LA Noire Dev Dropped Eleven Cases to Make the Game Fit on the Disc

Logan Westbrook

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Feb 21, 2008
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LA Noire Dev Dropped Eleven Cases to Make the Game Fit on the Disc


The burglars and con artists of Los Angeles got a lucky break; LA Noire's Cole Phelps had to skip them over entirely.

Brendan McNamara, head of LA Noire developer Team Bondi, says that the studio axed an entire desk - representing a full eleven cases - from the game because it was never going to fit on a single Blu-Ray disc. The studio also left a system where you had to bust muggers and other petty criminals to appease your captain after failing a case.

The missing desk was to be "Bunko and Burglary" - bunko is a slang term for a con - which would have covered fraud and, unsurprisingly, burglary. According to McNamara, Team Bondi had started work on the writing and design for the cases, and even finished some of the art. He also thought that the game might have had a better arc had the desk remained in the game, as it would have allowed Team Bondi to introduce more things. However, he said he was pleased with how the game turned out.

While Bunko and Burglary got the boot because it was too big, Team Bondi dropped the system for mollifying angry captains because it was a distraction. Remnants of the system can still be found in the game, however, such as when the player picks the wrong person in one of the game's murder cases.

Eleven cases seems an awful lot for a single desk; the other desks have maybe half that number. Maybe five or six cases would have fit on the disc, but maybe not. I would have been nice to have played through them, but it's not like the game is lacking in things to do.

Source: CVG [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/312606/la-noire-and-cut-burglary-desk-would-never-fit-on-one-blu-ray/]


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mad825

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Mar 28, 2010
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Release them as DLC, what's the problem? It's not like other gaming companies are doing this.Perhaps we are going to see them in the PC version?
 

Weaver

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Apr 28, 2008
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Logan Westbrook said:
The burglars and con artists of Los Angeles got a lucky break; LA Noire's Cole Phelps had to skip them over entirely.

Brendan McNamara, head of LA Noire developer Team Bondi, says that the studio axed an entire desk
I believe you meant disk, unless they took an axe to a desk ;)

EDIT: Nevermind, I'm a fool. See a few posts down for the full story!
 

Xelt

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AC10 said:
Logan Westbrook said:
The burglars and con artists of Los Angeles got a lucky break; LA Noire's Cole Phelps had to skip them over entirely.

Brendan McNamara, head of LA Noire developer Team Bondi, says that the studio axed an entire desk
I believe you meant disk, unless they took an axe to a desk ;)
Or it means desk as in, Homocide Desk, Arson Desk etc.
 

Weaver

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Apr 28, 2008
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Xelt said:
AC10 said:
Logan Westbrook said:
The burglars and con artists of Los Angeles got a lucky break; LA Noire's Cole Phelps had to skip them over entirely.

Brendan McNamara, head of LA Noire developer Team Bondi, says that the studio axed an entire desk
I believe you meant disk, unless they took an axe to a desk ;)
Or it means desk as in, Homocide Desk, Arson Desk etc.
Ohhhhhhhh.
See, I haven't played the game so I didn't know things were organized like that. My mistake!
 

neonsword13-ops

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Mar 28, 2011
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If Mass Effect 2 could fit on one Blu-Ray disk even with ALL of the DLC, I don't understand why L.A. Noire didn't.

Maybe some sequel material.
 

teebeeohh

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Jun 17, 2009
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wow, we have finally reached the singularity of "not enough room on a blue-ray" RUN FOR THE HILLS
 

ZeroMachine

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Wolfram01 said:
So basically Xbox screwed over PS3 and PC owners alike? Nice job...
HAHA, OH, that's, that's funny... that's...

... oh, you're serious? Wow... Huh. Way to turn this into an anti-Xbox news thing, even though that was not mentioned once in the article. Way to be.

Be pissed at Bondi, if anything. I'm really disappointed. I felt that something big was missing from the game and, lo and behold, I wasn't exactly wrong.

captcha: half done

How does it read our minds sometimes?
 

Easton Dark

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neonsword13-ops said:
If Mass Effect 2 could fit on one Blu-Ray disk even with ALL of the DLC, I don't understand why L.A. Noire didn't.

Maybe some sequel material.
It couldn't fit on the DVD, and they didn't want to work on something that only PS3 people could enjoy.

Kind of sad, really.
 

PixelKing

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Sep 4, 2009
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Wolfram01 said:
So basically Xbox screwed over PS3 and PC owners alike? Nice job...
Really? Your not bothered that team bondi didn't want to put it on 2 blu-rays?
 

