L.A. Noire officially delayed

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 2 September, 2010

Advancements "worth waiting for".

1940s detective game L.A. Noir has been delayed to "the first half of calendar 2011", Take-Two has announced.

Publisher Rockstar Games previously said it was due out this autumn. L.A. Noir was originally announced in 2005.

The confirmation comes as no surprise: rumour of the game's delay hit the internet in July.

In L.A. Noir players rise through the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department as they interrogate criminals and other shadey characters.

Team Bondi founder Brendan McNamara reckons the development team's "defeated the uncanny valley", so good are the character's faces.

During a question and answer session following Take-Two's Q3 earnings call this evening, chairman Strauss Zelnick explained the delay.

"Obviously when we schedule a title, we're trying to be mindful of at least two issues. First, how long does it take to put out an a plus title? When you're trying to do something ground breaking, it can take a while.

"We have tried very hard to balance appropriately a desire to have a rational release schedule with a desire to put out triple-A titles.

"Every time we push the envelope creatively, it takes a while. In this particular instance, I'm not going to disclose all the advancements, they're pretty extraordinary, they are complex and worth waiting for.

"Equally, we do try to pick the right marketing window. That is important. One of the things we're proud of around here is we've extended the marketing window. We've shown the market if you put something fantastic out people will come out for it. That's for pretty much year round.

"That said we do want to be mindful of what the competition is doing and we don't want to stack up a release unnecessarily. These are expensive products. One of the things we found with Red Dead to our happiness is we were able to crowd out some of the competition because the best title in the market won the day."

Feder added: "We get criticised often for title movement and not being on time and on budget. I've pointed out in the past that Red Dead Redemption took down any number of titles and was both on budget and on time.

"If a title needs more time it needs more time and we're willing to give it. I will say about L.A. Noir that as I look around competitively at the marketplace, there is nothing else quite like it in terms of the gameplay and the technology behind it. We want to make sure we get it absolutely right."

A trailer released in September last year is below.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (20) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • DDevil #1 1 year ago

    Hands up anyone who is surprised.

    Anyone?

  • makeamazing #2 1 year ago

    Not really surprised, i guess they are aiming for a RDR release timeframe date then (was that june?). Expect any games released at the same time to sell badly... advance warning :D

  • NewbieZilla #3 1 year ago

    Really hope this turns out to be a solid title. Been looking forward to it for ages. Don't mind the delay, just worried about its quality whenever the hell we get to play it.
    Edited by 1 at 02/09/10 @ 21:39

  • JayKwon #4 1 year ago

    *Raises hand. I read cancelled at first. Then was surprised it just got delayed. My mistake though.

  • bluemax #5 1 year ago

    Have high hopes for this because of the setting. I just hope it`s no GTA or RDR clone (loved RDR by the way) set in the 40s. They should focus on investigation and don`t go the route of drive from point a to b shoot target, rinse repeat imo.

  • Lee_Morris #6 1 year ago

    It was so obvious that it was coming this year I don't know why it had to get announced at the financial call. Is it just me or is there more and more bits of news getting announced that these thing.

    On the subject of L.A. Noire, I have high hopes for that game. I've heard various people say that the face capture has created the most realistic facial movement and expression they've ever seen. Another fairly slow paced detective game, ala Heavy Rain, will do me fine. I want to be a detective not GI Joe.

  • Soton4084 #7 1 year ago

    I've got high hopes for this game. I want it to be like Heavy Rain in terms of narrative, but with more freedom to explore and find clues (without being led to them). It should be linear in terms of free-roaming of the locale, but offer immense freedom in terms of how you investigate crimes. E.g: You decide who you bring in for questioning, what you ask. You decide where best to focus the investigation, etc, etc.

  • Lord_Gremlin #8 1 year ago

    I thought they decided to port it to 360, right? I suppose it's reasonable that now they need more time.

  • bluemax #9 1 year ago

    That`s the main issue for me also, to have a strong narrative, in a sense linear but with the freedom how you investigate, with different ways to accomplish your goal and different outcomings.

  • MrsPacMan #10 1 year ago

    @JayKwon

    might as well not bothered with that post. Was that really just what you thought at the time?

    @bluemax

    not really looked at the previews have you?
    Edited by 2 at 02/09/10 @ 22:33

  • oreillymj #11 1 year ago

    Somehow this sounds familiar to those who've experienced Brendan McNamara's previous fuck ups, I mean projects
    Edited by 1 at 02/09/10 @ 22:55

  • bifbert #12 1 year ago

    @DDevil

    Not surprised at all. Need to see a bit of gameplay to keep me interested in this one.

  • MaoZedong #13 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 09:40:08 17-12-2011

  • bluemax #14 1 year ago

    @ MrsPacman

    To be honest no, just heard the announcement a while back, were interested because of the setting, but didn`t catch a preview since then. Oh well I used to have more time to follow games, but I will look into it.

  • neems #15 1 year ago

    I wonder if they've misunderstood the concept of the Uncanny Valley? Seems hard to believe that anything running on current hardware could 'defeat' it.

  • mikeck #16 1 year ago

    From what I was shown at Gamescom this game is looking very good...delays aren't a bad thing when you know the devs are going to be making a game even better (in theory at least) ;)

  • BillMurray #17 1 year ago

    I had no idea it had a release date for this year so a delay doesn't bother me one bit!

  • schnide #18 1 year ago

    LA Noire Forever, from Take Two Games.

  • Acrid #19 1 year ago

    Delay is fine by me, give me a chance to play the pile of games I've already got before I add this to it

  • Tad59 #20 1 year ago

    Shame was really looking forward to this game, but like other comments say it's no surprise really. Nothing at E3 etc, so it was bound to happen