Poll of the Day > Did you like LA Noire?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Topic
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I think Ive seen some funny play throughs...
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i played it at launch and liked it well enough, but a lot of things about it just felt off somehow or just didnt work like they should. the driving and shooting were way too awkward for a game literally made in the GTAIV engine. the uncanny faces were impressive but just felt weird. the story didnt really go anywhere.

its like a solid 7.5/10

edit: oh yeah and it was made on sweatshop labor basically
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Only played it once back when it was brand new on the 360.

It was super average at best. Didn't like how the game practically gave you the answers for every single case.
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Haven't played it yet, but I'm planning on getting the remastered version sometime soon.
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TheWitchMorgana posted...

oh yeah and it was made on sweatshop labor basically

Ya, I read bout that yesterday (infact). Aside from the main 2 guys at Team Bondi and the dudes at ... RealCapture? RealMotion? whatever, aside from them the rest of the game was made to the beat of slavedrums and whips
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Not really.
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I loved it but the world felt a little empty at times
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Yes.
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Lokarin posted...

TheWitchMorgana posted...

oh yeah and it was made on sweatshop labor basically

Ya, I read bout that yesterday (infact). Aside from the main 2 guys at Team Bondi and the dudes at ... RealCapture? RealMotion? whatever, aside from them the rest of the game was made to the beat of slavedrums and whips

lol yeah apparently the project was such a mess at one point that rockstar basically had to step in and fix everything. you gotta be pretty bad to make rockstar look like the good guys
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It did some interesting things and it was pretty fun right at the start... But it just got so slow and repetitive and boring. And yes, the driving was awful.
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Considering the shit show that was the dev process of the game, it's a miracle they managed to create something this acceptable.
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It was pretty good, but it was a one shot game. \
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Nah. Was disappointed by it. Really didnt like the whole Watch their faces to tell if theyre lying aspect either. I felt it was hit or miss.
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Never got around to playing that one
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The earlier parts where you're still playing as a murder detective.

Although the ending was horrible where it turns out almost everyone you arrested earlier didn't matter.

The drug officer part wasn't as good.

Cole's affair seemed like an irrelevant and stupid part of the story to me. It's not like you ever get to know Cole's wife and you barely know the person he's having an affair with, so the story makes a big deal out of something you don't care about. The relationship develops completely off screen too so you don't even know how it happened.

Everything after that was bad.

I don't know how well this is known, but the famously terrible interrogation segments where the "doubt" meme comes from are in part terrible and confusing because the the interrogation option names where changed in post production to make them more impactful sounding, even if less accurate. Although it doesn't make reading the facial capture any less stupid.
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It felt like the framework for a great sequel that would eventually lead to an awesome game series. Unfortunately, unless you are GTA or Red Dead, Rockstar ain't letting you have a sequel.

That said, I enjoyed it and had a lot of fun playing it. My main complaint is that the interrogation sections felt like crap shoots and half the time you had to either play the missions multiple times or save scum to have any chance of getting 100% on a mission.
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DarkKirby2500 posted...

I don't know how well this is known, but the famously terrible interrogation segments where the "doubt" meme comes from are in part terrible and confusing because the the interrogation option names where changed in post production to make them more impactful sounding, even if less accurate.

I thought it was pretty simple to figure out. Truth=telling the truth. Lie=The person is lying and you have evidence of it. Doubt=The person is lying but you have no evidence.
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Miroku_of_Nite1 posted...

DarkKirby2500 posted...

I don't know how well this is known, but the famously terrible interrogation segments where the "doubt" meme comes from are in part terrible and confusing because the the interrogation option names where changed in post production to make them more impactful sounding, even if less accurate.

I thought it was pretty simple to figure out. Truth=telling the truth. Lie=The person is lying and you have evidence of it. Doubt=The person is lying but you have no evidence.

It's explained in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdTD3GVvyRo" data-time="&start=110

In the re-releases, the options are changed from Truth, Doubt, Lie, to Good Cop, Bad Cop, Accuse.

The original writers had it as Coax, Force, Lie.

