to the player that this is the moment when they need to pull out something to pin him with). It's presented in a way that makes the "force him to comply" tactic seem the most obvious, not the "you're laying dammit and I can prove it" tactic. Being suckered into picking "doubt"/"Bad Cop" at this stage is not a fault of the player overlooking their proof, it's a fault of the game not giving the player any cues that they've got to directly make an accusation/show the proof themselves at that moment in time.

*** Other times though, the game is just asking one thing of you but expecting something entirely different. Another rather early example of this happens in the case ''A Slip of the Tongue". Having found out the identity of the mastermind behind the stolen car racket, you go and confront him about it. He, of course, denies it and passes the conjectural circumstances off. He tells Phelps that he'll need some proof evidence if he's going to accuse him. The player is expected to know at this point that you need to prevent a piece of proof that shows his motive for doing it in the first place, aka, evidence related to his gambling debts. This is not proof of any kind, it's a motive, yet the player is supposed to know to present to him as the damning evidence that he is the racket mastermind. Not only this, but the player needs to select "lie", then present the proof of his debts, even though his statement is literally just him saying that Cole needs something more then conjecture to prove his accusations. There isn't any lie in there (yes, I'm aware that the Remastered Edition changed the option names).

*** Other times though, the game is just asking one thing of you but expecting something entirely different. Another rather early example of this happens in the case ''A Slip of the Tongue". Having found out the identity of the mastermind behind the stolen car racket, you go and confront him about it. He, of course, denies it and passes the conjectural circumstances off. He tells Phelps that he'll need some proof evidence if he's going to accuse him. The player is expected to know at this point that you need to prevent a piece of proof that shows his motive for doing it in the first place, aka, evidence related to his gambling debts. This is not proof of any kind, it's a motive, yet the player is supposed to know to present to him as the damning evidence that he is the racket mastermind.

** By the 1940s fingerprinting was a rudimentary (albeit still flawed) aspect of criminal investigation. Detectives in 1940s America going around touching all evidence they come across with their bare hands is close to parody levels of AnachronismStew (aka people using this kind of thinking, as though they believe that everything before the year 2000 was stuck at Tudor period levels of technology). And this is also an extremely bizarre line of thinking relating to the use of fingerprints in the first place. Every single piece of mystery fiction that's ever existed in the 20th and 21st century has been able to tell their stories without forgetting that fingerprints exist, including a lot of video games.
*** Fingerprinting would have taken much longer, what with having to search for a full fingerprint on evidence and then compare it to tons of fingerprints and risk not finding anything so it's easier for Cole to just look for suspects based on the actual evidence than fingerprints. plus fingerprints would have been easier to find on a letter because you would need to touch it multiple times to mail it.

** Fingerprints, and while I am at it, how the crime scenes are treated in the game overall. Nobody ever wears any gloves while manipulating evidence, yet we know fingerprint identification exists because the BD killer took the precaution of washing his letters with gasoline. If Cole didn't spend roughly half the game desecrating (cause there is no other words) evidence with his bare hands, wouldn't the fingerprint on the various lug wrenches allow several suspects to walk away free?
*** This bugged me too, but I just chalked it up to GameplayAndStorySegregation. It seems like an easy fix though, since Rockstar could have just shown Cole snapping on some gloves in every "showing up at the crime scene" cutscene.
*** It's the 1940s, though. This isn't a 2011 CSI episode. Besides, having fingerprints to tie suspects to crimes would immediately rule out 90% of the gameplay and remove any need for interrogation, confession or any other clues and remove all the mystery because you'd be able to identify whether someone was a suspect or not with 100% accuracy using that. Matching fingerprints in every single case would be a dull as shit game and ruin the entire experience. There would be no thinking at all involved.

*** By the 1940s fingerprinting was a rudimentary (albeit still flawed) aspect of criminal investigation. Detectives in 1940s America going around touching all evidence they come across with their bare hands is close to parody levels of AnachronismStew (aka people using this kind of thinking, as though they believe that everything before the year 2000 was stuck at Tudor period levels of technology). And this is also an extremely bizarre line of thinking relating to the use of fingerprints in the first place. Every single piece of mystery fiction that's ever existed in the 20th and 21st century has been able to tell their stories without forgetting that fingerprints exist, including a lot of video games.

