LA Noire 2 won't take five years to make

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 23 May, 2011

Team Bondi working on full body capture.

Developer Team Bondi reckons development on a sequel to crime caper L.A. Noire would take less time than development on the first game did.

L.A. Noire was announced as a PlayStation 3 exclusive seven years ago in 2004. The game suffered a number of delays before last week's launch.

The ambitious detective game uses new technology where actors are recorded by multiple cameras to capture facial expressions in great detail.

"Obviously the Motion Scan technology for capturing actors works and exists and other video game people are using that today, so that's there and available and quick," Team Bondi boss Brendan McNamara told GamerLive.tv.

"We developed a lot of tools to make this kind of game, so I think that part of it will be shorter. The writing part you can't really make any shorter. You can make it shorter than five years, but we've also now started working on technology for fully body capture. "We'll be able to drop that performance in a video game, which will be pretty amazing.

"All the lies and misdirection means that we have to map out many routes and a very large script to cover all of the different directions a player can go in the game," said McNamara. "That means the script by its nature is three times as long because you have these different avenues and there are a lot of logical problems to that, as well."

Eurogamer's L.A. Noire review uncovered an 8/10. " L.A. Noire is slow but quietly engrossing; its mechanics are suspect, but you can't fault the ambition, attention to detail and commitment that went into its making," wrote Oli Welsh.

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 (26) Latest comment 12 months ago

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  • Ultrasoundwave #1 1 year ago

    Roll on the sequel i say, absolutely fantastic game. Hopefully L.A Noire will also be as well supported with DLC as Red Dead and GTA IV were.........

  • Spong #2 1 year ago

    Great to hear they've got the tech down to knock out a sequel more quickly. What TB need to work on is their logic. A signed receipt in the boot of a car DOES NOT prove someone was at a scene of a crime.

  • Anciegher #3 1 year ago

    I wouldn't mind LA Noire 2 in 2013 :)

  • justsomeone #4 1 year ago

    playing through LA Noire, which I'm loving, I started to wonder at the sheer level of additional effort involved in all that motion capture...I honestly wonder - is it worth it...I mean, why not just put the actors in suits and film them? Why bother doing the cutscenes in-engine at all? The thing is so close to realistic, I wonder what the point is in simulating it...and now they're going to capture bodies too?

  • telboy007 #5 1 year ago

    Amazing game BUT if they fix one thing and one thing only let it be the fact that every time I answer a dispatch call the location is ALWAYS FUCKING BEHIND ME! It's becoming so infuriating that I usually don't bother half the time.

  • Eurolamer #6 1 year ago

    "Your mother is dead. Can you answer some questions?"

  • Murton #7 1 year ago

    Waiting for the return of the PSN store so I can play this complete with The Naked City extra case, didn't see the point in starting it without and risking some strange continuity, though I'm lead to believe the continuity is screwed anyway because of other chapters that seem to have gone missing, such as working in the burglary dept.

    Glad to hear that Bondi are geared for a sequel some day and reckon they can get it out sooner. Though that probably means same engine meaning if that crash/shutdown issue is due to their software, which is almost certainly is, then we may see a repeated issue much like New Vegas has the same bugs and memory issues as Fallout 3. Here's hoping that they track down the cause and get it patched out before gunning for the sequel.

  • MrEuroTrigger #8 1 year ago

    LA Noire 2 on consoles will be coming together with the first installment on the PC, that would be doubleplusgood. I have money prepared for that day.

  • CaptainQuint #9 1 year ago

    This is a very good game, but those interrogation parts can be very frustrating in their randomness. They don't quite work as they should do.

  • DiamondIce #10 1 year ago

    @Eurolamer

    Well it needs to be done...

    That did make me laugh but I suppose they have to speed up the process for gaming purposes instead of having the girl have a breakdown for days on end.

  • spekkeh #11 1 year ago

    Only played it for two or three hours or so, but really liking it so far. It's amazing how quickly you get accustomed to the facial animations (and how quickly the movements then start to grate, so probably a good idea that they're researching that now), I sure hope they sell their tech loads to other devs.

    LA Noire 2 can probably come a lot earlier, although it sort of depends on whether they change the time/scenery. The thing that does puzzle me now is why they created such a large map, I don't feel it adds anything to the game and I start skipping the long drives more and more. If they do change the setting, they could probably tone that down considerably for a next game (make every house interactive), creating a much more focused game for less money.

  • BBIAJ #12 1 year ago

    @Murton:

    The DLC doesn't become playable the Vice desk, several desks in, so you'd be okay to at least start it for now, if you so wish.

  • raion #13 1 year ago

    good to hear they're considering full body capture. as good as it looks, it's still jarring to se the different quality of animation between head and body, not to mention that they don't always seem connected with each other. female models in particular, since theywear open suits that don't hide the neck, it's painfully obvious that head and body are two different entities, animated indipendently from one another and then clipped together.
    still, it looks good and a step in the right direction. if they manage to use the same kind of technology with the whole body... it's gonna be fantastic.

  • HL706 #14 1 year ago

    Does anyone else find the combat unpredictably broken (the brawling)? I keep pressing the punch and block buttons and my Phelps just stands there and takes a beating. Yet I button mash my controller like hell and things start happening. :-/

    It's not my controller either as I swapped to make sure my wired pad wasn't gubbed.

