GAME SINS | Everything Wrong With L.A. Noire

[Music] after cyberpunk 2077 i've come to distrust any game that feels entitled and name itself after an entire genre of fiction so far their track record isn't exactly impressive when it comes to adding to an already mature genre they can nail the visual aesthetic in character tropes but porn parodies figured out how to do that and we don't pat them on the back for it noir fiction is a bit more than a time period and it certainly wasn't a real depiction of early 20th century law enforcement it's what we call a fictionalization of the time period where testosterone levels were sky high since plastic and soy wasn't in daily use and the only women worth speaking to were revealing cocktail dresses protagonists in noir generally worked from outside the system not within it what la noir feels like is a modern day crime drama like law and order even incorporating pulled from the headlines cases take even the most exciting of jobs and give too much care to replicating how that job is carry out inside of a game and you end up with a poorly paced crawl that fails at putting together a compelling gameplay loop these games normally come with the word simulator attached to the title and let you pretend to be a genius entrepreneur inside a simulation where you can actually lose all of your money and then kill yourself but when they receive a bigger budget they like to cinematically disguise themselves that's how we ended up with games like shinmu and la noir both largely forgotten for the exact same reason procedural investigation and interrogation is boring as hell especially in a game this long with an open world setting i'll be honest i've been a bit apprehensive about singing la noir after all it's a game about a main character poking holes in the [ __ ] he comes across it's only when the game focuses on cole phelps himself that i have some meat to chew on since there's no one around to point out his own [ __ ] so don't be too disappointed when i gloss over entire sections of the game where there isn't much worth harping over like a seal with tourette's since the game is so concerned with its precious words and scrunched up bases that everything gets buried in a sea of details i send games i'm not a damn courtroom stenographer l.a noir comes from rockstar your knee should have jerked in a well-recognized and pavlovian way just now the last and only time rockstar released a game that wasn't open world it was about ping pong i can't say i blame them for going in that direction with lanor after all it makes perfect sense that a game about a police detective chasing down leads across various cases would actually drive around town but unlike gta where the world feels organic and lived in with colorful npcs and things to do la noire is more like a mother driving past every fast food restaurant while telling your kids in the backseat they have food at home it serves the same purpose a matte painting on a film set does make the world feel bigger than it actually is eventually you'll do what i did and have your partner do all the driving for the rest of the game by the end i forgot that i was even playing an open world game since i was chauffeured each location since much of the gameplay is focused on examining crime scenes for clues the game has to place some unconnected objects at every crime scene otherwise coal can be replaced with a slightly more emotive bloodhound with a frighteningly accurate sense for evidence the problem is that the developers use the same ordinary items over and over again i was convinced that whoever owned the local brewery would be revealed to be behind everything come the end judging by the fact that i found one of their bottles at every crime scene cole will always tell you when you picked up something useless instead of letting you trip yourself up with false leads wouldn't want any interesting ideas to seep their way into the game now would we allow me to introduce the term pixel lending to anyone fortunate enough to have not wasted their time with old school point click adventure games the only way to progress at times is to click on every single thing on the screen until you were sure you had gotten everything here as long as you run cole's face alongside the edges of every room you can't miss evidence in the middle of cole's investigation he'll often come across newspapers which when examine trigger cutscenes a character setting up the actual plot the game will eventually get around you while call is busy dealing with cases that have no connection and you can miss these newspapers as well so if you're not thorough you'll end up with massive holes in the plot by the time you reach the last act of the game cole is supposed to be a talented detective but i have trouble buying that when he picks up every piece of evidence with his bare hands potentially destroying any prince they might lift from it not that checking for prince is something the police ever do in this game you're under arrest schroeder cut them right no way you're not taking me down for this the best way to say i'm innocent is by punching a cop in between cases the game likes to show flashbacks that cause time in the marines during world war ii these moments would have been far more effective had they been playable after all video games are an interactive medium packing most of kohl's and all of kelso's character building into incredibly short cut scenes that play in between cases with no context makes them easily forgettable there's a distinct lack of connective tissue running through much of this game over the newspaper articles triggering scenes that are difficult to place in the game's present day timeline and flashbacks to the war after my first taste of third-person cover shooting in la noir i was relieved to know that i only had to do it a handful of times throughout the game because in combat calls about as responsive as a steam train fueled with pudding cups this kind of opportunity comes along once in a lifetime hank i have to grasp it you have to survive at first cole here are the veterans the jabs love to shoot officers if i can make a name for myself in this war my future thinking of taking on a company of the emperor's finest