That’s not even remotely new. That kind of thing is a staple of point-and-click adventure games. This is a newer, more fulfilling update on it, and I certainly think te game warrants more attention when it comes closer to release, but it’s not revolutionary.
Point and click adventures have the interaction with objects but nothing remotely comparable to the character interaction in that example. And even top-nothch games like Grim Fandango had some fairly artifiical puzzles which I suspect is partly why the genre went into decline.
What LA Noire potentially offer is the seamless integration of clues from different sources: objects, environment, dialogue and facial expression. Everything is in the same beautifully designed gameworld. You aren’t constantly switching from gameplay to full-motion video and back. What does is allow the designers to create much more natural puzzles, similar to what could happen in real life. So, as in that example a character talks to a suspect, explores the room, finds something interesting, resumes his conversation, finds the suspect behaving suspiciously and connect the dots with the object he found to move the case forward. You couldn’t really have this sequence of events in previous games.
The level of character interaction sounds essentially similar to “Dragon Age” or “Heavy Rain.”
What “LA Noire” brings to the table is not different gameplay - the gameplay as you are describing it is absolutely not at all different from “Heavy Rain” in particular, and really isn’t much different from “Police Quest” - but in how advanced the technological presentation is. And it’s VERY advanced, to be sure. LA Noire promises to be the most advanced game of its type ever made. The issue of facial expression is an interesting one but we’ve seen games before where you had to gaueg people’s honesty; whjat LA Noire adds is motion capture, not a new aspect of gaming.
Again, though, I’m not sure I see the revolution here. It’s evolutionary, at least to my eyes.
I will say that it’s a big step forward for Rockstar, in that all their games to date have had no character options within the story at all, really.
I don’t play advanced computer games, so maybe I can’t appreciate it to its true value, but is the computer-generated animation of humans shown in the video really that much more advanced than what I saw in the Final Fantasy theatrical movie about 9 years ago?
Not really. It’s a little easier now, but… more or less the same. Things haven’t radically advanced since Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which was a very well-done combination of up-front conversation like classic RPG’s combined with 3rd person action.
Wow, uncanny valley much?
The realistic animations look strange on those low poly, low rez, plastic-y models.
Bring the models up to snuff and add the realistic animations and we’re golden. Better yet, build a repertoire that can be used on the fly by the AI.
Definitely not revolutionary but a step in the right direction. The more tech gets worked out doing this, the cheaper it will be to do.
Right-o. As it stands, it still looks pretty damned good.
OK I haven’t played Heavy Rain so I can’t comment on how much further this game goes. Anyway the “revolutionary” bit was just a question to start discussion. Obviously neither I nor anyone else knows whether this game will be revolutionary.
I do suspect that the motion capture technology will be more much more than eye-candy and will offer a qualitative leap in character-based gameplay. This is because the face is central to the way we read other people and a technology which dramatically improves facial expression will create all sorts of subtle gameplay possibilities which didn't exist before.
Incidentally this is a fascinating [post](http://gizmodo.com/5714436/how-la-noire-conquered-the-uncanny-valley-with-a-tech-called-motionscan)in Gizmodo about the technology. The title suggests that this technology has conquered the uncanny valley though obviously not everyone agrees.You seem to be suggesting that this game would be better on the PC. I agree but I wonder if Rockstar will ever bring a major title to the PC again. We may have to wait for the next generation of consoles whenever that is for this technology to really blossom.
Actually they might.
They’re apparently just hired (or are looking to hire) new PC game devs experienced in DX 10 and DX 11.
They might be a team that’s going to work on Red Dead Redemption for PC, or this. Speculation is rampant, we’ll just have to wait and see.
And yes, certainly it would look better on PC, but also maybe next gen consoles? When is this game due to come out?
It’s supposed to come out first half of 2011. Apparently it’s fully funded by Sony so I don’t think a PC version will available anytime soon.
Think of it this way: using almost 1,000 computers, it took Square Pictures about 130 seconds to render one second of video. This is rendered in real time.
But the reason it took that much computing power to render a frame was due to the overall graphical quality, NOT the animations.
Technically, sophisticated animations like this could have been included any time this console generation (and a long time ago using PC tech), but the tech to do so easily probably just wasn’t well developed, that and probably designers didn’t see a large need for it, probably because of my first objection - the graphics just aren’t up to par yet (on consoles) and the realistic animations look weird with low quality assets.
