McNamara: why you thought LA Noire's characters were "dead from the neck down"

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 9 November, 2011

Plus, why Cole Phelps is sometimes a bit of a psycho.

L.A. Noire main man Brendan McNamara has discussed criticism of the body animation in open world detective game L.A. Noire, specifically why some thought they were "dead from the neck down".

While L.A. Noire's character faces, captured using the cutting edge MotionScan technology, were acclaimed by gamers and critics, some criticised the bodies for being lifeless - despite motion capture work done by the studio.

"People were saying people were dead from the neck down," McNamara said at the Bradford Animation Festival 2011 at the University of Bradford this afternoon.

"That's because we had all this animation in the neck and all this animation in the face, but the clothes don't move. Once you get to the level that people can actually see that level of realism, then people expect to see clothes moving and the rest of the body moving in a way we can't replicate in video games."

MotionScan is a motion capture technology developed by Australian company Depth Analysis, a sister company of Team Bondi.

It attracted attention in the run up to release with the promise of an unprecedented level of fidelity in video game faces - and this, according to McNamara, created a problem of expectation when players eventually got their hands on the game.

"It's a subtle thing, but once you attune to that level of realism then you start looking for the other things," he explained. "And we had some criticism from people saying people were a bit stiff in their clothes and from the way they were done. But they were only stiff in comparison to real life.

"That's another reason why we pursued full body capture. There's been some discussion I've heard with people saying some ensemble recordings in some recently launched games were better than what we were doing in L.A. Noire. It's a weird criticism because we were actually doing it in the first place."

Meanwhile, McNamara explained why central character Detective Cole Phelps, played by Mad Men star Aaron Staton, sometimes responds with particularly aggressive lines of dialogue when prompted by the player in interrogation scenes.

"It's funny. A lot of people say Aaron turns into a psycho," he said. "When we originally wrote the game the questions you asked were coax, force and lie. It was actually force because it was a more aggressive answer. That's the way we recorded it.

"But when the game came out it was truth, doubt or lie. Everyone always says Aaron on the second question is a psycho. So that's not his fault."

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 (41) Latest comment 7 months ago

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  • peppergomez #1 7 months ago

    What, no Brendan McNamara jokes yet?

  • LowEnergyCycle #2 7 months ago

    @peppergomez He isn't worth it.

  • Elfworks #3 7 months ago

    I'm actually quite happy with that explaination of why Phelps goes mental with certain questions.

  • Sodding_Gamer #4 7 months ago

    Fuck off McNamara. I haven't even read the article yet. Just hate the douche. Anyway back to Skyrim!

  • nakedbiblereadingman #5 7 months ago

    Why didn't they leave 'coax', 'force' and 'lie' in the finished game, then?

  • Nanocrystal #6 7 months ago

    Wait, wait, wait.

    The dialogue was written and recorded for coax, force and lie options (referring to Phelps's approach to the interview), then later the options were changed to truth, doubt and lie (referring to Phelps's opinion of the suspect's behaviour) without altering the writing?

    No wonder the interviews were so hopelessly muddled and inconsistent. I'm a little shocked at this, to be honest. For a game where the interrogations were the primary feature, this is pretty appalling.

    EDIT: Elfworks, you're happy with this explanation??
    Edited by Nanocrystal at 09/11/11 @ 16:14

  • slippysloppy #7 7 months ago

    I often use Cole's line of questioning with my girlfriend. "Hmm, she says she likes the way I smell but maybe she's just being nice to me - I SMELL GREAT YOU LYING BITCH!!!"

  • Kanselier #8 7 months ago

    @Nanocrystal
    Shut up you whore! You are not shocked! Stop lying to me, I know what you are up to! Start telling me the truth or God help me I will put you in jail!

  • Scurrminator #9 7 months ago

    Why the fuck is this guy even allowed to speak there?
    Should have been heckled off the stage...

  • schnide #10 7 months ago

    "And we had some criticism from people saying people were a bit stiff in their clothes and from the way they were done. But they were only stiff in comparison to real life."

    Which does kind of matter if you're making the heads like real life.

  • BigDannyH #11 7 months ago

    What's his excuse for the lifeless city and the dull gameplay?

    He'll probably blame Rockstar for not letting him use his "encouragement whip" on those lazy developers.

  • PinktotheLast #12 7 months ago

    @nakedbiblereadingman

    True, that would have been so much better. I was constantly confused about what doubt meant.