** Fingerprints, and while I am at it, how the crime scenes are treated in the game overall. Nobody ever wears any gloves while manipulating evidence, yet we know fingerprint identification exists because the BD killer took the precaution of washing his letters with gasoline. If Cole didn't spend roughly half the game desecrating (cause there is no other words) evidence with his bare hands, wouldn't the fingerprint on the various lug wrenches allow several suspects to walk away free?
*** This bugged me too, but I just chalked it up to GameplayAndStorySegregation. It seems like an easy fix though, since Rockstar could have just shown Cole snapping on some gloves in every "showing up at the crime scene" cutscene.
*** It's the 1940s, though. This isn't a 2011 CSI episode. Besides, having fingerprints to tie suspects to crimes would immediately rule out 90% of the gameplay and remove any need for interrogation, confession or any other clues and remove all the mystery because you'd be able to identify whether someone was a suspect or not with 100% accuracy using that. Matching fingerprints in every single case would be a dull as shit game and ruin the entire experience. There would be no thinking at all involved.
*** By the 1940s fingerprinting was a rudimentary (albeit still flawed) aspect of criminal investigation. Detectives in 1940s America going around touching all evidence they come across with their bare hands is close to parody levels of AnachronismStew (aka people using this kind of thinking, as though they believe that everything before the year 2000 was stuck at Tudor period levels of technology). And this is also an extremely bizarre line of thinking relating to the use of fingerprints in the first place. Every single piece of mystery fiction that's ever existed in the 20th and 21st century has been able to tell their stories without forgetting that fingerprints exist, including a lot of video games.
*** Fingerprinting would have taken much longer, what with having to search for a full fingerprint on evidence and then compare it to tons of fingerprints and risk not finding anything so it's easier for Cole to just look for suspects based on the actual evidence than fingerprints. plus fingerprints would have been easier to find on a letter because you would need to touch it multiple times to mail it.
** Bringing us to something else, it's heavily implied that the true BD killer leaved evidences at the home of various suspects, such as bloody clothes or lug wrenches. How? How did he know who Cole would suspect (he spent very time little time with his victim before killing them; certainly not enough to learn about their relationships)? How is he able to get to the homes of would be suspects, breaking in, plant evidences and left without ever somebody noticing him? The timeline in each of the homicides cases is short: victim get killed during the night, found at dawn, case is closed pretty much at dusk. When did the BD killer ever find the time to plant all that evidence? Why do the suspects never think it's weird that bloody ropes and clothes pop up in their victims' houses? On that last point, the White Shoe case is spectacularly egregious.

*** This is exactly what I found the problem! The other issue was that we saw close to nothing of Cole's life at home and we get so scenes between and Elsa establishing their romance. A bit down someone stated that they tried to spin it as TheReveal, but it still falls flat, being a CharacterDerailment for Cole and the moment where I lost sympathy for him. Had we seen some scenes between him and Elsa, this would not have happened, as it would have shown Cole's imperfections, but also establishing that he did in fact have feelings for her. Compare this to when Ed Exley sleeps with Lynn Bracken in ''LAConfidential''. We see her seducing him, Syd taking the pictures and then Bud finding them. Had they gone straight to Bud, we would have lost the sympathy for Exley, as his ''motivation'' for doing it would be lost. A character can do an amoral deed without us shouting WhatTheHellHero, as long as we see the motivation for doing it. It was lost here and Cole's reaction are so cold and bland that it's hard to keep sympathy for him. Plus it's buildup is so badly handed (no previous tension with Elsa and his wife having not been seen at all) that when it comes, it's a lot less the TheReveal and more of an AssPull.

** The "reveal" of the true BD killer being the half-brother of someone really high in the government raise some questions. When did Donnelly learn this? Again, the timeline for the final homicide case is very short. Very few people knew (what I'm saying shall not leave this room and whatnot) that Cole and Rusty were on a fetch quest toward the true BD killer. Did Donnelly knew all along? Did "someone important" give him a call during the day that boiled down to "the BD killer is really the half-bro of someone really important, so shut up if you like your career"? If so, that could mean that not only the LAPD was under surveillance, but also conversely, that the "someone" knew for a long time the truth about those crimes, and was not only happy with tossing innocents in the gas chamber, but also with the BD killer keeping on his murderous ways.
*** Conspiracy's that ended up getting dozens of innocent people killed seem par for the course in an Noir story. For both of these, I just figured the time passing wasn't in real time (the "it is now blank AM/PM" when you arrive at locations notwithstanding) investigations usually don't get wrapped up in a pretty pink bow within a day like they do in the game, so they probably went that route so as to not make each case take 3 hours to complete. Not disputing these complaints, they annoyed me too, but just offering possible explanations.

