L.A. Noire once "five or six" discs

By Tom Phillips Published 17 May, 2011

"It's the biggest map we've done."

Team Bondi's sleuthing shooter L.A. Noire originally filled up to six Xbox 360 discs.

Six Xbox 360 discs?

The game's period recreation of Los Angeles is apparently the biggest map of any Rockstar title to date. There's also 21 hours of performance capture.

"We've always been called stupidly ambitious," L.A. Noire's writer and director Brendan McNamara told Gamespot. "It took a lot of effort to get down to three discs - I think we were on four or five or six at one point - and to get it onto one Blu-ray."

How was the game shrunk down? McNamara simply hails "miraculous compression" techniques to cram all the content in. The Xbox 360 version ships on three DVDs.

We do know two types of investigation were cut from the L.A. Noire's finished build - reducing the number of mission types from six to four. Perhaps that helped, too?

Team Bondi is now considering their release as DLC.

Regardless, McNamara claims gamers still have a huge world to explore. "It's the biggest map that we've done and that Rockstar has done, so there's a lot of detail in there," he said.

L.A. Noire's first 15 minutes.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Phillips

Tom joined Eurogamer in 2010 and has quickly made his mark writing news and columns and coming up with puntastic straplines. Questionable beard. @TomPhillips151 on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Phillips archive page.

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Comments (47) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • the_dudefather #1 1 year ago

    'Hey Phelps, come over here and look at this tree stump!'
    'insert disc 24'

  • chrisjm #2 1 year ago

    hopefully the decompression is just as miraculous and fast :)

  • Trigga_Tybalt #3 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 15:43:01 23-02-2012

  • RawNinjaKid #4 1 year ago

    Yeah 21 hours of cr*p compressed motion capture! Honestly, I think the MSG games on the PS2 looked better!

  • wizlon #5 1 year ago

    I'm sorry, how many floppy disks would that be? (People still use them, right?)

  • Goodfella #6 1 year ago

    Xbox 360, holding back console game development since 2006. ;)

  • neilka #7 1 year ago

    "It took a lot of effort to... get it onto one Blu-ray"

    Blol-ray!!!!!1

  • metalangel #8 1 year ago

    I must admit, exploring the city appeals almost as much as the actual police work.

    I take it the golden film reels are the "hidden packages"? Sounds good. If anyone else enjoys the virtual worlds Rockstar create then you could do a lot worse than go get all the pigeons in GTA4. You'll see parts of Liberty City the "tourists" never see.

  • Biker_Bob_1971 #9 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 16:59:10 06-02-2012

  • sir_tripod #10 1 year ago

    I've got it on pre-order for my 360 and I'll be playing it on one disk, the hard disk. Install game, job done.

  • RawNinjaKid #11 1 year ago

    Do you think MSFT would let Rockstar off with a superior PS3 version?

  • airjoca #12 1 year ago

    "We do know two types of investigation were cut from the L.A. Noire's finished build - reducing the number of mission types from six to four. Perhaps that helped, too?

    Team Bondi is now considering their release as DLC."

    Well, of course they are...

  • TONYgr #13 1 year ago

    Bigger than san andreas??

  • slickster #14 1 year ago

    It looks like the 360 is holding back the ps3 from having great games la noire should of been just on ps3.

  • YenRug #15 1 year ago

    @RawNinjaKid

    You do know that this was originally going to be a PS3 exclusive, don't you? No? Well, you can now stop talking out of your arse about a superior 360 version, this is not using the 360-lead GTA engine like RDR did.

  • azix2 #16 1 year ago

    There you have it. X360 reducing the quality of a game and the amount of content. lolz. They should have kept it the same for the ps3 regardless of how pissed the 360 gamers would be.

  • coolbritannia #17 1 year ago

    Xbox 360, spearheading online console services since 2006. ;)

    Fixed. P.S I'd rather change discs than wait for slower Blu-Ray loading. just sayin'.

  • Whitster #18 1 year ago

    All you people moaning about the 360 holding back PS3 games do realise you're getting a taste of what original Xbox owners went through with everything being developed for PS2 then ported last gen right?

  • M1chl #19 1 year ago

    Yeah they should keep it on PS3, but I guess that money talks. I have bot hconsole, doesn't matter to me if its exlusive or not. But still have a 32GB of game data seems crazy (even for PC game, whe you can have a bigAss textures). Propably it contains some video data as well...

  • Centrifugal #20 1 year ago

    I think this sort of thing will be happening more and more with games over the next few years, until the next-generation of consoles arrives.

  • metalangel #21 1 year ago

    @Whitster: Here here. I had both PS2 and Xbox versions of San Andreas. The PS2 version really chugged at some points... the big freeway cloverleaf at Mulholland in Los Santos especially.

  • mooseti #22 1 year ago

    I'm sorry but Blu-Ray has horrendous loading times, and not every ps3 game has an optional hdd install.

    EVERY 360 game has a hard disk install.

  • azix2 #23 1 year ago

    @whitster you are missing the point. Its not about graphics in game (I really didn't see a problem with ps2 back in the day. the old xbox wasnt nearly as appealing). The 2 consoles had the same storage back then so content wasn't cut. You can have the same content with differing graphical quality but not having it because another console made it impractical is fail.

  • LazyNinjaUk #24 1 year ago

    I'll take having to change a couple of discs over not being able to play my games online at all and having my credit card number stolen anyday.

  • slickster #25 1 year ago

    @LAZYNINJAUK

    Go back to sleep psn is back online i was on it all lastnight playing brink with "NO LAG".

