I know L.A. Noire isn't exactly a Rockstar game. It's by Sydney-based developer Team Bondi, who started the project before Rockstar was even attached as a co-developer/publisher. Still, the final product has Rockstar's fingerprints all over it, most notably in the driving mechanics which seem entirely lifted from Grand Theft Auto, and don't really sit well with the game's other elements, such as the investigating and cross-questioning.
I find the driving in L.A. Noire a major distraction from the core detective-based gameplay, a hold-over from GTA that doesn't seem particularily well-justified by the game's design. Ironically, the driving in Deadly Premonition, which was widely lambasted for being boring and tedious, made a lot more sense in the context of that game's over-arching design. Deadly Premonition is a complete world simulation, whereas L.A. Noire is a fractured, half-hearted one.
The driving makes sense in Deadly Premonition because the game is presented as a world, not a narrative. York has to get up, get dressed, have breakfast, drive to the crime scene, go get coffee, etc. and this level of fidelity makes the driving feel like a necessary part of its "day in the life" approach. Phelps by contrast never exists so completely in the 1947 Los Angeles Team Bondi so painstakingly built. He comes into existence in fits and starts, sometimes in the middle of a foot chase. Chapters begin with Phelps appearing in mid-situation, like you're watching a TV show. Why does that massive, seamless world even exist if some omnisicent narrator is just going to teleport you around it at will?
The driving makes sense in Deadly Premonition because the game is presented as a world, not a narrative. York has to get up, get dressed, have breakfast, drive to the crime scene, go get coffee, etc. and this level of fidelity makes the driving feel like a necessary part of its "day in the life" approach. Phelps by contrast never exists so completely in the 1947 Los Angeles Team Bondi so painstakingly built. He comes into existence in fits and starts, sometimes in the middle of a foot chase. Chapters begin with Phelps appearing in mid-situation, like you're watching a TV show. Why does that massive, seamless world even exist if some omnisicent narrator is just going to teleport you around it at will?
I'm not saying every game has to simulate life in all its mundanity. However, if you're not making a world simulation, you shouldn't bloat your game with world-sim features, like a GTA-style open city complete with pedestrians, cars, functioning stop signals, etc. I doubt anyone would have complained if L.A. Noire had simply cut between locations. Would past detective games like Snatcher, Policenauts, Blade Runner, or even Phoenix Wright have been improved by tedious world navigation?
In those games you just choose where you want to go from a list, and then you're there. This makes perfect sense because those games are about being a detective, not a driving-school student... which is what Rockstar's sloppy, built-for-mayhem driving mechancs make you feel like. (It matters a lot in Deadly Premonition that driving on the road like a normal driver is relatively easy - like it is in real life - whereas in L.A. Noire it's as difficult as it is in every other Rockstar game.)
In those games you just choose where you want to go from a list, and then you're there. This makes perfect sense because those games are about being a detective, not a driving-school student... which is what Rockstar's sloppy, built-for-mayhem driving mechancs make you feel like. (It matters a lot in Deadly Premonition that driving on the road like a normal driver is relatively easy - like it is in real life - whereas in L.A. Noire it's as difficult as it is in every other Rockstar game.)
What's bizarre about L.A. Noire and the hype/criticism surrounding it is how its being presented/discussed as if it were somehow original, when in fact it's just an extremely expensive, bloated, somewhat confused version of what many games have done before. It's hardly the first detective game (the ones I listed above are only just a few). All of its mechanics are swipped from better games. Take for example the interrogation system, an intriguing if inferior version of the cross-examination mechanics from Phoenix Wright. It took me forever to realize how L.A. Noire's cross-questioning worked, mostly because its on-screen UI suffers from mixed metaphors.
Your three possible responses - Truth, Doubt, and Lie - are utterly confusing. Only one of them (Doubt) is a player action. I had to read the instruction manual before I realized that "Lie" isn't something you can do. The actual action is "Accuse", which you do if you think they are lying. Likewise "Truth" really means "Believe" as in "Believe what they just said". How such a mixed up UI got through focus testing I can't imagine, since I find it hard to believe many people figured it out without being told by a Team Bondi QA person what the hell those buttons actually meant.
Your three possible responses - Truth, Doubt, and Lie - are utterly confusing. Only one of them (Doubt) is a player action. I had to read the instruction manual before I realized that "Lie" isn't something you can do. The actual action is "Accuse", which you do if you think they are lying. Likewise "Truth" really means "Believe" as in "Believe what they just said". How such a mixed up UI got through focus testing I can't imagine, since I find it hard to believe many people figured it out without being told by a Team Bondi QA person what the hell those buttons actually meant.
