The term ‘open-world’ and ‘sandbox’ have been ran into the ground, it’s a gimmick, usually the game takes place in some island just to establish geography. L.A. Noire has a barricade effect to keep you within it’s boundaries which does feel more natural. Similarly to Red Dead Redemption, the map and time are your real boundary, in the wild west after a certain point, all you have is dessert, the same goes for 1947 Los Angeles; which looks so eerily accurate that I wish there was a debug or at least a tour mode that guides you thru every landmark that’s still relevant today. The map effectively makes the experience more engrossing and immersive, I don’t want to run people over in this game, I don’t want to just see things blow-up. A real world makes you instinctively act more like a real person and some random jack-ass.
Game L.A. and real L.A. , who has only water could be used as an invisible wall.
Here we have an actual open-world that we know, L. A., or we at least have an awareness of what L. A. looks like, therefore the same pathos wouldn’t work with a space shooter in Mars. Just like being a Space Marine in 1947 L.A. would be out of place, but this is a game and each partner you have if just validation that the next stage or level has being. Cole Phelps can ruin every case he’s investigating and still move up in the ranks, a fact that would make any person yell WTF. I can only imagine that every partner, even Stefan Bekowsky whom quickly befriends Cole, drink themselves into a coma wondering why this guy?!?
Nice guy Ralph Dunn, Kewl dude Stefan Bekowsky and Douche-bag Roy Earle
Grumpy Old Cops, Herschel Biggs and Rusty Galloway
A guy that would scare the crap out of me when he loss his cool in the course of an interrogation, not to mention the number of ‘innocent’ people he puts into jail. Buy luckily most of the people that lie to him as stupid, their tells a too obvious for their own good, so not so much no politician/businessman every looks like he’s lying… even when he’s telling the ‘truth’.
Hey!, here's when I yell and look scary!
And the technology’s just at inauguration of it’s implementation, the next Mass Effect-like game will benefit tremendously from this technology. Games with character and fully realized stories and universes are going to be infinitely more immersive, and in a market where game and movies exist side by side, as shitty the game may be, a title like Iron Man 2: the game would’ve sold even stronger if the lead actor (like Robert Downey JR.) is in the game. .
Digital Performance Captured Performance Wooden Performance
Wouldn’t we want Bruce Wills in a Die Hard game, or Johnny Depp in a Pirates game. And as games have to find new ways of entertaining and keeping our interested, a system where reading the expression of the character you’re talking to might be that little extra we need to make videogames even more relevant.
I remember seeing these and being blow away, real actors, wow, but alas no real game play.
This interrogation mechanics is the new dialogue wheel, and it will get better, and 20 years from now, in a world where videogames might means something completely different, they’ll say it began with L.A. Noire.