L.A. Noire and the tenets of great adventure gaming

Graphic adventures are some of the best games ever made. When LucasArts was king, it gave to the masses Monkey Island, Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango. The company did release a few blemishes in their amazing 1990s run, particularly The Dig, but for their time, no other company delivered as many hits as they did. Compare LucasArts to Valve, and maybe you have something approaching resemblance, but Valve has not released as many games. LucasArts used to be the best.

Sadly, in an ironic fashion, they remained in the past when they attempted to evolve from the "Star Wars and graphic adventures" company. A former president of the company announced that LucasArts would not hold to its roots and continue to move forward! Or, whatever. What he meant to say is that LucasArts will only make Star Wars games from now on. The liar eventually left the company. Shortly after, the graphic adventures were released on Steam to much acclaim and success.

Since the 90s, Europe has picked up the slack when it comes to making adventure games. A few good games have risen to the top of a, sadly, general crap pile, like The Train and The Longest Journey. But it is not the 90s. Even TaleTale with their graphic adventure game factory cannot emulate the past. Maybe if they stopped and focused heavily on just one game, they would have more success, but they do not for many reasons, most of which is that the genre is not that popular and financially lucrative.

What is popular is Grand Theft Auto. So, it is a treat when the publishers of that juggernaut produce through Team Bondi of Australia what amounts to a neo-graphic adventure set in 1940s Los Angeles, City of the Angels. And, because it is a graphic adventure game, you play as a good guy, specifically a detective. Now that I think of it, I personally cannot recall a successful adventure game where the player is evil (Heavy Rain does not count since the parts where you play as the "villain" makes no sense. God, that dumb clock store scene is so stupid. That game had such great moments that is spoiled by such stupidity and arrogance from the director David Cage. Urg). Anyway, you can read details of the game elsewhere. Button layouts for controllers and product reviews are a bore.

Ultimately, L.A. Noire is a disappointment. Imagine what makes those 90s adventure games so successful. First of all, there are no incorrect answers. Sure, Sierra games had false leads and deaths, but I'm talking about good adventure games (take that, Kings Quest and Space Quest!). What is also important to consider is that because there are no wrong answers or dead ends, the game does not constantly inform you that you have made a mistake and done something not intended by the game designers. Lastly, most take you to new locals where you constantly run into new and interesting characters throughout a great story.

These are the tenets of a great graphic adventure. These are story games, and if you tell the player they are messing up the story or provide an illogical story (logic within the game world), then it is a failure as a graphic adventure game.

Due praise should be given to L.A. Noire for its highly detailed facial animation system during the interrogation sequences in the game. However, any such advances in technology are diminished because the first and second tenets of graphic adventures are broken during these sequences. The musical notifications after each question and answer sequence immediately informs the player that they have correctly or incorrectly chosen a wrong answer. Moreover, the notepad with its checks and x's give another reminder of the player's success or failure. Rather, no audible or visual notification should be given during these scenes because there is nothing to be gained by the player other than the desire to turn off the system and restart the sequence in its entire. Nothing is learned when a question is missed because the player is left with many questions on why they failed. Did the player read the visual ticks of the actor wrong? Well, they may act differently with the next question so it does not give the player a fail-proof approach for the next question. Should I have chosen doubt or lie? The distinction between doubt and lie is already thin, and sometimes the necessary clue to prove a lie is either questionable itself or another piece of evidence might seemingly be the correct option. That second problem is also found in the Phoenix Wright series and not specific only to L.A. Noire. For example, a piece of bloody cloth could easily link a person to the crime scene, but the game requires the shoe evidence because the question sets up that and that alone as the correct option.

The third tenet is a bit more subjective since it requires someone to have decent enough taste to discern a good or interesting story, characters, and locations from bad ones (or normal game ones). L.A. Noire lives entirely within the confines of 1940s Los Angeles, so its singular location should not be held against the game. Rather, the characters are wholly derivative of L.A. Confidential, and when the story pushes certain plot devices onto them, they clearly do not match. Consider the love triangle (affair?) in L.A. Confidential. Russell Crowe is in love and sleeping with Kim Basinger when Guy Pearce forces himself (not entirely unwelcomed) on Kim Basinger. It is somewhat of a sudden scene, but Basinger says to him as he forcefully kisses her that "fucking [her] and fucking [Russell Crowe's character] aren't the same thing". Immediately, the audience understands the dynamic being set up and the motivations of Guy Pearce. This never happens in L.A. Noire. Rather, Phelps is thrown rather quickly and clumsily into an affair with a german singer that leads to a demotion, blackmail, and divorce. In fact, the first time the character is explicitly shown to be in the middle of the affair is during an important case. Right after interrogating mobster Mickey Cohen, Phelps becomes angry and annoyed, and tells his partner to pick him up early tomorrow because “he has to go see about something” or whatever. Well, Phelps goes straight to the german singer. Why? To have rough sex with her? To be consoled? No indication is given because prior to this important scene; he’s barely spoken any words to the lady. It is bizarre, and it does not work.

And ultimately this leads to the greatest problem with the game, and games in general, is that everything must compound into a finale. Imagine Law and Order if each season culminated into one giant case and each season led directly to the finale. It would be a disaster. Sure, The Wire was able to achieve this, but that is because it was conceived from the beginning to do this. Law and Order could never do this because it did not start off with that goal. Same for the Sopranos. Same for Lost, which is a crappy show that people liked and retconned their affinity for it after the finale left them with all of those questions (people watched for answers to the shows questions, not the poorly developed characters. Anyone who tells you they watched for the characters is a liar and is only justifying their wasted years watching that garbage). In a previous blog post, I suggested that developers should model their games in the episodic format. Alan Wake and L.A. Noire do this. However, Alan Wake was bogged down by stupidity and an overly complicated story (hi again, Lost), and did not really see the thing through to the end. L.A. Noire could have just been episodic, endless, and a cash cow for DLC for the developers. Each case should be its own story. Maybe have 2 or 3 case arches to push a "grander" story forward, but the entire game does not need to have an overarching plot.

The game should not have the stupid war stuff either. It should not try to be L.A. Confidential. It should not ape the conflict in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It should have been just 10 or 15 episodes in the life of one particular cop. And it should just end. No grand finale. But, if an ending is needed, have the final case by multipart with the cop getting shot. Maybe he dies or lives, it does not matter, but it ends.

The endgame of Red Dead Redemption will be a case study for years to come that flawlessly resolves a larger story in a satisfying manner that is entirely consistent with the entire game.