LA Noire was almost genre defining. The first time I sat down and played it the scenery was overwhelming. It reeked of the noir landscape. The dark alleyway, the torches, and the cars, the streetlamps and bloodstains were completely believable. The straight-laced cop Cole Phelps was a tiring and dull cardboard cutout. By producing a character so overtly lawful 'good', we were left with a long string of repetitive actions with little or no motivation to continue with the plot.
My theory: Cole Phelps should have been a private detective. The LA landscape was excellent, but without the difficult protagonist the game was completely unable to fit into noir film genre. The police are boring. They have to be boring to keep us safe, they have to be boring to be uncorrupt, they are boring because if they weren't boring they would be dodgy. Private detectives are intrinsically difficult characters. They sit on the divide between private and public, at once affecting the atmosphere of political environments whilst simultaneously being self-serving only. They have power without responsibility. A dirty difficult protagonist in the spectacular LA environment would have created a game which not only had great set pieces (as in the cases) but an engaging over-arching plot. I haven't gotten anywhere near far enough into the game for this very reason. I'm not feeling the story.
My experience of this game has also been coloured by reading a book entitled Queenpin by Megan Abbott a crime fiction writer who has recently appeared in local libraries everywhere and is being rather patronisingly called a 'debutante' on the cover each of her novels. Queenpin follows the story of an anonymous (and thus liminal) woman who finds herself working for a mover and shaker (The Queenpin). I certainly entered into the book as green and fresh as the girl who fast becomes embroiled in the sexy criminal underworld. It's a great, easy and refreshing read, and I would recommend it. It is also soaked in more noir than your average pastry: it is the tirumisu of crime fiction. Yum. As we watch the girl's fall from grace, we are voyeur to this seedy world. It is this voyeurism which LA Noire utterly lacks. Were the protagonist a private detective, the potential for watching would be far greater. Whilst the police officers palate operates in fullcolour, a private detective can only ever be sepia-toned. Brown, grey and black.
Players of GTA weren't ready to go to the other side of the yellow tape. They didn't want to legitimise the policeman they have obnoxiously slaughtered for fun since the late nineties. If they are anything like me they certainly don't sympathise with Phelps. But the more anarchic role, the role of being at once part of the law, and yet against it, was what made red dead near perfect. It is also what would have made LA Noire a masterpiece.
