mozidesign.com Unorganized Thoughts of a Game Designer

Thoughts on LA Noire

Below are my thoughts about LA Noire, and just as a heads up I do mention some story events in my write up. So if you have not beaten the game I’d advise you to finish the game first and then read what I have to say as my opinion and ideas my differ from your experience and I do not want to ruin your experience based on my reactions to the game.

For those of you who follow my twitter feed, not long ago I said that LA Noire was a bit of a let down. Well it kind of is but, allow me to rephrase what I said. Overall, LA Noire is a good game, with some pretty slick graphics and engaging gameplay. However, what LA Noire lacks, which makes it sort of suck is that it is missing a key component that make video games fun in the first place (in my opinion at least). That component is the “Epic Win”.

In her TED talk (which I highly recommend watching if you have not seen it already here is the link ) Jane McGonigal discusses the “Epic Win” as gaining a high positive experience within extreme circumstances while playing a video game. This could be something like overcoming a boss battle, completing a very difficult mission, getting a clutch victory in a multiplayer game, or having an unexpected come back in a fighting game. Now LA Noire has no boss fights, nor any MP gaming or really any intense fighting like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat.

LA Noire is basically a crime solving mystery game, which puts players into the shoes of Cole Phelps. Cole’s story is pretty straight forward, as he is an ex-military guy coming back from WW2 and finds a job as police officer in 1947 Los Angeles. As you play the game you will solve various crimes which in turn will get you promoted from being a basic patrol cop to a full fledged detective who solves cases dealing with homicide and narcotics. Rockstar Games and Team Bondi did a fantastic job on recreating a late 1940′s early 50′s LA with very realistic characters, environments, and vehicles. Now this where part of my frustration with game begins, realism.

Every one is entitled to enjoy what ever game they like, but for me personally I enjoy more unrealistic games to have the occasional escape from reality. But now and then a realistic games can be fun depending on how they are executed. Games bounded in reality come with more rules and restrictions as compared to unrealistic games. Along with rules, games set in reality at times have events and consequences which seem realistic. Now this can be a good thing or bad thing. As an example, Heavy Rain, was a recent ‘realistic’ game with real consequences for your actions. I really enjoyed Heavy Rain, as it felt like a choose your own adventure book. Any action I did either lead down a path of positive or negative outcomes just like in reality. When the game was over the ending I got was purely based on the choices I made. Depending on my actions either I got the “epic win” or an epic fail (with characters dying off or something like that).

Now as Rockstar and Team Bondi made a ‘realistic’ game with LA Noire, where you follow a realistic path of getting promoted and even getting chewed out for your work on the cases. As you play the game you reach the level of being on the homicide team. These cases revolve around the real ‘Black Dahlia Murder’ which took place in LA during the late 1940s. You can find more information about that case online. Anyways, as you solve the homicide crimes you finally get close to the killer behind all of the murders in the game. In fact you even get to kill the bastard that did all the murders, getting the “epic win” but Rockstar and Team Bondi decided to play a realism card and turn that epic win into an epic fail.

Long story short, your police chief comes to you and says you can’t reveal the name or identity of the killer you just put down because he is related to a high ranking politician and doing so will tarnish said politician’s image. Seriously!? I can give rats ass about some politician, it is a video game why play this reality bullshit about ruining people’s image. Why did you steal my epic win of solving all of these murder cases away from me?! Because of my actions I reached the conclusion I was hoping for but the scripted events done by the developers says other wise that I can not have my reward for playing the game.

For your hard work of basically not being recognized for your actions you get promoted to go work on vice cases which deal with narcotics, homicide is no more, just forget about it and move on. As you move on to vice a similar epic win steal is done by the developers of the game by playing the ‘realism’ card. As you solve various narcotics crimes, a scripted cut scene plays out showing Cole Phelps doing something he should not be doing. Now as you get to very end of the vice cases on the verge of bagging one of the main guys behind all of the drugs, that scripted cut scene of Cole we saw a while back comes to bite us in the ass. What happens is that Cole is thrown off the case and off of the vice squad and you never get to see the out come of solving the chain of events in the vice cases. You get demoted and thrown into the shit list squad of the police department which is arson crimes division.

In real life this shit happens. People get promoted, do stupid shit which comes to light and gets people fired from their jobs. It is sad and depressing and honestly not fun when seen a video game. Going back to Heavy Rain, if I got a negative outcome it was my fault as that game requires you to make your own choices. In LA Noire, I got the epic fail because I am supposed to. The developers scripted all of the events, even the cut scene where you do the stupid shit that gets you fired from your case. Why script failure into game. It is not fun to steal away an epic win, with force scripted events that set you up for failure. If failure occurs in game it should be the player’s fault not the developers. This is why LA Noire is a let down. All of the pretty graphics, crime solving mechanics, characters, and story telling mean nothing when all the game does is set you up to fail.

I have done my fair share of spoilers here but I won’t say what happens at the end, except for be warned that the game will set you up for failure and steal your epic win by giving you a seriously lame epic loss.

With that said, is LA Noire a bad game? Not really, it has its merits but as I mentioned before it relies too much on the rules and events of reality. The game tries to present meaningful outcomes or lessons but they don’t mean much because you have no part in getting those outcomes. They are all scripted events, you have no choice but to go down the same path of failure no matter how many times you play the game.

I am sure someone will tell me that your standard run and gun FPS is full of scripted events and why I am not bashing those games. Well, truth be told, yes a lot of games in the market have scripted events. In fact that what games are, a bunch of scripted events. The difference here is that those scripted events are setup in way to provide the player with best possible outcome, such as success or “epic win”. Rarely do developers intend for player failure or frustration, but LA Noire went all out on being ‘realistic’ that it sets it self up to be morbid and depressing tale of what happens in life sometimes. No matter what you do, will get the same outcome every time, failure. In a standard FPS game, you go up against a boss, and you may not succeed the first few times around, but then you find the right tactics and advantages to overcome failure and attain your “epic win”.