Tales from L.A.

L.A. Noire is a detective game set in a digital replica of 1940’s L.A., where details such as clothes, cars, and music are all painstakingly and lovingly reproduced to give the game an added sense of realism. On the detective side of things, Cole Phelps doesn’t give a fuck about due process. Out of ten cases I’ve been on, zero have resulted in conviction. Either the cases have been thrown out of court or the suspects have been murdered by my gun.
Let me give an example of how the judicial system works in L.A. Noire: In a recent case, I walked in on a man beating a woman in her hotel room. The man tried to assault me as I moved in to break up the fight, and I knocked him the fuck out. When searching him, I found an illegal switchblade. This is what happened after the man woke up: he was allowed to leave, without charges, and with his switchblade, because the woman didn’t want to press charges. So even though I witnessed the event in progress along with my partner, he assaulted a police officer, and he’s carrying a concealed, illegal weapon, the game wouldn’t let me arrest him. Cole Phelps is a man who will arrest anyone for anything, and by, “arrest,” I mean shoot in the back. One time a suspect started shimmying up a drainpipe to try and get away from me. I was expected to follow him. I chose, instead, to shoot him in the spine, because you don’t run from the 5-0. L.A. Noire teaches us that crime can be eliminated simply by walking up to people and shouting, “L.A.P.D.! Stop right there!” When they proceed to run, they’re resisting arrest, and you can then shoot them. It’s a form of law enforcement with zero recidivism. Unfortunately, everyone runs. You don’t even have to announce that you’re a police officer. You could be going for frosty malt shakes, people will take one look at you in your suit and run for it. So, eventually the entire city will be a barren wasteland of piled corpses.
L.A. Noire also prides itself on using real-life evidence from the Black Dahlia case in it’s game, and gives you the chance to solve the crime on your own. I’ve since learned that the “evidence,” is her social insurance card, and the eventual suspect is probably the most ridiculous one you could find, with no actual ties to the case. The killer also likes to leave clues in the most dangerous places imaginable. A real serial killer would not, for instance, leave a clue on top of a chandelier suspended one hundred feet in the air, only accessible by tight-rope walking. The very chandelier managed to fall from the ceiling as well, costing the city tens of thousands of dollars, and Cole Phelps doesn’t so much as shrug at it. That’s how much he cares about the tax payers. At the end of every case, you’re rated on how much damage you caused. There’s even an achievement if you cause more than $45,000 in damage. There’s another for shooting over 100 criminals. You’re being rewarded for being a bad cop.
The game also has an “intuition” system, where during the interview process you can chose to “ask the community” which answer they chose. The results, usually split 16%/37%/41% shows how people don’t have a clue. I mean that literally, in the proper sense of the word “literally”: they’d don’t have a clue. So at any time, over half the people playing the game don’t know how to play the game. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a “warning shot,” before I read about it in the achievements list. It thought all shots had to be headshots.