LA Noire: a Retrospective

2011 was a stellar year for gaming, especially if you like action games. Batman: Arkham City received 10/10 ratings from numerous outlets; Skyrim released for the first time; Uncharted 3, Gears 3, Dead Space 2, the list of critically acclaimed releases goes on and on.

But there is one game that is missing from that previous paragraph, and I feel its exclusion is unjust, ironically. It’s a game that was praised for its ground breaking animation work, for bringing together such a wide range of game genres in such a stylish, atmospheric, and cohesive manner, and for its attention to detail.

That game was L.A. Noire – a third person action adventure game set in the titular Californian city in the 1940s. The game comes from Team Bondi and Rockstar games, and like many of Rockstar’s other games, L.A. Noire is an open world affair. But instead of causing mayhem, the player is tasked with undoing it. They step into the shoes of Cole Phelps, an LAPD officer and former Marine, and follow his career from beat cop to detective.

At its most basic level, L.A. Noire is a puzzle game. As a cop, players have to uphold the law, are unable to get away with killing unarmed civilians (bit idealistic for the LAPD but just go with it), and have solve cases through finding evidence and testimony from witnesses and suspects. These basic tenants of police work give the whole world a different feel to the rest of the GTA HD universe games that have come from Rockstar.

Team Bondi, 2011

Gunplay is far more rudimentary and not as challenging compared to GTA. The player always has a trusty sidearm, but can go out of their way to the trunk of a police car or up to a fallen goon and grab something heavier, like a good ol’ fashioned Tommy Gun. Players can also choose to hold their crosshairs on a fleeing suspect and fire a warning shot in the air, putting the perp in a cell instead of the morgue.

What’s more challenging and important to LA Noire is general sleuthing. Tailing cars or suspects on foot often follow a slippery or difficult interrogation. Following cars is pretty easy, even with LA’s decidedly realistic digital drivers. Following a pedestrian, though, is a nightmare and its difficulty is arbitrary. The age old problem of player walking speed being too slow to keep pace but running is too fast and loud rears its head, made worse by bugged out fail states – often I would be spotted through walls, round corners, and across streets for no reason at all.

These aspects of police work aren’t the main attractions to LA Noire; it is the interrogations that make the game something special. Team Bondi’s work on facial animation was ground-breaking in its time. Sure, the expressions on a suspects face could be incredibly obvious…

Team Bondi, 2011

…But this gets the player involved in the game by studying body language, involving them in a really important aspect of police work. Plus, there’s nothing more satisfying than catching someone lying, and rubbing the evidence in their face.

It is also equally amusing to accuse people of something without evidence, as Phelps will usually fly right off the handle, but it makes his character feel very schizophrenic because of the limit to three dialogue options – Good Cop, Bad Cop, and Accuse. Politely backing out of outlandish claims really hurts the players’ sense of immersion too.

Whilst a good time can be had in the game, interrogations and the other mechanics can become repetitive, especially when cases find the player going back and forth from several different locations, or even doubling back on themselves and returning to the same crime scenes. What should really grab players’ attention, though, is the story and world building.

1940s America lives in this game. LA Noire isn’t a mere emulation of it, but it has resurrected it through an impeccable eye for detail. The hairstyles and fashions, the vehicles and domestic appliances scattered throughout people homes, even the homes themselves! There’s a real sense of a nation lifting itself out of the depression of the 1930s and into the modern era, spurred on by the wartime manufacturing effort and technical advances.

Team Bondi, 2011

Music is obviously a big part of any open world game; it helps fill the time spent travelling from place to place. 1940s LA is no different, featuring diegetic blues, swing, and jazz from car radios broken up by hammy advertisements. It plays in nightclubs, and even includes the official game soundtrack that could have been lifted from noire thrillers of the era.

And none of this comes across as parody as it would do in Rockstar’s GTA universe. Instead it feels as though LA Noire is a love letter to noire filmmaking and storytelling. Each case opens with a monochrome title, some suspenseful music, and the suspicious goings on taking place in a darkened setting, with a heavy use of chiaroscuro (dramatic differences between light and dark).

