I mentioned before that L.A Noire relies heavily on a new kind of facial technology, and that’s because unlike other games you have ever played, LA Noire has actually introduced a level of facial animation that’s so impressive that they expect you to actually make decisions based on how characters react to questions that you ask.
The technology has to be seen to be believed (hence the video embedded into the review) and is nothing short of revolutionary, allowing Team Bondi to also hire around 400 real actors to do play real parts and give real performances. While the technology was implemented for its use in the interrogations, the believability and atmosphere it brings to the characters and cutscenes are to the point where you can forget that you are watching a game, and are actually hanging on the performances of the actors.
Like a few other elements of this generation, I simply don’t know how I will be able to go back to games that use anything less and hope that this becomes a standard from now on.
Once you have picked your jaw up off of the floor, you will be required to use your evidence, together with your gut-feeling to question suspects and witnesses and make decisions on whether they are lying, telling the truth or saying something that you can’t prove, but sounds a little off.
While the facial animations are amazing, and it’s a very interesting experience to sit and stare at a characters face to try and determine the validity of their statements, it can be incredibly easy to get it wrong… and often. The idea of basing a game around this system was very risky, firstly because they are asking people to use their actual ability to determine if someone is lying or not and secondly, they had to direct the actors in such a way that the facial expressions didn’t easily just come across as either of the three different options.
What this means is that you will often encounter times during the game where you just fail miserably for reading people wrong, even when you were so sure that you had it right (and judging from Tweets going around the net, it wasn’t just me suffering from a case of bad detective skills).
You are also given only one crack at your response, which means that you can back out before deciding if the statement is a lie, doubtful or the truth, but once you press that button, you can’t go back and if you don’t get the information you wanted from that question, it’s lost forever (and the way the game saves, reloading a section to do it again can set you back quite some time).
This then, is a little bit of an issue, as one of the main gameplay mechanics – as impressive as it is – is still a little flawed and will sometimes leave you incredibly sour as you mess up an interrogation with no questions answered right even though you know that in a real situation, you would have been able to just rephrase the question, or try ask again.
This brings me on to my next point.
Failure in L.A Noire is a bit of a blurry line that I wasn’t able to fully test out due to the nature of the game, but it isn’t handled the same as usual. Sure, if you get shot dead, you are dead and have to reload the game. The same thing goes for letting a suspect get away. When it comes to actual cases however, you can’t really fail, not in game terms anyway.
Last Updated: May 31, 2011
| LA Noire | |
|
|
|
|---|---|