  • PinktotheLast #13 7 months ago

    This game was the biggest letdown of my gaming life.

    And I've bought some truly awful games in my time.

  • kangarootoo #14 7 months ago

    "When we originally wrote the game the questions you asked were coax, force and lie" "But when the game came out it was truth, doubt or lie"

    Well that was a bloody silly idea wasn't it. One of the biggest issues was that the truth option sometimes wasn't the right option, even when the answer you had been given WAS THE TRUTH.

    Example.
    Q. "Do you know Mr Blogs?"
    A. "Yeah, I know him."

    The answer is true, but Truth isn't the right option because apparently I am supposed to press the perp for extra info related to how him and Mr Blogs went fishing together and shared a wife every other Tuesday or something.

    Now fair enough if there is more information to be gleaned, and fair enough if his shifty eyes were suggesting something lying beneath the surface. But if I ask a question, and the perp gives me a truthful answer, I expect to be able to choose the Truth option EVERY TIME!


    Simple fix to all of this bollox. Simply print on screen in plain text the exact words Phelps is about to say. Then when I choose an option I won't be surprised 50% of the time by some unexpected craziness emitting from his mouth that I could not possibly have predicted. To quote a friend of mine "I shall never forgive McNamara for making me shout at the teenage rape victim."

  • kangarootoo #15 7 months ago

    This warrants a second outing.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIA0w-iqVc8

  • NewbieZilla #16 7 months ago

    @PinktotheLast I doubt that.

  • God_Octo #17 7 months ago

    Yay! I loved psycho Cole, I thought he was brilliant. But yeah, I don't know why anyone would even consider inviting McNamara to anything after the horror stories about him.

  • LR100 #18 7 months ago

    I want to know why Burglary and Fraud case desks were not released as an expansion, as from the sounds of things they were finished parts that just got cut.

  • arcam #19 7 months ago

    I don't know why anyone would even consider inviting McNamara to anything after the horror stories about him.

    Maybe some of those stories are exaggerated, and maybe McNamara isn't really the most evil man in the games industry...

  • NewbieZilla #20 7 months ago

    @arcam I couldn't remember the exact specifics as to how far along in development they were with that, so I looked it up. Seems it wasn't entirely done, but the writing and a bit of the design was. http://playstationlifestyle.net/2011/07/21/l-a-noire-burglary-desk-stole-too-much-blu-ray-space/

  • Bennicus #21 7 months ago

    The interrogation scenes made so little sense that I just gave up trying to 'win' them after the first couple and was just happy to get past them, it's nice to hear that they have a good excuse why that was the case.... ah. Well, not good, but it's an excuse at least.

  • Iain815 #22 7 months ago

    Hang on, I haven't played the game yet. So if I ever decided to, would I be better to stick masking tape over 'truth, doubt' and write on it 'coax, force'?

  • miiiguel #23 7 months ago

    I realy like L.A. Noire.

  • Shikasama #24 7 months ago

    Brendan McNamara - Costing people their jobs whilst sleeping on piles of money.

    Couldn't care less about anything this guy has to say and won't be buying any game with his name attached in the future.

  • NewbieZilla #25 7 months ago

    The way to do the interrogations is ask a question. If you think the person is telling the truth, you choose this. If you think they are lying you go lie. If you think they are lying but do not have evidence to back this claim up you go doubt.

    Those of you who think, oh, so there should have been a force thats why I failed... No, you just failed because you didn't read the suspects properly.

  • Bennicus #26 7 months ago

    @NewbieZilla
    As Kangarootoo explained above, sometimes someone *is* telling the truth but "Truth" is the wrong option because the game wants you to get more information from them by yelling at them.

    It was actually easier to ignore what they were saying and just base my responses on the ridiculous facial animations they play while they're waiting for you to do something.
    Edited by Bennicus at 09/11/11 @ 17:46

  • myiagros #27 7 months ago

    My method has always been:

    If you think they are being straight with you pick "Truth", otherwise pick "Lie".
    Listen to Cole's accustaion.
    If you have any evidence to back it up pick the evidence, otherwise back out of the accusation and pick "Doubt".
    Works most of the time.


    I could tell he was going to say that the body animation only looks dodgey because the facial animation is so amazing, before i even read the article.
    It isn't true!! The body animation just looks dodgey full stop!

  • telboy007 #28 7 months ago

    Everyone has the same walking down the stairs animation, EVERYONE.

