Review | L.A Noire

Team Bondi’s LA Noire represents a watershed moment for the industry as a whole. After being in development for seven years, LA Noire is prefaced on an experimental exploration of narrative and gameplay, and how the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Team Bondi’s vision for LA Noire, while wildly successful in its execution, only stands to show how it, as well as the industry, faces unique conceptual problems – problems that are inherently pervasive in both the conventions of the open world genre as well as character-driven narratives.

What is extraordinary about LA Noire is that it exists. In a market that has been inundated with sequels and remakes, Team Bondi invested in a novel approach to a relatively old game style. Placing itself in a midcentury Los Angeles that was rife in drugs, violence, corruption, and the embers of manifest destiny, LA Noire, at its heart, is an adventure game. The player, as the role of 1947 Los Angeles detective Cole Phelps, is required to investigate a crime scene and piece together interviews and environmental clues to come to a singular conclusion and a criminal charge. When the post-war Los Angeles trappings and mise en scène are stripped away, however, the underlaying mechanics are as simple as a point-and-click adventure.

While not all objects are relevant to each crime scene, individual points of interaction are nonetheless limited to the player and ultimately indicate the designer’s intent for the clues and the gamespace. Each crime scene presents its clues to the player through visual cues, either through lighting or its positioning in the game’s geometry. Clue finding becomes even easier with its contextual help system. Every time the player nears a point of interaction, the controller vibrates and piano keys sound off. After several hours into the game’s narrative, the novelty of investigation grows thin and superficial. The game’s mechanic that attempts to aid the player becomes a crutch, conditioning the player to only be observant and responsive to the help system. Team Bondi’s attention to detail in the world is authentic and expansive. Yet the player’s reconditioned gameplay vocabulary and habits ultimately devalues the scope and specificity of the game world.

The same binary conditioning extends to LA Noire’s cutting edge facial animation system. Upon interviewing witnesses and suspects, the player is tasked to evaluate whether or not the interviewee is truthful, lying, or withholding information. The performances in LA Noire are unrivaled in the games industry and seem to be a whole generation ahead of other games coming to market. When applied to a gameplay mechanic, however, the performances are stripped of their possible nuance and made into binary player choices. Every question asked in an interview essentially generates a truthful response or a non-truthful response. If given an answer that is not factual or correct, there is another layer of player choice: doubt and lies. The actors’ performances for the two options are alike in their tone and delivery, so much so that it often times becomes difficult judge between the two. Clues that have been accumulated throughout the investigation are the means in which the player is able to refute lies and therein by furthering the investigation. It quickly becomes apparent to the player that despite the amazingly acute performances, every interaction is a binary set of choices: are they telling the truth, and if not do I have the evidence to refute their claim. Every line of inquiry, while engrossing to witness, ultimately breaks down into this simple and reductive system of deduction.

LA Noire’s performances, as well as the game world, try to remain consistent in their rule sets and motivations. Unlike Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto, the player cannot freely kill and maim civilian inhabitants. Team Bondi seemingly understand the possible disconnection between player actions and the characterization within the narrative. Niko Bellic, of GTA4, was positioned in the game’s narrative to be a reluctant warrior – one who was trying to find a new life. The motivations of the Niko, however, would clash with the violent choices the player or the narrative mission types. In replacing the open world vagrancy that has defined the genre with a methodical investigatory mechanic, Team Bondi limited any potential for disconnect between the character and the player. While there are certainly instances where Cole Phelps’ motivations are unclear or he is inexplicably harsh with a witness, Team Bondi has managed to marry narrative and open world exploration without compromising the integrity or believability of either.

It is an almost foregone conclusion that LA Noire represents a new wave of game presentation and narrative. While it is all too easy to commend Team Bondi for innovating in presentation, their handling of narrative and player motivations seems to be their greatest achievement – especially in a genre that has consistently fallen short. What is unfortunate, however, is that LA Noire succeeds by way of reduction and binary player choice.