It also took me several interrogations to realize that you have a fourth option, not shown on-screen, "Present Evidence", which only appears if you choose "Lie" (which really means "Accuse"). Counter-intuitively, choosing the "Lie" option - which seems like the harshest option - is the only one you can back out of, since if you accuse them of lying but then decide you don't have the evidence you can backpedal out of the accusation. Why can't you do that with "Doubt"? It would be incredibly useful since the resulting dialogue often is not a measured expression of doubt but a random outburst from Phelps on an entirely new subject.
Has no one at Team Bondi played Phoenix Wright? That game came out years ago, has virtually the same statement analysis / present evidence mechanics, and presents them logically, elegantly, clearly in the first 5 minutes. This failure to learn from other games is bizarre, considering the audience L.A. Noire is going after, which is apparently much more mainstream than Phoenix Wright. I know more than one baby boomer who has finished every Phoenix Wright game - all five of them - and I can't imagine any of these people suffering through L.A. Noire's bewildering interface enough to realize it's the same game.
Only hardcore gamers have the patience for such nonsense, which further begs the question of what, exactly, is the point of spending so much time and money on photo-realistic performance-capture? Does Rockstar/Bondi actually think the mainstream audience such stunts are designed to snare would be able to parse their game? What kind of people spend all that money on breaking games out of their low-culture niche and then hide the solution to their byzantine game mechanics in the instruction manual?
UPDATE
I just heard you can skip the driving in L.A. Noire. I tried it out and sure enough if you hold (as opposed to tap) the 'get in car' button, Phelps will tell his partner to drive, at which point it simply skips to the destination. How players are supposed to figure this out I'm not sure, but it does make the game less tedious. It also makes it even more obvious that the open-world aspects are an entirely disposable legacy feature inherited from GTA.
Only hardcore gamers have the patience for such nonsense, which further begs the question of what, exactly, is the point of spending so much time and money on photo-realistic performance-capture? Does Rockstar/Bondi actually think the mainstream audience such stunts are designed to snare would be able to parse their game? What kind of people spend all that money on breaking games out of their low-culture niche and then hide the solution to their byzantine game mechanics in the instruction manual?
UPDATE
I just heard you can skip the driving in L.A. Noire. I tried it out and sure enough if you hold (as opposed to tap) the 'get in car' button, Phelps will tell his partner to drive, at which point it simply skips to the destination. How players are supposed to figure this out I'm not sure, but it does make the game less tedious. It also makes it even more obvious that the open-world aspects are an entirely disposable legacy feature inherited from GTA.
Posts
Luckily, I had a tutorial pop up in the beginning of the game that told me I could skip the driving (so I did!). Either it didn't come up for you or you missed it.
ReplyDeleteI think the reasoning for the "open world" mechanics are much more mercenary than design driven. If the screenshots look like GTA, then the GTA kiddies will buy it. Convince producers that an "adventure" game will sell--much harder than convincing them a GTA clone will sell.
They suggest the partner driving feature in a tutorial message in your first case ("The Driver's Seat"). But yes, it's easy to miss. Once I found out, I was using it constantly.
ReplyDeleteGood article. I like the change of perspective in lie / doubt. I had a hunch there was something not right there. Great find!
The rest of your analysis is spot-on as well. I'm also flabbergasted how they were able to screw up the Phoenix Wright system so badly. They must have played it, the similarities are undeniable.
I've only played the first Phoenix Wright released on DS, but this was my experience with the title. (Which was a few years ago, so I may get a few aspects of this wrong.)
ReplyDeleteFirst, I read through some text boxes, and am given my case. Then, I walk around a few rooms, clicking my stylus around the screen looking for clues. When, and only when, I find ALL the relevant clues on a case, do I then get to go to trial.
In the trial, I need to present the exact answer and piece of evidence that the game wants me to present, at a specific point in the interrogation, or I get 1 strike. 3 strikes, and I get to start the trial all over again. And it's this linear, very binary approach to the gameplay that turned me off from Phoenix Wright, and the reason why I enjoyed L.A. Noire so much, despite it's flaws.
L.A. Noire is different because it doesn't force you to solve your case in any preset way. You can get all the clues, or almost none of them. You can botch all sorts of aspects of the case, and even put the wrong suspect in jail! I think the difference between people who were disappointed with this title, and people who admired, appreciated and enjoyed it, are whether or not that person can just let go and enjoy the story, and not get frustrated that it's nearly impossible to do a "perfect run" on you first attempt at a case.