ZeroMachine

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neonsword13-ops said:
If Mass Effect 2 could fit on one Blu-Ray disk even with ALL of the DLC, I don't understand why L.A. Noire didn't.

Maybe some sequel material.
I have a theory as to why it takes up so much space, and it makes sense: it's the animations. In most games, a speech a character makes will call upon a hefty list of animations and put them together properly to make the characters look like they're saying the right words.

That means that, although the list of animations is still big, the space they take up isn't as much as, say, a game where every damn sentence spoken is a different animation created by 36(?) cameras filming the person speaking the line.

Every single spoken line of dialogue is not just another sound file anymore, it's a full blown unique animation.

That would take up a LOOOOOT of space.
 

Svenparty

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Sounds like Downloadable Content if it's tweaked right although for this day and age the game felt quite long.
 

neonsword13-ops

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Easton Dark said:
neonsword13-ops said:
If Mass Effect 2 could fit on one Blu-Ray disk even with ALL of the DLC, I don't understand why L.A. Noire didn't.

Maybe some sequel material.
It couldn't fit on the DVD, and they didn't want to work on something that only PS3 people could enjoy.

Kind of sad, really.
...Ok, now I am deeply disapointed. What ever happened to effort and producing the best product? Hell, even McNamara said the story would have been better if the desks were left in. The game did have a some what unsatisfactory ending and those desks would have made all the difference.
 

Wolfram23

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Secret Weapon said:
Wolfram01 said:
So basically Xbox screwed over PS3 and PC owners alike? Nice job...
Fanboy fail.

The PS3 screwed over everyone because they couldn't squeeze it onto one precious blu-ray. The 360 version already comes on multiple discs so what's one more? It's the Sony retards that are complaining about having to get up to change a disc. Most lazy fuckers I've ever seen.
Actually it was a simple misreading of the article. It's a basic fact that BluRay holds significantly more data than a DVD, so that's not in any way being a fan boy.

In fact, if anything I'd say you're the one all put out about having to get up and change disks given your attitude. I didn't mention a thing about swapping disks.
 

neonsword13-ops

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ZeroMachine said:
neonsword13-ops said:
If Mass Effect 2 could fit on one Blu-Ray disk even with ALL of the DLC, I don't understand why L.A. Noire didn't.

Maybe some sequel material.
I have a theory as to why it takes up so much space, and it makes sense: it's the animations. In most games, a speech a character makes will call upon a hefty list of animations and put them together properly to make the characters look like they're saying the right words.

That means that, although the list of animations is still big, the space they take up isn't as much as, say, a game where every damn sentence spoken is a different animation created by 36(?) cameras filming the person speaking the line.

Every single spoken line of dialogue is not just another sound file anymore, it's a full blown unique animation.

That would take up a LOOOOOT of space.
I will have to say your theory is correct. That is a lot of data to process. The old, fat ps3s gave in because there was so much data on the disk.
 

SeriousIssues

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Jan 6, 2010
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At least the sequel will come faster, right?
I'm pleased with how L.A. Noire turned out, I even bought two DLC cases afterwards. As much as I want those new cases, I think that 4 desks over 2 discs was enough, so I won't push the issue.
 

Sparrow

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I'm sorry, but this is seriously old news. This information was available months ago, litterally days after the actual release of the game. They only new scrap of information I see here is the fact that the cases would have been a result of messing up cases.

mad825 said:
Release them as DLC, what's the problem? It's not like other gaming companies are doing this.Perhaps we are going to see them in the PC version?
To clarify, they never actually got through to making the cases. It was simply planned, but then dropped.
 

Waaghpowa

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Apr 13, 2010
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ZeroMachine said:
Wolfram01 said:
So basically Xbox screwed over PS3 and PC owners alike? Nice job...
HAHA, OH, that's, that's funny... that's...

... oh, you're serious? Wow... Huh. Way to turn this into an anti-Xbox news thing, even though that was not mentioned once in the article. Way to be.

Be pissed at Bondi, if anything. I'm really disappointed. I felt that something big was missing from the game and, lo and behold, I wasn't exactly wrong.

captcha: half done

How does it read our minds sometimes?
Obvious fanboy stupidity from his post aside, I think it's more like an outdated format and disc restrictions helped short the content. Blu ray being 25 gigs per layer and PC games usually being digital, but as Westbrook said, it's not like there's a shortage of things to do in the game.

mad825 said:
Release them as DLC, what's the problem?
The problem is paying more for content on a game that we already paid full price on. They're going to charge us for content that was originally intended to be included but wasn't because of storage restrictions of DVD's.