  • metalangel #15 1 year ago

    I'd rather have more detailed crime scenes and more stuff to do, if I'm honest (not fidgeting or rolling my eyes around theatrically).

    X

    Fine, fine. It's a bit of a shame every case seems to start in the briefing room, there's very little of life outside the case. Hell, it's so tightly scripted you don't even get to park your car when you get to each location, a cutscene does that for you too!

  • Branoic #16 1 year ago

    Biggest disappointment of the year for me. It's just like assassins creed one - an amazing tech demo with repetitive mechanical gameplay elements, and a brilliantly realized open world, with sweet F all to actually do in it.

    If LA Noire 2 takes these failings and does an Assassins Creed 2 on them, it'll be an awesome game.

  • Rodchenko #17 1 year ago

    Fantastic game (about halfway through). Suggestions for the sequel:
    – more emotional involvement with the main character. More info/stuff on him outside of his police-work.
    – Ability to free-roam the city without having to be on an assignment and more interaction with NPCs outside of missions
    – Less repetitive case structure
    – Please bring back the bonnet-cam for driving sections. I hate the behind-the-car perspective and the other one is unusable

  • spekkeh #18 1 year ago

    I see some prepubescent kid discovered the neg button again.

  • Kaminari #19 1 year ago

    What most people surprisingly fail to realize is that the graphics are not supposed to look photorealistic. They are meant to reproduce the believability of Edward Hopper's artistic style. It's probably Rockstar's fault for not communicating enough on this matter. Still, it shocks me that I know more about Hopper than the average American.

  • metalangel #20 1 year ago

    @twinberettas: point 1: the cop's life outside work is always part of the stories! Maybe not as much in crime serials of 1947 as today, but so far I haven't really developed much attachment to any of the characters, especially Phelps! Those war flashbacks are not an adequate substitute. Law and Order just about gets away with showing minimal "home life" because there's intense and charismatic characters like Briscoe and Goren.

    Point 2: So far I haven't dusted for fingerprints or made plastercasts of footprints (this was already done for me in one case!) or anything like that. I manhandle all the evidence (without gloves), ransack people's houses and then bluster them into confessing. There's no booking people, no trials (yet?), I just fulfill all the objectives and then the captain appears from nowhere announcing I've just solved the case, I'm amazing.

    I really hope this is the equivalent of Bad Company 2, to introduce the basic concepts to us, and a proper serious approach is planned for the sequel (a la Battlefield 3)

  • Moribundman #21 1 year ago

    @Rodchenko & metalangel Have you finished the Vice Desk cases yet? Hehehe. I think your wish may just come truuuue.....

    It's around about this point that the case structure gets a little more (ahem) "mixed up". And lets just say that the "Arson desk cases" see very little in the way of repetative Phelps missions...

    Oh, and you can free roam on each different desk without the current case getting in the way via the "Cases" Menu. You can also play DLC cases out of the chronology at any time, but the game will automatically feed them in at the correct time (as a consequence I ended up playing the Naked City twice - once after my first Vice Mission, once after the Second (where its supposed to be).

  • Moribundman #22 1 year ago

    Without spoilers, has anyone else finished? Arson desk got very Chinatowny and as such I loved it.

  • Moribundman #23 1 year ago

    @twinberettas et al Before you go negging me for no apparent reason, play past the Vice Desk and then you can stop whining about wanting to see who Benson and Stabler boink or divorce outside the office in Law & Order. I think you'll find they keep Cole's history close to his chest for a REASON and it all bursts out at the right time.
    Edited by Moribundman at 23/05/11 @ 15:08

  • metalangel #24 1 year ago

    @Moribundman: The more of it I play, the less of it there'll be left. For all its flaws, it's such a wonderful thing that I don't want to blast through it, I want to savour it. I dare say it (thus far) is committing the usual Rockstar sin of being far too handholdy for far too long, so you're a long way in before you're given free reign and the game is at least half over by then.

    @twinberettas: that's what I'm saying, though, so far there hasn't been anything to flesh the characters out at all, apart from a few very cursory lines in the briefing room. After finding RDR too verbose, LA Noire seems to be the opposite, and to its detriment.

    No, I don't want a minigame collection. However, figuring out good places to dust (Police Quest made a puzzle of this, for example, stolen car, the criminal thought to wipe the steering wheel and gearshift and doors... but he adjusted the mirror and forgot that...) as well as ensuring you take casts of things would give you more to do at each scene, not to mention ensuring you build a good strong case.

    I guess my expectations were off! The cases can seem to end rather abruptly. I attribute my spelling to trying to hastily type on an iPhone. Considering the complete train wreck that is spelling and grammar tends to be on the internet, I think that earns you a 'fuck you' for smugness ;)

  • metalangel #25 1 year ago

    Just testing ;)

    I spend my working days writing in broken but "official" looking language for reports. As a result, the parts of my brain that handled thrilling, flowing prose have atrophied from a total lack of use. You pointing it out doesn't help!

  • OhhYeahh #26 12 months ago

    Okay, I just beaten the game and have to say I wasn't expecting that. But since they are going to make a sequel who are they going to focus on? Hopefully not Kelso cause I didn't really see him as an important person through towards the ending of the game.