Which explains why Cole is extremely provocative in a lot of the "Doubt" choices.
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DarkKirby2500 posted...

In the re-releases, the options are changed from Truth, Doubt, Lie, to Good Cop, Bad Cop, Accuse.

Yuck. It's still pretty obvious. Coax, Force, Lie would work. But Good Cop, Bad Cop is too vague. A better system would be Truth, Force, Lie.

Truth: You believe them to tell the truth.
Force: Force a confession out of them.
Lie: You caught them in a contradiction.
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Not tying dialogue choices to overly simplistic prompts would be a better option tbh.
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Blighboy posted...

Not tying dialogue choices to overly simplistic prompts would be a better option tbh.

Honestly, most of the problems with the dialogue aren't really the choices or that the options are too simplistic, it is that they are too inconsistent.

Sure, truth is super easy to figure out (almost too easy), but doubt and lie are basically the same thing and in some cases you have multiple pieces of evidence for lie but the game only wants you to pick one of them. Hell, there are even cases where you can have a bunch of pieces of evidence for lie but the game insists you ignore all of them and pick doubt.

Clearing that up more or making it so there was more grey area then "right answer/wrong answer" would have made that much more enjoyable.
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It was just an average game. The faces are still weird.
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The_tall_midget posted...

Considering the shit show that was the dev process of the game, it's a miracle they managed to create something this acceptable.

I agree thats rare. too many instances where development is crappy, stays crappy for a game yet they still release it.
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No, I stopped playing it during the first mission after you become a detective.

To try and be fair, it's basically an adventure / visual novel which isn't really my genre. Having said that, there are definitely some things the game could have improved upon or things I had issues with.

- hints are displayed while characters are talking or emoting. You're supposed to do it one at a time. First the hint then the dialogue, or vice versa.

- things like the following a suspect in the car (without driving too close) feels a little goofy/unrealistic and like a stereotypical videogame, and it's weird to have to do it when normally you can skip driving by just letting your partner drive. (Test Drive Unlimited 2 has missions like these, and I like them, but it's a racing game and the game is not story based and rather silly tonally. GTA series is also kind of tongue in cheek and heavily involves driving gameplay)

- if you realize that you missed a clue or forgot to interview someone when you had the chance, you can't go back and do it without having to restart the entire case from the beginning.

final_lap posted...

- if you realize that you missed a clue or forgot to interview someone when you had the chance, you can't go back and do it without having to restart the entire case from the beginning.

For this, it's possible to complete cases without doing everything, but you need to do everything to achieve a perfect score.
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It had its flaws, but I definitely enjoyed it for what it was. Though I'm salty that they tied one of the achievements to the shitty shooting mechanics, which means I'll always be one achievement away from full completion.



Dikitain posted...

but doubt and lie are basically the same thing and in some cases you have multiple pieces of evidence for lie but the game only wants you to pick one of them. Hell, there are even cases where you can have a bunch of pieces of evidence for lie but the game insists you ignore all of them and pick doubt.

I'm not sure I'd say it's even that (at least not JUST that) per se, as much as it is that the biggest problem is that you're not entirely sure what any given Truth/Doubt/Lie prompt is necessarily going to refer to (and the Switch re-release changing prompts to "Good Cop/Bad Cop/Accuse" just makes things worse).

What a lot of people miss is that the real dynamic is that you're either accepting what they're saying, questioning what they're saying, or presenting direct proof that they're lying (which is why you need the specific piece of evidence that calls their bluff). But the vagueness of the prompts means you're never entirely sure exactly WHICH aspect of what they're saying you're calling bullshit on, and thus whether or not it's something you have evidence to dispute, or if you have to opt for the more general putting pressure on to force them to trip up. So sometimes you may pick "Lie" because you think you have the evidence to prove something they said wrong, only for Cole to go off on a completely different tangent and address something you DON'T have evidence for.

Plus a lot of people confused "I think they're lying" for the "Lie" option, which caused those people problems. Because THAT'S actually the "Doubt" option. "Lie" is more "I can prove they're lying".
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Miroku_of_Nite1 posted...

