L.A. Noire is one of the most anticipated games of the year and one that the Train2Game blog has been paying close attention to.  It’ll have some of the most sophisticated Art & Animation seen in a game, as you can see for yourself on the Train2Game blog.

With only a week to go until release now, L.A. Noire is getting a lot of publicity, and recently game director Brendan McNamara and VP of development Jeronimo Barrera gave a fascinating interview to The Guardian about the game. It’s an interesting read for Train2Game students.

MacNamara told the newspaper that Game Designers are now realising that games can be about human drama

“There’s no reason why you can’t have the same sorts of relationships – whether they’re about fear, hate or love – with a game character that you can with a film character. That’s one of the freedoms that technology gives you” he said.

Barrea agrees and says L.A. Noire goes someway to crossing the line between video games and television

“Even though the structure of the game is revolutionary for this industry, it’s based on the tried and true formula of cop shows that have been around for years on television,” he said

“There’s an element people will be familiar with, whether you’re a hardcore gamer or not: you show up at a crime scene, you find evidence and then you go talk to suspects.”

As reported by the Train2Game blog, Macnamara has previously said in future realism will be hard to differentiate between video games, films and television.

The Rockstar pair believes that an emerging interesting in human drama in video games will change game development.

When you’re making games this big and so frigging complicated you have to have a good director and good writers, you have to have designers who are willing to take chances on creating new gameplay mechanics.” said Barrera

“Something has to change, that’s the only way of raising the bar. We’re taking lessons from Red Dead, which took lessons from GTA, we’re obviously evolving how these games are made.”

Barrera added that when it comes to Game Design, L.A. Noire is taking as big a step forward as Grand Theft Auto III.

“We’re taking the same risks with LA Noire as we did when we published GTA 3” he said “At that time, I remember trying to explain to people that there aren’t really any levels, you can go where you want, you activate missions when you want. It was going over people’s heads. They thought it was absurd”

“Well, this game is a bit more cerebral, you have to talk to people, you have to figure out if they’re telling you the truth, but it’s taking that same sort of step that GTA took. We’re going from having a cinematic experience that you can control to a human experience that you can control.”

For more information on the Game Design elements behind L.A. Noire, see the Train2Game blog.

L.A. Noire is released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on 20^th May, and as reported by the Train2Game blog, the Art & Animation is so sophisticated that the Xbox 360 version needs three discs.

So Train2Game, is it a positive thing that some games are becoming more like dramas? How do you think this changes Game Design? And would you like to work on this type of game in future?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

[Source: The Guardian]