* Why did Errol Schroeder have a list of names with numbers? What was the significance? Floyd Rose's name was in there, did Schroeder have some sort of proof that Rose was dirty? Was the alleyway shooting a set up to frame Schroeder for murder? If so, did Rose want you to find the gun despite saying he didn't think it was likely? Was Rusty in on any of this?

** Unfortunately this is the kind of game where the dev team didn't quite [[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything think of everthing.]]

*** But the point is, there's even more boring police work out there. Ask [[TheWire Lester]], who's painstakingly logged and filed stolen items claims for thirteen years [[InsistentTerminology and four months]].

*** 1) Could you explain why comparing two Noir stories on different formats doesn't work? This game already has a bunch of shout out to several classic film noir. If you don't want to compare with with movies, let's compare with other noir-feeling games then. MaxPayne2 for example, is the example of Noir romance in videogame. 2) What is the 'other' subplot that you mention? Is it about the case, Cole's past, or something else entirely? Most of that is revealed at the end. 3) TheReveal scene means that there must be some secret to reveal in the first place. You can't assume from a couple of scenes that Phelps attending Elsa's performance that he had the affair with her either. If it's the reveal, it's a rather ambiguous one, since it doesn't answer that "Is this the first time they have the affair or not?"

** Honestly, it is a mystery why they would take a game that was pretty much a homage to those old-style adventure games like VideoGame/PoliceQuest and suddenly give it an action finale when the shooting controls were clunky and made it impossible for the plot we actually cared about to be wrapped up. The reason we don't find out about what happened with the stuff Cole cared about was because they had switched the reigns to Kelso, and yes, he didn't care. The problem with that is we, the player cared, and it left us hanging on everything that had suspense built up for it until that point. It was a big misstep, and honestly felt like they said "it's Noir right? That means it has to have a needlessly sad ending that doesn't wrap up anything that was established just because!" on top of trying to one up the whole [[VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption John Marston]] [[YouShouldKnowThisAlready dies]] thing by having us switch protagonists 2 hours before the plot proper is finished up.

** This, to me, was so [[{{Overstatement}} dreadful]] that I had to insist that they were parodying some B-movie device. I mean, it's simply ''not'' a newsreel. It even reminded me of an otherwise [[Film/JohnnyEnglish unrelated movie]]. Considering that this was soon followed by an out-of-tune mobster chase (and preceded by... ''IndianaJones''?), I was somewhat willing to accept my original thoughts.

** Honestly, it is a mystery why they would take a game that was pretty much a homage to those old-style adventure games like VideoGame/PoliceQuest and suddenly give it an action finale when the shooting controls were clunky and made it impossible for the plot we actually cared about to be wrapped up. The reason we don't find out about what happened with the stuff Cole cared about was because they had switched the reigns to Kelso, and yes, he didn't care. The problem with that is we, the player cared, and it left us hanging on everything that had suspense built up for it until that point. It was a big misstep, and honestly felt like they said "it's Noir right? That means it has to have a needlessly sad ending that doesn't wrap up anything that was established just because!" on top of trying to one up the whole [[RedDeadRedemption John Marston]] [[YouShouldKnowThisAlready dies]] thing by having us switch protagonists 2 hours before the plot proper is finished up.

** This, to me, was so [[{{Overstatement}} dreadful]] that I had to insist that they were parodying some B-movie device. I mean, it's simply ''not'' a newsreel. It even reminded me of an otherwise [[JohnnyEnglish unrelated movie]]. Considering that this was soon followed by an out-of-tune mobster chase (and preceded by... ''IndianaJones''?), I was somewhat willing to accept my original thoughts.

--> OK, I admit that this is likely a dumb one. After the [[spoiler: atrocity where he accidentally burned the cave full of Japanese civilians]], why didn't he take them back to a US base? Yeah, OK, he'd have to admit what he had done and all, but at least they'd be treated and nursed back to health![[/folder]]