It was pretty good, but it was a one shot game. \

Realistically, on some level, it was almost more of a tech demo than a game.

Most of the emphasis put on it was in trying to perfect the face capture tech and potentially use it for future games. So a hypothetical "LA Noire 2" wouldn't really have BEEN LA Noire, it probably would have been a completely different story, genre, and game mechanics, with only the face capture of actors remaining.

Half the reason why Rockstar was involved at all was because they liked the idea of using face capture in future GTA games, because they'd already gone down the "Let's cast a bunch of Hollywood actors to play all the major roles in our games" road for the franchise. And to some extent, it's basically how they made GTA V.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

because they'd already gone down the "Let's cast a bunch of Hollywood actors to play all the major roles in our games" road for the franchise. And to some extent, it's basically how they made GTA V.

Well not really. Outside of the radio they've stopped doing that since GTA:SA. According to one of the Housers it was too hard to work with established actors so they've gone with using nobodies since GTAIV.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Most of the emphasis put on it was in trying to perfect the face capture tech and potentially use it for future games. So a hypothetical "LA Noire 2" wouldn't really have BEEN LA Noire, it probably would have been a completely different story, genre, and game mechanics, with only the face capture of actors remaining.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whore_of_the_Orient

Granted, we never really got a lot of information on what WotO was supposed to actually be, but all signs point to it being very similar to LA Noire, just based in 1930's Shanghai instead of 1940's LA.

Also, if it actually did come out I don't think they were doing themselves any favors with that name (although I understand it is what the the city of Shanghai was called back in the time the game was set in).
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Miroku_of_Nite1 posted...

Well not really. Outside of the radio they've stopped doing that since GTA:SA. According to one of the Housers it was too hard to work with established actors so they've gone with using nobodies since GTAIV.

I meant face-capture more than celebrities - look at the voice cast for GTAV in general, they basically ARE their characters.

Hell, that's part of what made this possible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsaLDnl_fEs" data-time="



Dikitain posted...

Granted, we never really got a lot of information on what WotO was supposed to actually be, but all signs point to it being very similar to LA Noire, just based in 1930's Shanghai instead of 1940's LA.

Yeah, that's more or less what I meant. It's a game with similar mechanics and heavy focus on face capture tech, but it's a different setting, likely with different enough mechanics to be a new sort of experience. It's not LA Noire 2, in the sense that it's not set in LA, it probably wasn't going to be noir, and it wouldn't be a continuation of the original story (not that you really COULD continue Cole's story, all things considered).



Dikitain posted...

Also, if it actually did come out I don't think they were doing themselves any favors with that name (although I understand it is what the the city of Shanghai was called back in the time the game was set in).

It's entirely possible that was just their working title, and it would have been changed to something else prior to release.
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DarkKirby2500 posted...

For this, it's possible to complete cases without doing everything, but you need to do everything to achieve a perfect score.

If I realized I missed something, I want to go back and do it. I don't want to finish the case and be forced to fumble through all the interrogations due to not having the correct evidence. (Regardless of whether it's still possible to "win") To me that feels like punishment for not doing things perfectly.

final_lap posted...

DarkKirby2500 posted...

For this, it's possible to complete cases without doing everything, but you need to do everything to achieve a perfect score.

If I realized I missed something, I want to go back and do it. I don't want to finish the case and be forced to fumble through all the interrogations due to not having the correct evidence. (Regardless of whether it's still possible to "win") To me that feels like punishment for not doing things perfectly.

I myself reset until I got a perfect score, which is annoying because not nailing the interrogations counts as "missing evidence" because the game asking you to read the face capture to be able to tell what someone was thinking was stupid and extremely poorly thought out.

But unless you care about achievements it really doesn't matter because...

Spoilers....

It turns out everyone you arrested was innocent regardless of if you 100% every case. Yes, it's a stupid, horrible plot twist. No matter how much evidence and information you have, you were wrong because every single suspect was innocent.
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DarkKirby2500 posted...

I myself reset until I got a perfect score, which is annoying because not nailing the interrogations counts as "missing evidence" because the game asking you to read the face capture to be able to tell what someone was thinking was stupid and extremely poorly thought out.

