L.A. Noire is a detective story based in Los Angeles in the 1940s and is modeled after the film noir style popular in Hollywood during the same time. The cases that the player must solve are even based off real cases from 1947 in L.A.. Players control Police Officer Cole Phelps and solve cases leading to Phelps’ various promotions, including him becoming a detective.
An important part of the player’s ability to solve cases rests in determining if different characters are lying or not. The unprecedented facial animation technology used in L.A. Noire helps with being able to determine this. This technology is thanks to MotionScan, a technology developed by Depth Analysis, that captures an actors’ facial expressions with 32 different cameras. This technology led to the facial expressions and reactions of the characters in L.A. Noire to be unmatched by any other video game. This helped give the game a solid 89/100 on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 from Metacritic.
The remaster gives us consumers higher resolution, improved textures here and there, improved weather, better lighting, and more cinematic camera angles. Also, the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X will receive a 4K version of it. In addition to these remastered editions for the standard consoles, the HTC Vive, Steam and HTC’s virtual reality headset, will be getting seven of the cases from the game for some virtual reality case solving.
There doesn’t seem to be a solid consensus as to why Rockstar chose to remaster L.A. Noire over some of their other last generation games, but two theories include prepping consumers for L.A. Noire 2 or simply exploring virtual reality more.
Why do you think Rockstar chose L.A. Noire? Is it the game you would have chosen? Let us know in the comments!
