Brendan McNamara is making the video game of "one of the great untold stories of the 20th Century"

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 9 November, 2011

"Hopefully I'll have something to announce pretty soon."

Brendan McNamara, founder of now shuttered developer Team Bondi and writer and director of L.A. Noire, is making the video game of what he describes as "one of the great untold stories of the 20th Century".

Speaking to Eurogamer at the Bradford Animation Festival 2011 in the University of Bradford, the controversial developer said he hopes to be able to talk about the game in a few weeks' time.

"It's pretty interesting," he said. "It's one of the great untold stories of the twentieth century. So I think it'll be good."

Team Bondi, which closed recently following the release of the Rockstar produced L.A. Noire, was an Australian developer based in Sydney.

The studio's reputation was irrevocably harmed amid allegations of unfair working practices, despite the critical success of L.A. Noire. Team Bondi's assets and most of the staff went to KMM, a production company set-up by Mad Max maker George Miller. Rockstar retained the L.A. Noire IP.

McNamara, however, is a free agent, and has spent his time writing a new video game - one that has a number of publishers interested.

"I learnt a tonne of things from doing L.A. Noire which will hopefully play into what we do next," he told Eurogamer.

"A lot of people who were working on L.A. Noire have gone across to KMM, some of them to be working on some of the film projects. A lot of the art and animation guys went across. Some of the people have gone to work in different Rockstar studios. I'm personally just writing some new stuff now, which I've been pitching around for the last couple of weeks. Hopefully I'll have something to announce on that pretty soon.

"There are a few people interested, yeah," he said. "I've still got to do the paperwork."

McNamara wouldn't go into detail on his next game, but did tell Eurogamer it is of a similar scale to L.A. Noire, in that it is a big budget console game.

"We think the evolution from The Getaway to L.A. Noire and learning the lessons we did on the way, and some of the stuff about emerging storytelling, is definitely an avenue to pursue."

L.A. Noire used MotionScan to recreate realistic character faces. It is a tech owned by Depth Analysis, an Australian company McNamara still has a vested interest in and, crucially, access to.

"I own some of the shares, and some other people own some of the shares. It's a limited company, and there are some other investors in that, too.

"Hopefully towards the end of that we'll have the full body stuff up and running. That could be pretty interesting, too."

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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