single-handed as a soldier cole was a glory hand out to make a name for himself in order to set himself up with a greater post-war future was his big plan after gaining renown in the war to become a police officer and work his way up to detective none of his accomplishments during the war influence his career path his advancement on the force is all earned through hard work and merit that screen did not sound like it came from coal as it was clotheslined while chasing a perp across a rooftop la nor's core gameplay would actually put in the adventure game category since most of the time you were either finding clues or questioning people but no one buys adventure games so open world car chases in combat happen to trick you into believing you aren't playing a less interesting version of sam and max the one thing most people recall about lane war other than the delt meme is its facial capture technology it was one of if not the very first game to focus on capturing the performance of a real actor and putting into the game it used a system where a video of the actor's performance was converted into an animated texture that's projected over the in-game model's face the execution falls somewhere between uncanny valley and a lizard wearing the skin of its victim god help your sleep schedule if you pay too close attention to their mouths which the system seems to have the greatest trouble with teeth will move and bend with their lips while their oral cavity is about as deep as those dimples on your coffee lid projecting a highly compressed gif over someone's face turned out to be a technological dead end since developers opted for tracking motion data from faces instead the only reason for such a complicated facial capture system was for the primary gameplay mechanic where cole questions a suspect or witness and you have to determine if they're lying or not by watching their facial animation it's made kind of pointless since the only two emotions characters can express are worried and sprayed with water all the interrogation and clue gathering ends up being a way for coal to ask more questions you see you can actually fill a case you can only drag it out longer by being successful no matter how much evidence you miss or how badly you mingle interrogating witnesses and suspects you always end up with just enough to find the culprit and put him away a system where you could charge the right person but result in a mistrial or not guilty verdict would have been nice all that actually happens is you receive a one through five star rating on your performance so upholding the laws turned into an uber review those who played l.a noir when it released will remember that the interrogation options used to be truth doubt and lie and the re-release has been replaced with good cob bad cop and accused perhaps the developers forgot it takes two people to play good comp bad cop so cole was awkwardly left playing the world's most bipolar detective selecting bad cop at any time regardless if cole's talking with a suspect or a grieving widow we'll have him hit the gas on the most unlikely and unsubstantiated accusation he can come up with the next time rockstar re-releases this game they should change the options from good cop bad cop to phone survey and kneel before zod regardless of what words they slap on it this has always been nothing but a multiple choice test there's only one right approach to every line of questioning it even allows you to remove all the incorrect options if you're unsure and you can always rule out accused by just accusing the person and seeing if their response goes something like i bet you don't have a single threat of evidence to prove i was standing over the corpse in the parking lot at precisely 8 pm last friday which more or less points to which piece of evidence you need of the three responses available to you good cop comes into play only a few times throughout the game i suppose this is a result of having to get their money's worth out of the facial capture technology they suck so much time into since when a character is telling the truth their face remains passive which doesn't give their tech showpiece much to do for a game that prides itself on sticking close to police procedure there are some curious admissions such as the lack of search warrants or attorneys during police interrogations even during rare moments when characters will ask of an either cole's partner will handwave a person's legal rights away and commence searching their home or prying a dubious confession out of them the only reason cole looks so competent is because no one ever pleads the fifth or demands a warrant even when they know they're guilty and know that allowing him to search their property will turn up evidence against them the problem with shotgun dispersing the plot throughout a game that for the most part has nothing to do with it until the end is that you make it difficult to remember much of it since the game is asking you to split your attention between three different things cole's actions during world war ii the cases he's working and all the stuff going on in the background about the stolen morphine it's the kind of plot where details are very important and connecting the threads together when the game focuses on it toward the end is hard enough without having to remember what was said and done during video nets in a game this painfully long matchbook clues are a classic staple in nor detective fiction and i'd be willing to let it pass except they use it half a dozen times to direct coal to his next lead there were several optional dlc cases available in l.a nor in the game's re-release those dlc cases were spliced into the campaign with no choice to turn them off making an already long game that doesn't have enough variety to justify that length into an insufferably long one you [ __ ] young boys valdez are you a madman this will cause an international incident danny ben miguel tristan and teddy full lips ring any bells why would the argentinian diplomat valdez keep a notebook full of his gay lovers in english while chasing down the kid who stole the consulate's card to get back at valdez for coming onto him the other illegal street car racer is trying to not call off the