LA Noire

Watch the first trailer here!

People are buzzing this morning about the new trailer released today from Rockstar Games for LA Noire (not sure where the extra “e” comes from), a game that’s exactly what it sounds like, a film “noir-esque” detective drama/police drama and other LA film noir movies like The Big Sleep,Double Indemnity, Chinatown, and LA Confidential.

INITIAL RESPONSE: Woweee. The facial animation performance on this game, at least for the trailer, is the best I’ve seen and the most convincing–dare I say it–EVER in this type of media. I was a little ho-hum about the title ’till now! If this story and gameplay is as compelling as the visuals, I’m definitely a customer.

However, I’m finding out that it took over 5 years and millions of dollars to make this. While it’s not unheard of to spend millions on a title these days, this one apparently was worked on by a couple of studios before it landed in Rockstar’s lap, which means it took much more than any one of the previous could handle or was willing to chip in.

It was meant to be a technologically pioneering type of venture using the latest and some say greatest tools in the animation industry. More investigation is needed to figure out just how did they do that! Not enough time to post all of it here… Check out the trailer and download it from Rockstar Games’ website.

More info at Giant Bomb.

Related book I’ve seen, LA Noir.

Download HD version here or from Rockstar.