Even the main menu gets in on this, its background being the quintessential noire setting - a dark alleyway, filled with mist, car headlights shining through from the other side as a shadowy figure paces across road.

Team Bondi, 2011

Voice acting also works its way into creating a noire world to explore, from the initial narration to the way Phelps and his partners interact with one another. Sure, the characters are archetypes and tropes, but they are done competently. Phelps is not just a highly motivated detective, but a veteran of Okinawa and struggling with survivor’s guilt. His partners, too, are based on detective based stereotypes; Galloway is a stubborn alcoholic, Earle is a sleazebag and corrupt, and Bekowsky is smart-mouthed but diligent.

Buuuuuuut this is where we have to deal with the other side of the use of stereotypes from the 1940s. Representation of women is a real issue in LA Noire, with female characters broadly falling into three categories – scheming and gossiping, naïve and timid, and the femme fatale in the form of Elsa Lichtmann, the singer of a nightclub who destroys Phelps’ marriage and leads to his downfall. These are all integral elements of the noire genre of film, especially the femme fatale, but I worry that there may be more to it than that: gaming and game development was still a pretty hostile place for women in the early 2010s, and in the wake of stories such as the on-going sexism scandal at Riot Games, it unfortunately makes me wonder if there is perhaps a link to the environment in which LA Noire was made and the end result for many of its female characters.

Team Bondi, 2011

Post #MeToo, I feel that a majority of LA Noire’s story and motifs have a new relevance beyond simply good storytelling. One case where this is really brought to the forefront is ‘The Fallen Idol’, where Phelps and the player work through an attempted murder case, only to discover a Hollywood producer is drugging and raping young women during casting sessions, the acts filmed by an accomplice. This, among other cases, really work to highlight the level of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse that went on, and continues to go on, in Hollywood. As one suspect says in ‘The Fallen Idol’, “This is a sick town, detective.”

A little commentary is also had as to the coerced drug taking and abuse within Hollywood circles. The central backstory for the game is that a shipment of morphine is stolen from a military transport ship and being sold on the streets of LA, but also peddled by a doctor to the stars and starlets to “keep them going”.

And naturally, we have to talk about the prejudice and racism in the game. Thankfully, LA Noire avoids, for the most part, racist stereotyping that was a part of media in the 1940s, but it doesn’t shy away from the racism that was prevalent at the time. Earle is the core of this throughout the game, what with him being a colossal shitbag and all, taking issue with “a negro laying his hands on [him]” and being “disrespected by Elsa, whom he refers to as a “German junkie whore”.

See? A real charmer.

Team Bondi, 2011

“Negro” is thrown around an awful lot in LA Noire, as both a slur (used in lieu of another word that is more problematic, I think), as well as a substantial amount of antisemitism and hatred of Mexicans and Hispanics. This is often demonstrated by the officers of the LAPD themselves, often attempting to disregard evidence and clues gained from African Americans, or doubting a Jewish suspects motives to tell the truth, implying they are after money or favours.

Prejudice in LA Noire is there as a reminder that this is just what life was like for ethnic minorities in the US at this point in time. It makes for a more authentic script and world but doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable. There are obvious parallels to be made to current issues with American police forces, and perhaps the selection of LA as the game’s setting is being used to make a point: the city isn’t just famous for crimes such as the Black Dahlia killings, but for the institutionalised racism within the LAPD that bubbled over into the American social consciousness in 1992 with the Rodney King riots.

Despite these more uncomfortable elements, I see LA Noire is a bit of an underrated gem. Its story, though at times clichéd, is competent and compelling, utilising elements of noire film like chiaroscuro and music that is quintessential to the genre to great dramatic effect. Phelps’ progression through the LAPD and seeing the rot that has set into the city is an eye-opener, especially in today’s climate. A fantastic game that I’m glad to have played through again.