  • Goodfella #26 1 year ago

    As expected, the morons here miss the point entirely.

    It's not about 'not' having to change discs. Read azix2's post.

  • MDL199 #27 1 year ago

    Sadly as with other ambitious multi format games we all suffer because of the 360's reliance on a last generation disc format whether we own a 360 or not.

    A real shame LA Noire didn't remain a PS3 exclusive.

  • Flabio #28 1 year ago

    The game wouldn't exist if it was PS3 only without some subsidising. You can't DO console exclusive games on this scale anymore. It's the same reason Square put FF13 on the 360. You have to cover costs, and ignoring around half the market is just insane.

  • orangpelupa #29 1 year ago

    ""It took a lot of effort to get down to three discs - I think we were on four or five or six at one point - and to get it onto one Blu-ray.""

    also maybe because initially, LA Noire is a sony exclusive game :D

  • orangpelupa #30 1 year ago

    Trigga_Tybalt
    17/05/11 @ 14:56
    Ignore poster | #4
    +2


    I hated the compression of video when i played through Cyrsis 2 on 360 after beating it on PS3 and all the flashback videos looked pretty ropey compared to the PS3 version. Makes me wonder if LA Noire will have the same problems?


    -----------

    so the PS3 version of crysis 2 use better video than PC?
    on PC Crysis 2 use the ridiculus low bitrate lowquality video.... Its horrible.

    the realtime graphic is much high quality than the video

  • maxb #31 1 year ago

    Let's just enjoy it for what it is regardless of what format we play it on!

  • Bahumet #32 1 year ago

    @maxb

    Here fucking here.

    Does anyone know of a games site that's fanboy free? Please.

  • andijames #33 1 year ago

    @KinglyBauce

    Chips with your spam today sir?

  • Bigglesworth #34 1 year ago

    Just wow. Are we going down this road again? Disc swapping vs slow loading??

    I shudder at what we're reduced to.

  • orangpelupa #35 1 year ago

    install to SSD, problem solved....

    but SSD is expensive, so it bring another problem lol

  • Bigglesworth #36 1 year ago

    @wizlon: I'm sorry, how many floppy disks would that be?
    Xbox360 DVD's hold, what, 9GB? And we used to get about 1.44MB on a floppy didn't we? So taking the 3 DVD estimate from the article, that gives us a stack of floppy disks numbering approximately 18,750.

    Hum. That's a big pile o' disks.

  • Machiavellian #37 1 year ago

    It looks like the 360 is holding back the ps3 from having great games la noire should of been just on ps3.

    Or maybe you should be asking yourself if the game was announced as exclusive for the PS3 but changed, what happened. Not the 360 fault RS decided to go multiplat for this game. As far as compression goes hopefully RS used some of the superior methods that the 360 can use instead of Bink and other low rez low bandwidth methods.

  • coolbritannia #38 1 year ago

    @Goodfella, we get the point, it was just a shit point.

  • handsonhips101 #39 1 year ago

    @coolbritannia; I think its a valid point. Why is it not?

    Also would you really prefer to get up, find the discs load them when it tells you to? Course you would. By the time you have done that the bluray version would have loaded anyway.

    I love you. You make me laugh. X

  • coolbritannia #40 1 year ago

    Yeah, I'd rather have Blu-Ray in terms of space, but the loading times for Blu-Ray have always been shit.

    LA Noire is what, 20 or 30 hours? So you'd be complaining that you had to get up once every 5 hours to change a disc?

  • Goodfella #41 1 year ago

    Actually that's where you're wrong, they haven't 'always been shit'.

    A lot of games have load times no longer than their 360 counterparts, but then you wouldn't know that not having a PS3.

  • dean0null #42 1 year ago

    Bigger than Red Dead Redemption?

  • WJF #43 1 year ago

    'The 2 consoles had the same storage back then so content wasn't cut'

    That's untrue.

    Compare the two versions of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. The PS2 version was severely cut-down (level design, textures) compared to the Xbox. The last few levels especially were a joke on PS2 when you compared them side-by-side (as I and a friend did at uni, seeing as we were both playing it at the same time)

    Edited by WJF at 17/05/11 @ 21:40

  • handsonhips101 #44 1 year ago

    @coolbritannia;

    no I wouldn't complain; I played enemy zero and panzer dragoon saga to death on the Saturn, both 4 discs with lots of swapping. It can't be denied that its a dated way to go about things.

    But I wouldn't complain about the bluray loading time either. It's tit for tat. Both flawed. I am interested in how compressed the textures are on each system though.

  • azix2 #45 1 year ago

    @WJF

    just one game. I can't think of a practical reason they wouldn't be able to have the same game, even if the graphics are different, on each console. I doubt what you describe is something like the game being a 15hr game originally but being cut to 10hrs since they couldn't fit the last 5hrs of content on the disc.

    BTW I hadn't even noticed the mention of 3 discs. Seriously you people cannot be ok with that. You take it because its all the 360 can give you but I bet you if the situation was reversed you would be bashing it as well. It's plain retarded to have multiple discs for a game at a time like this.

  • Loghorn #46 1 year ago

    @Whitster:

    LOL, now that's ownage to all of the PS3 fanboys of what you said right there.

    @Flabio:

    Indeed. Plus PS3 fanboys should be even grateful that they're still receiving this game. If a big game like this were to be a 360 exclusive instead of being a PS3 exclusive, then heads would've definitely been rolling within them.

  • orangpelupa #47 1 year ago

    the day after tommorrow...... hoping LAN comy to my door :)