'L.A. Noire' changes the face of gaming
A lone police car patrols the inky L.A. night. The camera zooms in on the side of the car and tilts up to the driver's face — a face that could change the look of video games forever.
The face is that of Detective Cole Phelps, the main character in the new game L.A. Noire. And the face looks, sounds and reacts just like that of actor Aaron Staton, best known for his role as Ken Cosgrove on TV hit Mad Men.
Video games have been capturing actors' detailed movements for years. But for Noire ($60, out today, for PS3 and Xbox 360; rated Mature for ages 17-up), Staton spent more than three months delivering a special face and voice performance from a seat surrounded by a sophisticated 360-degree, high-definition camera rig. The millions of images taken of Staton were painted onto a three-dimensional "mesh" character, which was given his body movements from a separate motion-capture session.
The revolutionary new MotionScan process was used on hundreds of actors in creating the nearly 400 characters that appear in L.A. Noire. The result is a new benchmark in character creation, with subtle, expressive nuances from the real-world actors reflected in the faces of in-game characters.
"Everyone who has seen it and been a part of it has been blown away by the technology," Staton says. "With the dialogue and the characters, (writer and director) Brendan McNamara has really created a world that was fun to be a part of."
For years, game creators have chased the movie experience with cinematic "cut" scenes between game levels, Michael Bay-esque blockbluster scripts and casting of actors from Vin Diesel in Chronicles of Riddick to Daniel Craig and Judi Dench in the James Bond titles.
In creating Noire, Sydney-based Team Bondi and Rockstar Games have closed the gap with their groundbreaking re-creation of actors' performances. The game and its TV-episode narrative style delivers "a different form of storytelling that feels like a frontier," says Tribeca Enterprises chief creative officer Geoffrey Gilmore, who hosted a showcase of the game at last month's Tribeca Film Festival, the first such honor for a game.
"However you react to it, it feels like we are at a turning point," Gilmore says. "It looked terrific on the big screen."
Humanity and technology
The plot of L.A. Noire is ripped from the pages of crime novels and plays out in Los Angeles, the hallowed film noir turf of Chinatown and L.A. Confidential.
Rather than focus on a gumshoe such as Sam Spade, L.A. Noire stars decorated war hero Cole Phelps (Staton), who joins the police department upon his return from serving in the Marines in World War II. The tropes of noir storytelling allow for interesting character dilemmas, says McNamara, whose previous credits include PS2 hit game The Getaway.
"They usually get forced into a situation where they have to do something because of events, and that brings out the humanity in the character," McNamara says. "If you could make a video game character that wasn't just this cardboard cutout — this guy who had big guns at the start and at the end — and people really cared about the character, for me personally, it would be really gratifying."
Read More:abcnews
Posts