road instead of fleeing they have no reason to protect this guy and every reason to get the hell out of there kelso this carbine the boar is dirty that's not a carbine though carbines are smaller in magazine fed that was clearly an m1 garland no it isn't are you arguing with me kelsey do what you need to do sergeant you know the boar's immaculate weekend liberty canceled a two-day field drill and this game treats coal like an [ __ ] during world war ii jack kelso lost everyone their weekend by mouthing off to their drill instructor are you going to clean this rifle no sergeant nicole is right i'm going to stop playing games and join a rifle company and fight the reality insubordination during wartime is pretty strictly punished however kelso is allowed to wash out of officer school an enlisted rifle company despite showing that he has a problem following direct orders i want a deal keep talking and we'll see what sort of deal you're worth what happens to the cars once they cross over the state lines i don't know i just deliver them give me something to lasco or i'll take you back to the cells and tell the whole station your child molester he just asked for a deal in return for giving up all the information he has on a stolen car ring yet in the very next question he lies and withholds info i suppose this was another necessity of a system where the player can fail each question depending on their approach do you have a delivery ledger mr lightvault who would like to cross-check against the coombs automotive emporium it's a little out of the ordinary detective uh i'm not sure i can share those sorts of records this game can only operate the way it does is because everyone refuses to invoke their fifth amendment rights not to self-incriminate such as the guy who prints automobile ownership slips and is also secretly giving them to a car theft ring to resell the cars who allows cold look through his delivery ledger which leads to the thieves and then back to himself we should call for a couple of black and whites can flash her down here i thought you marines were gung-ho cole you have a 45 don't you ever want to use it up against an entire warehouse full of armed car thieves cole and his partner decide to take them head-on without calling for backup all but ensuring a bloodbath would result since two cops can't arrest a dozen men by themselves we understand that you're still suffering from the effects of the accident mrs mcafee the officer says that you claim that you were drugged who did this to you if she's still under the influence would you really want to take her statement right now some of them might be impacted by the dragoner system lorna works at a check cashing place in hollywood we have a word for that it's called a bank keep him here stefan i'm gonna take a look around what's this got to do with me don't try my patience knucklehead i'm glad cole fought against tyranny for our freedom and then came right home and denied people's rights under the law i know this is a prop shop where the girls were drugged but hobgood was trying to hide his secret peep room by wiley e coyote the entrance with a matte painting of the the backlog kid i think i want him dead the mob boss cohen who was at odds with courtney sheldon backing out over selling the stolen morphine on the streets has a murder phone at his restaurant table he didn't even need to dial a number he just picks up the phone and a hitman is waiting on the other end the intolerance set was torn down in 1922 25 years before this game is set if you found me then mcavee's goons will too oh we need we need to get out of here when you stick as close to actual detective work as this game tries to it feels way off when it throws you into it only in a video game moment where you have to shoot your way past two dozen enemies in a temple filled with explosive barrels and make absolutely no sense in a 25 year old movie set built for an ancient babylon setting where no fuel barrels would exist you felt such a reputation i'm not gonna be able to hold on to you any longer you're getting promoted the traffic desk captain seems to enjoy when his detectives rack up a massive body count he even promotes coal to the burglary desk of which we see none of since that was mercifully cut from the game so the next time we see kohli's been promoted to the homicide desk hi elsa here's someone i'd like you to meet cole phelps war hero and crime fighter extraordinaire and why would i want to meet another fascist from the lapd [Music] sorry about this cole what an evening i'm having first a negro puts his hands on me and then this [Music] who do you think you're talking to you german junkie [ __ ] roy earl the administrative vice detective takes coal out for drinks at a nightclub in celebration but this is really about kickstarting a poorly developed plot around colin elsa the singer of the clone that he introduces call to i say introduce but all roy does a say her name smacker and then stand back and lets cole watches dr fontaine pumps her full of drugs i can see why cole fell for this lady after this first impression the most sincere bit of praise i can give to l.a noir is that it doesn't shy away from accurately depicting criminal violence there are moments during the game that are honestly hard to look at i can't show you any of those moments because this is youtube we're dealing with but during the homicide cases this game can make gore for like something you would feel guilty for enjoying games like doom where it's made over the top and cartoonish in comparison ironically the facial capture technology works the best on an unmoving corpse i'm not sure whether the killer or the victim stole an ornate puzzle box lighter from a nightclub but being left behind in the murder scene would almost certainly have to be intentional since it's a little too big to slip out of someone's pocket unnoticed what can you tell me about the shoe prints men's size the killer's footprints indicate that he was a size 8 shoe a detail that will coincidentally end up indicating several other people across multiple cases were you working here last night yes how can i help officer you can start with your name garrett mason you're the regular bartender on knights