  • bwiancohen #29 7 months ago

    I just think that Phelps was a douche and a crap copper - he kept banging up innocent people......

  • Elfworks #30 7 months ago

    @Nanocrystal I'm more happy that there IS an explaination.

  • kongzi #31 7 months ago

    Bullshit McNamara, the stiffness and weirdness had everything to do with your technology and how it works:

    -bodies and faces were captured seperately, because the two are impossible to match up you had to instruct the actors to not move around to much. The way the face captures work is that the actor can't move or turn his head too much, and it shows in the game. That's why characters in the game either sit or stand still when they talk and that's why the characters that move and emote the most have that weirdness about them.

    -the stiffness in the bodies had nothing to do with the clothing. No game this scale has cloth simulation on characters. I think the body mo-caps where quite good to begin with, but they had to be compressed down a lot to accomodate the data for the faces. A standard way of doing is reducing the number of bones on the skeleton, and the first place to start is the spine. That's why the arms and legs move alright, but the torso is stiff, which is exactly what happens in LA Noire. You can't blame that on not having cloth deformations, which aren't that hard to achieve anyway by getting creative with skinning and some simple effects. But that was probably impossible because of the demands motion scan put on the hardware and production.

    -Phelps comes across as a psycho precisely because what he says, but how did that come about? Same reason. You have to record voices early on in the production. Most developers work exactly the other way around so they can evolve storyline and characters along with the gameplay. You don't try to wrap a game around some cutscenes.

    Motion scan is really impressive, but also highly impractical. I think it hampered development of the game, which is why it took years to make and still feels underdeveloped, why rockstar had to step in, why Bondi is broke and had to treat it's people like shit and most of all why the game is impressive and boring at the same time.

    Face it, it was weak and amateurish direction that made this game fall short. Most of the components on their own were good or at least adequate, they just failed to come together to make anything interesting beyond following the storyline. That turned out to be rather aimless and trying way too hard to tie all of the genre cliches together failing, again, to do anything interesting with them. It didn't know whether it wanted to be an intimate story about love, betrayal and friendship or a sprawling narrative about LA and it's crime, corruption and conspiracies.

    THAT is why I thought LA Noire's characters were "dead from the neck down" and why Team Bondi is "dead in the water". Don't put words in my mouth, McNamara. You have only yourself to blame. Grow up and stop making excuses and blaming others. Maybe you should've tried to put out a decent open world cop game first before overreaching yourself and your team.

  • filipo #32 7 months ago

    I think you nailed it @kongzi

  • arcam #33 7 months ago

    @kongzi

    Wow, great post.

  • photoboy #34 7 months ago

    Well that goes a long way to explaining why my interrogations went to shit. If I'd know "doubt" = "force" I might have used it a lot less and pissed off quite a few less witnesses.

  • BlinkeredAxis #35 7 months ago

    LA Noire is an excellent game. I found that the interrogations became easier once I got the hang of the 'doubt' option. Also, it is impossible sometimes if you don't gather enough crime-scene and other evidence first.

    I'll not comment on Team Bondi's alleged working practices (I just don't know), but totally get the artistic vision that went into this game. It's pretty unique.

  • Vortextk #36 7 months ago

    I read they were stiffly animated because one of the developers complaining about bondi, professionally, said there was like 1 dude doing all that stuff.

  • micky1984 #37 7 months ago

    @miiiguel me 2

  • flameboy84 #38 7 months ago

    So many other games have awesome clothing and body animations his explanation is BS.

  • Murton #39 7 months ago

    So the body animation is poor because the facial animation is great, I wasn't aware that the two were mutually exclusive. Heavy Rain and Uncharted both managed to have pretty good facial and body animation using motion capture, why couldn't LA Noire?

    Also, coax force and lie are mentioned in the tutorial section as well despite these options not really being available. If you're going to change a core mechanic like that then you need to re-write the script for the game, or better yet, don't change something so stupid.


    I honestly believed that the interview logic from Homicide onwards was broken to create replay value and prevent people from simply 5-starring everything on their first time out, now I know it's that it's not nearly as clever as that but more that the script simply doesn't match the options given to the player. Poor show really.

  • Shinetop #40 7 months ago

    But they were only stiff in comparison to real life.

    Yes... that was the point of the complaints.

  • HAL9000 #41 7 months ago

    Unlike Brendan McNamara...at least the game characters aren't dead from the neck up!
    Edited by HAL9000 at 11/11/11 @ 15:55