Rant about LA Noire (Spoilers Galore)

[James Joseph Emerald]

As a preface, I'd just like to ask, did the writers actually suffer a collective stroke towards the end? Or did they just get fired and replaced with braindead retard monkeys? There was such careful attention to detail and characterisation beforehand, smashed to pieces by a sudden rash of clumsy writing.

First off, I liked the shift to Jack Kelso's perspective. It was a surprising twist. But it should have only lasted for a short segment (like controlling Joker in Mass Effect 2), or maybe an entire case at the most. It really made poor Cole seem like he was shoved off to the sidelines. Besides, after the first case as Kelso, I couldn't help but think "why couldn't Cole take over doing this? I mean, Kelso's just an insurance investigator." The only real reason was to suddenly detach you from Cole and replace him with a vaguely more "relatable" protagonist. Which is especially annoying because it numbed the effect of Cole's death. By the end, he'd become a sidekick character in his own game. That's no way to go out.

Also, the Assistant DA coming out of the woodwork, randomly offering Kelso a job under his protective wing right when most needed was such a deus ex machina. There was absolutely no mention of him beforehand, and then suddenly in walks this man in a position of power who wants to weed out all the corruption that's plagued you thus far? Please.

Then there's the actual ending. The final shootout was rather anticlimactic (especially because halfway through I accidentally picked up a flamethrower I couldn't get rid of, which both sucked for fighting with its short range, and felt very sadistic and out-of-character to use). There was a bit of tension built with Tex/Hogeboom burning people with his own flamethrower like some sort of fire-breathing monster (note: is it a coincidence that the Black Dahlia killer references a 'Tex' in his messages?), but then you catch up to him and it's immediately over. I got very confused about which character was supposed to be the main character at this point, since Kelso was doing all the heroic stuff and Cole was just tagging along like a random support character. And then he literally fades out with a whimper, killed off by nothing more than overflowing sewage water. It's almost comical.

The part that really annoyed me was that there was no epilogue. It cuts straight to his funeral, and then the credits. You never find out what any of your hard work building cases and collecting evidence actually amounted to. In fact, you know Roy Earle seems to have survived completely unscathed, despite uncovering damning evidence of his corruption, so most likely it was all suppressed and you accomplished virtually nothing throughout the entire time you play as Cole Phelps. The only thing you managed to do was nail Monroe, and that was entirely done by Jack Kelso. So really, 90% of the game was just screwing around as a minor character until you convince the real main character to come in and wrap everything up in 30 minutes.

Needless to say, I found the ending a bit disappointing. What did you think?


Edit:
Crap. Double... topic post. Stupid internet connection...

 

[42]

well, i think you're missing the point, It's a Noir story and it was following total conventions. but you are so right about Phelps getting sidelined in the end, i thought it was an alright shift in perspective, but i preferred playing as the advertised protagonist. If you watch carefully before you enter the sewers you see the assistant DA being surrounded by the crooked cops. and there they make a deal. and if you watch the funeral scene you see Earle shaking hands with the new DA. I personally was hoping that there was going to be a big interrogation at the end of the game with someone that has hard to spot tells. Shootout was alright, but i think the war plot could've resolved much better. I dunno, i really think the writers could've handled the ending better but the beginning, traffic, homicide, vice, and the 2 arson cases you're in control of phelps, really did a good job in setting up the plot, but lead to a conclusion that it didn't deserve. but then again the writers did follow noir conventions to a T, so i'll have to read through some old detective noir books. maybe they too had shit endings that left the audience some what unsatisfied.

 

[WorldFree55]

my only real gripe with the game was the ending. It just seemed too forced.

 

[DefinitelyPsychotic]

Yeah, I have to agree that the ending sucked major balls. It felt like they rushed it because they didn't have enough time or something.

Every now and then, I put it back in my PS3 and replay some of my favorite cases (i.e. "A Marriage Made in Heaven", "The Red Lipstick Murder" and "The Driver's Seat"), but other than that, it just sits on my shelf. Although I am looking forward to the last (unfortunately) DLC case "Reefer Madness". I hope they let L.A. Noire go out with a bang!

 

[Bat Vader]

Yeah, I have to agree that the ending sucked major balls. It felt like they rushed it because they didn't have enough time or something.

Every now and then, I put it back in my PS3 and replay some of my favorite cases (i.e. "A Marriage Made in Heaven", "The Red Lipstick Murder" and "The Driver's Seat"), but other than that, it just sits on my shelf. Although I am looking forward to the last (unfortunately) DLC case "Reefer Madness". I hope they let L.A. Noire go out with a bang!

It would be cool if the developers added the two case desks that were taken out of the game. Reading about the problems between Rockstar and Team Bondi I would not be surprised if Reefer Madness is the last piece of DLC.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

yeah. And since we are talking spoilers here.. there was one thing that really annoyed me. As a builder myself, i kept wondering how in the world did they manage to make a conspiracy around building fake houses so big without having one guy blow the whistle?

I mean, sure maybe you could get some mobsters to do the building, but you still need permits and visits from inspectors for plumbing, woodwork, electricity and the foundations. It gets a bit ridiculous when you think about how many people would have to be bribed or coerced or whatever for it to work.


Anyway, i think they should have simply left coles personal life out of the game as opposed to trying to shoehorn it in at the last second. I mean the wife he cheats on, how many lines did she have? two or three?