i'm a temporary barman i work for an agency i fill in at bars across town do you remember a woman who came in here last night five feet seven about 110 pounds blonde hair about 40 years of age you mean celine henry every case on the homicide desk is based around the black dahlia killing a real murder that took place in la around the same time this game is set cole's cases are conducted under the beliefs these murders are being carried out by copycat killers and that belief persists well after it should have become clear that someone is killing women across the city since eventually that conclusion makes more sense than five different murderers who all tried to copy the black dahlia and there's a pretty obvious connection that runs through every case that coal never spots until the killer reveals himself every murdered woman was last seen in a bar getting drunk and on their first case cole meets a bartender gary mason who mentions that he works as a tim for an agency that fills into bars around town which would be a very easy to spot link between all the murders because real police detectives follow up on things like the employees working at the last known location of a murder victim [Music] you jacob henry yeah who's asking lapd you're under arrest for the murder of your wife celine henry murder rusty wants to go in hard in a wrestling's husband for her murder so he kicks down the door points his gun at the guy and tells jacob he's under arrest then puts his gun away never cuffs the guy and they all have a seat so cole can question him so now you're going to tell me you loved her ah the d.a goes all gooey over remorse jacob after questioning jacob and determining he isn't the killer rusty picks a fight with a guy gets knocked on his ass then jacob turns the fight coal because this is how police work goes or at least how developers imagine it should when they realize their gameplay loop is kind of on the boring side the most unbelievable thing that reoccurs during all the murder cases is how the real killer is constantly able to frame other people for his murders such as when he places a bloody tire iron in celine's lipstick in mendez's apartment the guy who drove her away from the bar last night the killer managed to catch up with him then somehow got celine out of the car without mendez noticing anything murder her then find where mendez lived and break in without leaving a trace so we could plan evidence there i ain't staying a goddamn thing i congratulate mindas for being the only intelligent person in this game for refusing to talk with the police however i think this is mainly because the holes in the case were so huge that bringing attention to them by allowing coal to question him would unravel the whole mess angry boyfriend they were married they'd be at home not humping out here in lovers lane except that just like the last murdered woman there's a wound on her left ring finger indicating a wedding ring that was violently removed that's funny the work boots we found here are size eights why lie about it if you've got nothing to hide because i always get teased about the size of my feet you know small feet small always been true in my experience who prioritizes their dick size after being told their wife has been violently murdered step away from the incinerator don't let him get away so muller's wife goes missing and he reports it to the police in the morning knowing they would come and question him about it and he waits until after the police arrived to burn some bloody work shoes in his backyard incinerator before they've even had a chance to pull out of his driveway he could have just waited another five minutes they were leaving the other suspect in the case is a random pedo caught spying on girls at the high school where mahler's wife went missing which makes him a strange suspect since the victim was over 40. the killer left a bloody rope tire iron and mechanics overalls in the trunk of daedra's car after driving it back to the high school parking lot it never occurs to the police to question why the killer especially if it was a lady's husband like they suspect would murder her get blood all over his work clothes stuff them in the trunk of his own car then return to parking at the school where his wife left it with all the evidence inside but only bring the bloody shoes back home with him we were on our way to interview eli rooney yes phelps i know this particular fiend is an old acquaintance i have tried to reaffirm his belief in a wrathful and terrible god look like you've had it rough you see me asking for your sympathy boy if the chief beat eli while he was in police custody that's an easy win for any lawyer if they existed in this universe why did you burn your shoes hugo because i knew you'd never believe me believe what it's rabbit's blood a guy at work brought him in and i helped him skin them in an earlier traffic case a man used pig blood to fake his own death an analysis of the blood determined that it wasn't human so cole knew the guy was still alive somewhere the same thing could be done here but no tess is running the blood here so the game can throw false speculation over muller this place you worked have a name hennessy moraine you can't misplace big yellow letters hm out front enough lies hugo your overalls put you at the scene of the crime last night my overalls are in the laundry of my house green overalls bloodstained with the initials hm found in the trunk of your wife's car this could be cleared up by calling mahler or eli's place of work and inquiring with the style of overalls both companies use in a contrived coincidence the initials hm correspond with muller's name and the name of the company eli works for so you can't know which it belongs to you have to charge one of these two for the murder but both are innocent but only one of them gets you yelled out by the chief do you know why we're fighting the japanese private with respect sir these bastards attacked pearl harbor and why did they attack pearl private because they hate the us of a and our way of life they attack the us because we cut off their oil yeah but there's a reason we cut off their oil japan invaded manchurian was doing a real sick number on it you worked the