LA Noire, Rockstar Games’ crime thriller heading to consoles next month, is not what you expect. If you were hoping for Grand Theft Auto meets James Ellroy, think again: this is an adventure game like none the controversial games publisher has ever tried before. We got hands on with the title today at Rockstar’s London HQ and uncovered some surprising facts about it – read on and see the evidence.
This isn’t Grand Theft Auto Confidential
While we proclaimed 2010′s Red Dead Redemption a masterpiece, there was no doubt it followed a tried and tested formula, from the sandbox world to the radar and shooting and mission mechanics of every Grand Theft Auto title since 2001. LA Noire, developed by the Austrialian Team Bondi, may use roughly the same controls, but that’s where the similarities end. This is a game about being methodical, checking out every clue, and pursuing every avenue when questioning suspects. That means no multiplayer either: this is a solo affair, and though there are numerous ways to solve a case, it does mean replay value may be low.
Sounds mundane? It’s not. Team Bondi has crafted a beautiful, sun scorched world of smoking dames, rich red carpets and barren storm drains, and the four missions we’ve either seen or played have proved to be gripping tales all on their own. There’s an overarching narrative that joins them together, and Rockstar’s keeping mum on it, but it may well involve the famous, (real life) unsolved Black Dahlia murder, which is referenced repeatedly in the game.
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You can’t die
Well, that’s not quite true. There are brief shooting sections which play a tad like GTA (though your health regenerates, Call of Duty style), and it’s perfectly possible to fall off a building to your death. But for the most part, you won’t be punished for choosing the wrong question or making an accusation: instead, new opportunities to present themselves, or you make have to take a more circumlocutory route to solving the crime.
In the mission we played today, The Silk Stocking Murder, we failed to pick up on the lies one suspect gave us, missing out on a clue to head straight to a food market where the victim was last seen. We got there eventually, but not until we checked out another lead, a bar across the road – and beat the murdered woman’s estranged husband unconscious for trying to escape arrest.
There’s graphic nudity
Sure, there was the odd stray penis flapping in the wind in Grand Theft Auto 4, and even a clothed sex scene in Red Dead Redemption, but LA Noire hits you with brutal images and no tongue in cheek. On more than one mission, you’ll be presented with the battered, bloodied corpse of a naked woman, bludgeoned or hacked to death – one victim baking in the midday sun even has flies buzzing around. That’s not all, either – you have to expect individual parts of the body, including the head, arms and torso for evidence. Grim.
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You can’t just run over pedestrians anymore
There have been quite a few changes since we last checked out LA Noire – the force/accuse options when interrogating suspects have been simplified to Truth, Doubt and Lie, which does make things a lot more obvious. One thing that’s still up in the air however is what becomes of you, an LAPD detective, should you accidentally flatten someone under your cop car.
A Rockstar spokesperson today told us that it had yet to be decided, but that there likely would be some sort of repercussion for squashing citizens: either a reprimand from your partner, or even in-game consequences. We’ll find out closer to launch when we get our hands on a review disc – but it’s certainly a change from Niko’s drive-as-the-crow-flies approach to sidewalks.
There’s an option to make the game easier
Originally, Rockstar planned to let you adjust the difficulty of LA Noire on the fly from the start menu, with different police ranks assigned to how obvious you wanted clues and interrogations to be. The company has since abandoned this approach: instead, the game starts off as tricky as it’ll ever be, and as you judge people’s responses correctly (or find landmarks, encouraging you to explore the city) you earn intuition points. You can have a maximum of five at any one time, and these can be used to remove question options, reveal all the crime scenes, or even show what options other gamers connected to the Rockstar Games Social Club went for, Ask The Audience style. It’s a nice approach since the gameplay no longer revolves around go-here-kill-people.
LA Noire is out on Xbox 360 and PS3 on 20 May 2011.