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I've played through half of LA Noire and I just completely lost interest after the FUCKING BULLSHIT that is the Homicide Desk. The game should really make up its mind whether it wants to let you actually play it, or just be a god damn movie. So it consistently gives you more than enough evidence to suggest that a serial killer is at work, but refuses to let you act upon it. So instead the story coughs up the bullshit that the killer suddenly became 'overconfident' and feeds you clues to play with you. Worse yet, as I got all excited about being able to put my English Degree to work by deconstructing the poetry of Shelley, I found out that if you take too long to think about the clue the game just comes right out and tells you the answer. What honestly is the point of calling it a bloody game...

I agree with you about Cole as well. He's such a terrible character, and I found it odd that in the war flashbacks Kelso seemed to develop more character than Cole, who was just 'kiss ass boy scout No 1.' Honestly, this game features some atrocious writing at the best of times. It seems like they kept all their writers in different rooms and only spoke to them on different days.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I don't really like that the majority of cases are all linked to other cases or that house building stuff later on.

I mean the entire Homicide desk is about sending a boatload of innocent guys to jail before finding the real killer and you get shouted at if you send the wrong innocent guy to jail

Most of the game felt like i was just hoping for a standalone case rather than the frankly crap consipiracy stuff hanging over the later cases.

On a lighter note i really liked the interrogation sequences, protip always click lie before you do anything else. It's like Cole has some sort of fit where he accuses the guy and then just sheepishly backs out, fucking hilarious.

 

[DefinitelyPsychotic]

Yeah, I have to agree that the ending sucked major balls. It felt like they rushed it because they didn't have enough time or something.

Every now and then, I put it back in my PS3 and replay some of my favorite cases (i.e. "A Marriage Made in Heaven", "The Red Lipstick Murder" and "The Driver's Seat"), but other than that, it just sits on my shelf. Although I am looking forward to the last (unfortunately) DLC case "Reefer Madness". I hope they let L.A. Noire go out with a bang!

It would be cool if the developers added the two case desks that were taken out of the game. Reading about the problems between Rockstar and Team Bondi I would not be surprised if Reefer Madness is the last piece of DLC.

It is the last and final piece of DLC for LA Noire. I remember Rockstar tweeting saying that when they announced the four up-and-coming DLC cases ("The Naked City", "A Slip of the Tonge", "Nicholson Electroplating" and "Reefer Madness") they also announced that those were the four and only pieces of DLC for LA Noire, unfortunately.

But yeah, I do wish they would release some of the cases from either two of the desks that got cut out of the game (Burglary and Bunco).

 

[RatRace123]

Yeah, the game kinda dragged for me in the middle. I kept going for the story, and it's a pretty good one, except for the ending.
My main problem with it was the lie/doubt thing, but that's a gameplay mechanic rather than story.

 

[Katana314]

Hate to say it, but I agree with all the negative comments.

This may be a noir story, but first and foremost, it is a video game. There are several rules to the storyline of a video game that I'd prefer all developers follow.

1. The protagonist (controlled character) must make steady forward progress that is directly caused by the player. If you reached the top of some immense tower, there must be something worthwhile there. Obviously, if you get there and see "Oh, someone took the Orb of Awesomeness before us. Oh well." it feels like shit (unless you, say, find some valuable hidden scrap of paper that the 'someone' overlooked)
2. The player cannot ever be forced to do something that knowingly causes harm to someone they didn't want. (Not perfect wording, but situations like "one lives one dies" are excluded). But a situation like Convict Innocent Man vs Convict Innocent Man, when in real life, another option would be "yell at the chief and refuse under principles of humanity to dole out a conviction." Letting all the "Black Dahlia killers" go to death row felt horrible.

See, these kind of things would be acceptable in a movie: They are tragic events happening to a group of characters we've grown attached to. Mistakes were made by those characters, they have their flaws, and we see their impact passively, with interest. But in a game, we ARE that character. Their efforts are our efforts. We don't want their flaws to become our flaws, we want only our own flaws to be their flaws. We don't want Gordon Freeman to trip on a twig because he has poor vision and needs eyeglasses, we just want him to miss a crossbow shot because -we can't aim perfectly-.

The player likes feeling like a badass. There is never any reason to deny them that right, honestly; any story can be tooled around that. Unless you're making a wishy-washy "sad ending" kind of story - the rules are sketchy on that, and while once in a long while it works out well, I would say unless you have made dozens of games and know the rules of emotional impact inside out, don't try it whatsoever.

For a story-based game, I have seen independent people doing the programming/writing/music all on their own that managed better dialogue and storylines than LA Noire.

 

[InfectedStar]

I played the game from beginning to end and I felt betrayed and ripped off (mostly by the ending), the ending sucked such cock it made Paris Hilton look like a virgin school-girl!

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

If the game had just stuck with the Homicide desk (And made it less sucky) it would have been a lot better.

And if they'd made Kelso the protagonist instead of Cole.

 

[violent_quiche]

I ignored the spoiler warnings and blundered on because frankly, I'm only finishing this LA Noire for the exercise rather than the enjoyment at this point. Part of it is probably that it's just not the game for me: there is some quality work in there but I just don't generally enjoy point and click adventures. The attention to period detail, the facial capture and voice acting are all solid, but I find the narrative uninvolving, the cases are A+B+C=WIN and the interrogations drive me up the fucking wall*.

Given the options of Love->Doubt->Regret, I'm wavering between 2 and 3.

*Had they taken an approach of Lie: present evidence pieces #1[warm], #2[warmer], #3[warmest] it might have seemed like less of a cliff face for interrogation dunces like me. It's hard to imagine Cole not presenting a range of relevant evidence when a suspect is clearly bullshitting.

 

[DEAD34345]

I loved most of the game, but I completely agree with your rant on the ending. It's such a damn, damn shame they screwed up there, and after everything was going so well beforehand. I'd even started to like Felps, and then BAM: Reverted to side character and killed by an inopportune bowl movement...