bar last night yeah being a temp guy from the agency that little fat goes right past their heads and they neglect to ask who the temp bar worker was or to speak with him hey what the [ __ ] lapd [ __ ] you're under arrest so let me put my gun away so we can have another brawl it's like they're receiving confusing stage directions we've been over both documents pretty carefully they've been wiped with gasoline so there's no chance of prints at no point in this game do fingerprints matter except here where they mentioned the letters being wiped with gasoline no evidence in any of the homicide cases is adjusted for prints except these letters even the murder weapons what size shoe do you wear angel size 8 what difference does that make if this game doesn't have the killer asking his victims about their husband's shoe size before he decides to kill them it's going to have some explaining to do over how this keeps happening your wife has been brutally murdered so how do you explain your shirt being covered in blood you found that i cut myself shaving you would try that excuse when you have no cuts in your face that weren't put there by cold punching you she said she came from the eldorado bar and it's not one of my places we used to buy fruit at the market down the street but the creep there was always running his eyes all over my wife the real killer set up the fruit store clerk across the street from the bar he picked his latest victim from placing a bloody scalpel in his back room along with a puzzle box containing your jewelry which is open with the clue left behind at the scene of the murder i'm not sure which is more nonsensical that he knew the owner kept a puzzle box here and knew the combination to it or that he somehow figured the police would be led to this guy when the only mention of it came from the husband do you mind if we look around why would you want to do that because we say so i guess you can don't you have to get a court order or something i have rights clem you do not that the game is concerned with that though the fruit store clerk doesn't have any reason to run so he doesn't even know what they found in his back room but flee he does and then he's charged with the murder the fact that both klim and the ladies husband mentioned her being driven away in a brown coop last night is never brought up again you're gonna feel real bad about shooting all these homeless people after you learn that this is another frame job by the real killer at least i hope they feel bad they never mention losing any sleep over killing a bunch of homeless people strangely you can come to the homeless camp before its later arrive and search his shack and find none of this evidence which means the real killer showed up sometime in between visits and planted it another person the killer couldn't have possibly known would be connected to the crime through sheer circumstance so hand it over walk away what's stopping you we had to deal with them that they would dole it out slowly they said they would supply abortion clinics and doctors but they've been moving it on to addicts and you believe mobsters would dole out illegal morphine to abortion clinics and doctors two groups of people who don't need to buy illegal drugs then get out to the railroad depot on santa fe avenue we have another poor enforcement found this morning beside a railroad line 40 year old white woman there's more detectives than just call phelps and rusty and homicide what are the odds that these two would be handed every case connected to the black dahlia killer what did you make of mccaffrey there'll come a day and it's coming very soon we'll run him and the rest of his pink old buddies out of los angeles i got some bad news for you rusty the suspect at the bowling alley flees in his car and cole and rusty come into your car from the parking lot then i guess just happen to have keys in the ignition doesn't look like anybody's home commit breaking and entering then since you don't have a search warrant any evidence called digs up in mccaffrey's apartment would be inadmissible due to him breaking the law himself to obtain it like one of the earlier cases you have to choose between charging two people with a murder and neither one is guilty the real black dahlia killing saw hundreds of suspects and interrogations over several years but not a single person was ever charged with her murder cole was now wrongly charged five different people the party has good lawyers maybe you should ask for one before answering questions then the final case in homicide feels like a sponsorship deal with the la tourism department since it has cole and rusty travelling from famous landmark to landmark in a scavenger hunt the killer is set up for them using chili poems is clues cole can tightrope walk and since the killer placed the next poem on the chandelier inside the hall of records i suppose he can too jesus christ cool get off that goddamn thing cole could have just asked magnets to retrieve the letter for him a tar pit is already a natural death trap but this one has a wooden walkway that snakes around the pit leading to the cinder island that sinks his cold walks across it and just like with the chandelier this was a needless risk because rusty rose called back in a boat after he finds the next poem the other poems were left in out the white places the public wouldn't normally be but this one was in the center of a public maze anyone could have come along and found this letter and taken or thrown it away before call arrived the final poem was found back at the intolerance movie set and picking it up causes the set to collapse you realize cole isn't indiana jones right he just picked up a letter there's no reason that would cause a sent to collapse don't bother calling for backup at the home of the serial killer who's expecting you or even calling a report about what you've discovered in case you die the lapd you said is it really possible you could have found me after all this done how interesting you place poems or the verses literally guide them to famous landmarks it was incredibly simple to see through do you remember me detective the temp bartender yes despite every victim frequenting a bar and being drunk when killed it