I found the driving perfectly enjoyable, and added to the atmosphere to manually drive up that dusty road, step out of the car, and walk up the trail towards the police line and the scene of the crime. I do agree that I wish there was more interactivity in the world, which was 2nd biggest disappointment with Noire. (#1 being the really bad shooting/movement/cover controls, which were a big step back from Red Dead.)
I really can't comprehend your confusion of Truth/Doubt/Lie. No offense, but considering how isolated your experience is, I don't think it's a flaw.
To each their own. Eventually, I'm going to need to play Deadly Premonition, as it keeps being brought up as the "right way" to do certain things in games, and I'd like to be able to have an opinion on it.
I don't think it's very isolated. Lots of people expressed frustration about the interrogation system. I am not the only one. My assertion that Phoenix Wright is better has to do with usability/accessibility, how well the game explains itself to the player.
ReplyDeleteL.A. Noire isn't so bad once you figure it out, but the game does a shit job of making itself clear. So does Deadly Premonition, frankly, only in DP's case what's hiding underneath its usability issues is genuinely more fresh and original than L.A. Noire, which is a dreary, stone-faced carbon copy of L.A. Confidential.
It's fine if you enjoyed L.A. Noire more than Phoenix Wright. I prefer more open-ended games myself, which may be why I haven't finished any of the Phoenix Wright games. My only point was that those games do a superior job of teaching the player how their systems work, which is something any right minded AAA developer should be doing if their making something as ambitiously aimed at the mainstream as L.A. Noire.
The combat in L.A. Noire can be skipped too, which is why Adventure Gamers (whose definition of "adventure" is strict) has reviewed it as an adventure game. This makes me wonder whether the combat and driving are put in the game solely to appease Rockstar's GTA-playing audience so that they don't feel uncomfortable playing a non-action game.
ReplyDeleteBut then again, L.A. Noire is a game that allows the player to progress even if he had failed in every investigation.
BTW, Sierra's old Police Quest series had driving, but they are also meant to be police procedure simulations.
I was definitely frustrated by the truth/doubt/lie situation—it drove me crazy not having any say on how Phelps decided to "interpret" my directions. Regarding the driving, however, I wanted to mention one additional feature that most people have overlooked: you can actually skip any and all of the game's action sequences. Unlike skipping driving this is never stated during gameplay, but if you fail an action sequence (anything other than a crime scene investigation or interview) several times, you are given a prompt to skip past the event. This renders everything outside of the investigation optional, if you're willing to deliberately fail the driving and combat segments. That option makes it pretty clear that the development team shared some of the uncertainty about the GTA-holdover elements.
ReplyDeleteIn the pause menu there is an option to disable this behavior, forcing you to complete all the sequences. I wonder if the game wouldn't have been better served by having the option be an opt-out, instead, letting you trim out everything but the detective work--perhaps playing a brief narration clip to fill in the gaps in the story covered in the car chases and such. This would have made the game much smaller, but it might have been a much more consistent experience.
Matt, have you read Rob Zacny's take on how the interrogation mechanic is broken? http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/108561
ReplyDeleteI think "bloated" is the perfect word to describe this game. "Addition by subtraction" should have been the motto here, I think; the fact that there is an option to skip all the action sequences (which are so repetitive, narratively incongruous, and tedious as to invoke continual eye-rolling), like Adam said, indicate that the devs were at best ambivalent about including them at all. Had a lot of the extraneous pseudo-openness of the world been cut, I think LA Noire would have benefited significantly.
Consider the Twilight Zone-like repetition of the incidental dialogue: "There's that detective who solved that big case!" "I'm gonna get good and tight come Friday!" Christ, why bother sketching every minute detail of the secondhand lamps on sale in a storefront if your city is only populated by surreal clones? Feels like being in one of those old Star Trek episodes where they land on a planet populated by androids. The absurdity of the ancillary characters is in direct opposition to the supposed fidelity of the main characters. By contrast, every ancillary character in Deadly Premonition had a distinct personality.
I actually like parts of this game, particularly the parallel story tracks of Cole in the present, Cole in WWII, and the Kelso/Sheldon/Fontaine plotline. Curious to see how those tie together. And when investigation doesn't devolve into a pixel-hunt, it can be fun to assemble clues and try to construct a theory of the crime. My problem there is that the evidence you collect often can't be put to intuitive use in interrogations. For example, you might find a passenger manifest showing that two guys were on a ship together, but when one guy denies knowing the other guy and you confront him with the manifest, it's the wrong option. What gives? The objectives then becomes not making deductive leaps, but sussing out which deductive leaps the game wants me to make at which particular time. In this way it feels like following a FAQ to get Achievements or something.