It’s an interesting tech but it does tie facial animation very tightly to a pre-scripted performance. So … good for creating very realistic in-game cutscenes, not so good for creating a dynamic character that you can interact with in real time.
Plus it makes your production pipeline much less forgiving. You can’t pull an animator in at the last minute to tweak the story because your quest objectives changed during tuning. You’re basically locked into the story as written.
I do. Nothing they’ve mentioned even remotely hints at anything even in the same continent as revolutionary.
No, it won’t. This is nothing new. The fact that you apparently don’t play games where this kind of thing is common doesn’t mean it’s anything new. It’s been done repeatedly for over a decade. This is a nice refinement with several technical advantages, nothing more or less.
Seriously, this is embarassing. it’s like listening to somebody try to claim that after eating a gourmet burger that it’s this fantastic new thing that’s sure to sweep the nation.
Yeah, this is my concern. From the video, it pretty much looks like they’re mo-capping actors’ performances and then re-rendering them in 3D. For the actual presentation in-game, they seem to be mostly relying on pre-programmed camera angles. IOW, it’s basically “The Polar Express” in real time. I imagine that there will be times when the player can move their view around, but if the majority of the game is in fact pre-programmed shots (as the video makes it seem), then really all they are doing is introducing facial mo-cap into real-time cut scenes. In which case, why not just do it “Command and Conquer” style and film live-action cut-scenes?
As is, the footage they show is firmly in Uncanny Valley territory, and I don’t see anything about the “can you tell if the character is lying” gameplay element that couldn’t be done equally well with live action footage. (Not that I’m advocating that video games become interactive movies, but they’re the ones saying that adding a whole unnecessary layer of mo-cap and rendering to the stack is a revolution in gameplay.)
Probably not. L.A. Noire was in development for more than a year before development on Heavy Rain even started and more than two years before it was publicly announced.
Which gives you an idea for how long the game has been “the next big thing.” It looks neat, but the game’s original release date was in 2008. Then it was pushed back to 2009. And then it was pushed back again to September 2010. Now it’s scheduled for Spring 2011 and I’m still not convinced it’ll make it.
Also, it’s not PS3 exclusive. It’s coming to the Xbox 360 too.
JB’s point about how long LA Noire’s been in production really goes to the OP’s question.
Whether or not this level of production value results in more video games like it depends on whether or not it makes money. If the sum total of revenue for LA Noire doesn’t justify the outlay, companies will be reluctant to pour money into similar games. If, on the other hand, LA Noire makes a metric assload of money and the public is screaming for more, more such games will be made.
I still don’t think it constitutes a revolution, but LA Noire, if it is successful, will spawn more games with very high production values, and continue us on the road to games with even more interactive and expansive environments.
Things get made because they’re profitable, not because they’re cool. Sometimes those things coincide - smart phones, for instance, are awesome, and are also a money-printing machine for Apple, RIM, Samsung et al. But sometimes they don’t. “Rome” was a great TV show but couldn’t continue because it cost more than it hoped to ever make in advertising dollars. Reality TV, on the other hand, is cheap and shitty - but it makes a lot of money, in part BECAUSE it’s cheap and even if fewer people want to watch “Big Brother 26” than “Rome,” “Big Brother 26” can earn advertising dollars far in excess of its extremely low production costs (low as compared to sitcom and drama fare.)
The video game example would be music and rhythm games, which aren’t particularly expensive to produce from a programming point of view, but are immensely profitable. Now, THAT is a video game revolution; there you have a game that, thanks to Guitar Hero, has gone from being a few novelty arcade franchises to a hugely popular game genre in a span of less time than LA Noire has been in development (no, really; Guitar Hero was released for the first time in 2005, and LA Noire has been in development since 2004.)
Of course it’s something new. The facial animations in this game are far ahead of any other game including Heavy Rain. I was just watching a conversation scene on Heavy Rain and they barely looked human once they started talking. Now the legitimate debate is whether this technical advance is going to matter enough for gameplay to be called revolutionary. I think it might because like I said the face is absolutely central to how we interact with each other and much better facial animation means potentially far deeper character interactions. Now whether LA Noire actually achieves this and influences other games remains to be seen but the potential is there.
The analogy I would use is the first iPhone. Almost everything in the iPhone had been done for years before by other smartphones. What the iPhone did was to refine the technology and UI to create a seamless experience and that was enough to create a revolution.
That’s why I mentioned Discworld Noir and the Phoenix Wright games. Most of the puzzles involve talking to people and proving their statements wrong, rather than using a monkey on a pump to stop a waterfall.