To be fair to them, that was literally the entire point of the game in their eyes, and the only reason the game existed in the form it did in the first place. Most of the actual investigations, free roam, and general gameplay outside of the interrogations were added after the fact to justify why you'd be questioning people and trying to read their facial quirks.



DarkKirby2500 posted...

Spoilers....

It turns out everyone you arrested was innocent regardless of if you 100% every case. Yes, it's a stupid, horrible plot twist. No matter how much evidence and information you have, you were wrong because every single suspect was innocent.

That's not actually true.

If I recall correctly, it's only true during the homicide cases, because the real killer is deliberately framing other people, and you eventually catch them at the end of the homicide arc. Other than that, I don't remember any other cases where you're expected to catch the "wrong" person (though there might be one or two in other departments, most of the time you're definitely catching the right person).

The only real issue is that during one of the homicide cases, you're punished for doing the "right" thing and avoiding arresting the suspect who is clearly not guilty and pushing to arrest the more obvious suspect, but that's actually telegraphed by your boss telling you which suspect he wants you to arrest, and kind of underlines the narrative that your department is corrupt, which in turn feeds into the overall story. So it makes sense in context, even if it feels like you're being punished for being the best possible detective (but evoking that resentment is exactly what the game wants, because now you feel like Cole feels).
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

DarkKirby2500 posted...

I myself reset until I got a perfect score, which is annoying because not nailing the interrogations counts as "missing evidence" because the game asking you to read the face capture to be able to tell what someone was thinking was stupid and extremely poorly thought out.

To be fair to them, that was literally the entire point of the game in their eyes, and the only reason the game existed in the form it did in the first place. Most of the actual investigations, free roam, and general gameplay outside of the interrogations were added after the fact to justify why you'd be questioning people and trying to read their facial quirks.

DarkKirby2500 posted...

Spoilers....

It turns out everyone you arrested was innocent regardless of if you 100% every case. Yes, it's a stupid, horrible plot twist. No matter how much evidence and information you have, you were wrong because every single suspect was innocent.

That's not actually true.

If I recall correctly, it's only true during the homicide cases, because the real killer is deliberately framing other people, and you eventually catch them at the end of the homicide arc. Other than that, I don't remember any other cases where you're expected to catch the "wrong" person (though there might be one or two in other departments, most of the time you're definitely catching the right person).

The only real issue is that during one of the homicide cases, you're punished for doing the "right" thing and avoiding arresting the suspect who is clearly not guilty and pushing to arrest the more obvious suspect, but that's actually telegraphed by your boss telling you which suspect he wants you to arrest, and kind of underlines the narrative that your department is corrupt, which in turn feeds into the overall story. So it makes sense in context, even if it feels like you're being punished for being the best possible detective (but evoking that resentment is exactly what the game wants, because now you feel like Cole feels).

After the Detective section the whole game goes downhill for me in general. You're not even really trying to solve cases anymore.
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DarkKirby2500 posted...

After the Detective section the whole game goes downhill for me in general. You're not even really trying to solve cases anymore.

Well, you're always a detective, but yes, the game kind of takes a dramatic shift once you're transferred to Arson.

Basically, Arson is where most of the actual "noir" happens.

If they really wanted to go the full noir route, they should have had Cole grow disillusioned with the police and get fired entirely, only to become a private detective for the last act.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

DarkKirby2500 posted...

After the Detective section the whole game goes downhill for me in general. You're not even really trying to solve cases anymore.

Well, you're always a detective, but yes, the game kind of takes a dramatic shift once you're transferred to Arson.

Basically, Arson is where most of the actual "noir" happens.

If they really wanted to go the full noir route, they should have had Cole grow disillusioned with the police and get fired entirely, only to become a private detective for the last act.

Your version of the story is much better than what actually happened.
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It was pretty meh. I really liked the direction they were trying to head in with the facial captures and the puzzle solving aspect of the game, however the actual execution of those ideas wasn't fantastic. It just kinda got stale for me.
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