never occurred to anyone there might be a connection even after they realized that killer seemed to have detailed knowledge on each of his victims stuff that a bartender might learn from a drunk patron mason has a murder chamber with a bathtub full of blood but all of his victims were beaten with tire irons and then strangled the rope at the location of their death he never brought them here for processing mason killed six women in total tricked the police into arresting five innocent men and then led the police on a scavenger hunt that leads right to him for no reason as far as i can tell he had to give himself up just for this to come to an end because there won't be any press briefings or accommodations what are you talking about we got the werewolf the guy who killed the dahlia killed all the other broads you got no one mason was a ghost can you at least tell us why captain mason is the half-brother of one of the most highly elected officials in this country since the black dahlia killing was never solved in reality i was predicting they had to come up with a contrived reason for why this would stay off the books but i expected a little more effort than that what's gonna happen to the suspects in the cases captain i won't be a part of that a bit of missing evidence at the grand jury a procedural error here a mistake there they'll all be quietly let go and i have some news for you phelps no more rooting around in the entrails of cadavers and corpses for you the head of advice has asked the chief for you that's still five lives ruined people charged with violent murders who are only acquitted in mistrials tend to be viewed as guilty in the eyes of the public their lives would be effectively over some of them were fathers accused of killing their own wives and why would cole be promoted over this the official reports will state that he led five investigations that ended with no convictions and five mistrials due to missing evidence that should be a massive black mark on his record phelps welcome device this is your new partner roy earl you just know roy earl is crooked because he has two first names that and we watched him smack elsa around earlier in the game after protecting a guy making peep show blackmail videos and facilitating the statutory rape of a minor not a good guy in my book cole seems a very given though even though he's secretly seeing the woman he slept we got better things to be doing than wasting our time on two dead junkies did i ask your opinion detective two men dead on u.s army issue morphine that makes it an advice case vice is when the actual plot of the game finally picks up since all the cases revolve around the stolen army issue morphine only took 10 hours to get around to that hope you were finding those newspapers scattered everywhere those burgers are going to burn at least turn off the gas before you leave what if the street food stall catches fire and burns the morphine he was selling in popcorn cups you sold the drugs to cornell tyree and tyrone lamont oh i sell i sell fried steaks and black eyed peas even lies about the kind of food he sells i only saw burgers eggs and bacon in there we're only interested in morphine army surplus morphine what do you have to say about that i heard about that big robbery on the ship ain't my line of work i prefer something with a sporting outcome are these perps covering their eyes and counting to 100 while call searches their things he just watched coal find the morphine inside the slaw machine lapd we'd like to take a look around the hell you will [ __ ] you carrying a warrant no do we need one yes yes you do and a criminal owns a fake radio full of stolen morphine would certainly insist on seeing one jose ramez you're being arrested on suspicion of supplying illegal drugs resisting arrest and for malicious damage to lapd property instead of sending the furniture company men to the precinct for questioning cole brings them back to the warehouse and doesn't bother cuffing the guys who just attempted to flee in a delivery van while throwing furniture out the back at him he's making a run for it let him have it and that's why you cover suspect who has already recklessly fled once already how much call for ice anymore with all those newfangled refrigerators save it for someone who wants to hear it how many janitors carry a gat the guy never stated he was a janitor nor does he look like one he was just a guy who walked up to you on the sidewalk if mickey cohen has this much stolen morphine i don't understand why he was so upset that courtney ended their relationship this had to have been the bulk of it the vice section of the game is nearly doubled in length by two dlc cases you now have to play through call for help you were going on a drug bust and told to be careful of all the assignments to hold off on calling for backup you picked a drug operation using a cannery to distribute dope inside kansas soup would have been an obviously bad idea since it tells investigators exactly where to look for the source you only need creative methods to move drugs across borders once it's in the states you can move that around and unmarked packages metal cans are heavy take out more space and require trucks to move large amounts making it all the more likely you would be cut either these customers are serious soup lovers or i think we found our middle man carl levin king to kgpl i'm requesting assistance and a bee wagon at 20th century markets 1558 north highland you couldn't have done this back when you busted the house full of weed i need to make a deal i need guarantees does anyone understand their obligations when they request a deal from the police every time a suspect offers information in exchange for not being arrested calls tell us to go through the process of bad copping the truth out of them how did the owner of the cannery parnell never notice he was missing a great deal of cans from inventory because the gang was showing up and packing them at night that guy died clutching the silver dollar that the gang leader hands out to every member cole might want to put a gun in his hand since he wasn't armed when shot by the police and who keeps their wallet in their front shirt pocket and this crook died with a