L.A. Noire, the innovative 1940s PS3 crime caper from Australian studio Team Bondi, is 15 years old today.
The classic detective game – eventually published by Rockstar in 2011, but originally announced by Sony as a PS3 exclusive several years earlier – leaned heavily into its groundbreaking (at the time) facial capture technology, which allowed you to read the faces of its characters.
By using an array of cameras shooting at up to 1,000fps, the dev was able to capture the nuance of its actors’ emotions. This led to a unique gameplay mechanic where you could look for “tells”, like facial tics, opening up new lines of interrogation.
It was a unique system at the time, and it’s not really something we’ve seen since. While L.A. Noire’s actors did “ham up” their roles in order to make the game broadly accessible, it was still successful in making you feel like you were a detective.
Unfortunately, the technology never really went any further, because developers ultimately decided it was better to record facial capture alongside motion capture.
Because of the complicated camera arrays used in L.A. Noire, actors had to sit perfectly still while delivering their lines to record the advanced facial capture. Motion capture was then shot separately and matched to the facial performances, making for some unwieldy results.
The game also suffered from misaligned expectations. Being published by Rockstar, many expected an advanced open world like in GTA San Andreas and GTA 4, but its historical Los Angeles mostly served as a backdrop for the missions. There wasn’t much you could do in it, and the game even gave you the option to “skip” driving sequences if you wanted to.
Director Brendan McNamara had previously worked on The Getaway games for the PS2, which had similarly atmospheric sandboxes with limited interactivity.
We think the dev nailed the noire vibes impressively – this was one of the better looking games you could buy on the PS3 in 2011 – but we suppose more could have been done with the open world to make it more interactive and engaging. In hindsight, it was mostly set dressing.
Another big issue with L.A. Noire was that it launched during an era when DLC was a relatively new and novel concept, and so some cases from the campaign were inexplicably yanked from the main story so they could be sold as part of the Rockstar Pass.
Later Complete Edition re-releases of the game would solve this problem, but it was a particularly contentious point upon its original launch.
Overall, though, we look back on this game fondly. Protagonist Cole Phelps may not have always acted in line with our expectations, but he’s a memorable character and some of the cases in this detective game were really fun to solve.
More importantly, this was an ambitious effort that pushed technology forward in a way that inspired new gameplay ideas. Sure, this was just an adventure game at its core, but using facial capture as a central mechanic was truly special.