roll of money in his hand this was a shootout with the police yet the crooks were clutching silver dollars and money rolls in their final moments so cole and roy will call in back up to bust the unarmed chapel and reselling weed the crooks packing it inside cans but not when busting the leader at his hideout the next case focuses on a rigged boxing match with a guy who was supposed to take a dive hammond wins instead put out an apb on bruce willis i guess lapd we're making inquiries into the whereabouts of an albert hammond no one here by that name you sure sure i'm sure this isn't the sort of place where people use their real names and some alcohol figures the guy who signed in as winston churchill as a boxer of fled after winning because the guys from the uk as if he couldn't think of anyone famous it didn't come from his own country at hammond's girlfriend's apartment they find her being assaulted by one of the mob goons looking for hammond they let him go despite assaulting a woman them and trying to impede a police investigation telling hammond's girlfriend candy around town as she collects money from the bookies for the fight is the second worst mission in the game even after you succeed she still alluded since she knew she was being followed all along candy goes into the ladies room at the bus station and is shot and killed by someone who apparently knew she would come here and that she would need to use this restroom at this specific time if the guy can make calls like that why does he even need to rig boxing matches whoops the guy that let go earlier is the one who killed candy and tries to kill him at the theater i'd feel a bit guilty getting a woman killed due to professional ignorance like that next is another dlc mission made mandatory it's really long and there's not much in it worth mentioning if the victim was alive when she entered the tub water would have entered her lungs the water is violently churned in the windpipe as she drowns the result is that a lot of foam is generated the entire time the corners going over why it's unlikely she drowned the tub after an overdose i was thinking yeah duh she's got bite marks all over her arms and bruises on her neck i don't think they ever explain why her attacker is bitter i sure hope no one jumps out of this weirdly large and open chekhov's window later do you mind if we ask you some questions about mrs randall um not if it doesn't compromise doctor patient privilege objective everything you tell us call will violate doctor patient confidentiality remember that other telling mission i said was the second worst mission in the game meet the first another tailing mission this game is at its worst whenever it has you be stealthy we got you good phelps yeah he really packs a wallop how do i get back here under your own steam miraculously while chasing one of the perps across a rooftop cole gets ko'd with a board somehow cole managed to get himself back to the apartment after suffering a concussion not even remembering how he got back the path leading back to the apartment including walking over a balance meme stretched between buildings and he did it in that state i want to see no one not my wife or my children nor my friends and i don't want a lawyer oh you wouldn't have received one anyway going to how this game is played out what have i done oh no what a surprise the next case is about the marines who stole the army morphine being killed one after another by the mob somehow all those marines live right here in l.a instead of all over the country people are dying of overdoses if you know anything about it you need to tell me i can't help you you can do this the easy way with me or i can call my partner back over i can assure you he's a lot less sensitive the case leads call to the nightclub where his lover also works and even with elsa cole has to use bad cob to get answers out of her even threatening to call roy over to smack her around i'm not sure why cole has to carefully tell his girlfriend back to her apartment wouldn't he already know where she lives she sure seems like she was expecting him maybe it's a weird kink we have some questions do i need my lawyer yes you're a mob boss you should know this one of the marines from the morphine heist works as a bus driver who the mob tries to kill by sniping it from a rooftop and it almost works since felix doesn't do the obvious thing in floor at the moment the guy opens fire on his bus what do you know about the army surplus robbery from the cool ridge jack what i know is that on three separate occasions you would have been dead if it weren't for me i don't know anything about the robbery kelso is the only person in the game that can lie his way through an interrogation even when you get all the answers right robert steiner 6780 west sunset boulevard the victim is the chris majewski and then they stuck around long enough for me to call the police and for you to drive over here from the precinct people just can't resist those gas station nachos i have a human interest story it involves a certain lapd cop a hero from the war who has led his beautiful wife and kids down who's betrayed america for a german junkie [ __ ] this cutscene activated by a newspaper gives a way that roy knows about cole's infidelity and is plenty to use it to take the press's attention on the vice squad's own scandal call stops five public shootings in one day and will still be vilified by the end of it if only all criminals died like cartoon villains clutching evidence that linked them to their crimes and cohorts is this your attorney no detective this is dr harlan fontaine he came down here to help me out but why wouldn't you bring an attorney to this you've brought someone to advise you that just as guilty as yourself after all courtney sold the remaining morphine to dr fontaine after he cut off the mob so he would go down for this as well now of course he's going to look after his own interests unlike an attorney who would look after their client i'm conducting an investigation upstairs in my office this man is about to confess as of now you're suspended from duty pending a fitness review luckily for the both of them the lapd choose this moment to drop their internal investigation and nicole's infidelity on him and i guess this case about the dead marines and stolen morphine is dropped because no one takes it up after cole's demoted arson because that's just how the police work what is going on here your wife's attorney has pictures of you and the german compromising pictures she's pressing charges you'll be formally charged with adultery at least cole's wife is smart enough to hire a lawyer how could you do it lad your wife your children consorting with the enemy and a dope fiend at that i wish i knew too shame the game never developed any of that regarding cole's wife you wouldn't be at vault if you found yourself wondering who the game was talking about the only time you see her before now was at the very beginning of the game as she waved cole off to work cole has two relationships that are never developed so all the drama surrounding his infidelity is nothing but a narrative framing device with little effort these guys have lockers yes they do but my men have a right to some privacy don't you need a warrant or something show him and keep quiet why even have characters ask this question anymore when it gets hand waved away every single time the final boss of this game should have been someone's lawyer three of instaheat's employees have criminal records two of which included arson yet none are guilty of tampering with gas valves that burn the homes down you still have to charge one of them with it and unlike the homicide cases nothing is ever done about the innocent man in lockup i guess that's why they made the two guys you can charge already wanted for something else the person actually sitting these fires is a former marine who is on flamethrower duty who served under colon is also dr fontaine's patient who's also responsible for putting him up to setting house fires in some kind of fake therapy but was actually using him to burn down houses as part of suburban redevelopment's plans to get rich off increasing the property value before the state seized on the land using imminent domain however hogaboom went on the lamb after he accidentally burned a family to death in what was supposed to be an empty home it is now starting fires indiscriminately as his insanity grows but somehow every house fire he said after ending his treatment belonged to families receiving suburban redevelopment vacation rewards to get them out of town so someone could burn the house while they were away if you're a part of a complex criminal conspiracy to defund the state by burning people out of their homes and then building fake houses and to raise their property values why would you choose a man suffering from extreme post-traumatic stress that you've also addicted to morphine as a guy to burn homes down he would be a massive liability you said the morellis had won a weekend away it's a catalina island yeah that's right first thing i thought after the explosion was thank goodness there was a way you didn't enter yourself i'd already agreed to sell the competition was an incentive for those who were still thinking about this plan should have unraveled pretty quickly of every home that burned down just happened to be owned by someone who had just won a trip to catalina island and was out of town when it burnt like how hard would it be to actually put that together even cold spots it and he failed to see the bartender connection in all those murder cases would you like us to return with a warrant yes why does no one ever take him up on that chapman who was apprehended at the scene of the second house fire and also handed out flyers for elysian fields development the company who built all the new homes for returning gis they just coincidentally burned down and is their fall guy once call came snooping around is spotted by coal coming out of a laundromat and chapman hijacks a trolley since a vehicle that moves along a rail is the best choice for an escape vehicle california fire and life he worked for a legion the roofs that he was working on collapsed it's a very generous settlement elsa i'd like you to do something for me i think there's something dirty about elysian fields what is that got to do with lou i want you to reject this settlement i want you to go and see an investigator named jack kelso or someone with no development elsa seems to have a lot revolving around her she was being treated by dr fontaine and now her friend who worked in construction died while building one of the fake houses for the redevelopment scam and she was the one named to receive a settlement from the insurance company that insured the scam houses right as the actual plot picks up the game takes call away from you and replaces him with jack kelso while cole becomes a supporting character in his own game granted kelso fits the role of noir detective way better than cole ever did but call was also just starting to get interesting now that he had his fall from grace and was working against a corrupt system i'm investigating the accidental death of a lou buckwalter and are you deaf do i have to beat on you looks like you do let's interrupt kelso's investigation into a shuttly mate house so the player can throw three punches that could have just been a cut scene elsa's friend was a movie set carpenter but for some reason was building houses in this development and didn't realize that the house he was building was made with lumber stamped with not for construction use from a film company the kind of thing you should have recognized due to his past work experience the foreman kelso fought a minute ago tries to flatten him with a bulldozer after escaping the attempt on his life kelso doesn't even confront the guy he just walks off and doesn't even contemplate that someone just tried to murder him i don't believe insurance claims investigators carry weapons either the conspirators of the suburban redevelopment fund including kelsey's boss put together a film of them having drinks and discussing how rich they're going to become with multiple camera angles tracking shots and proper lighting something you couldn't film as casually as this is depicted this would have been filmed like a movie production with multiple takes and repositioning of film cameras setting aside making a film about how greedy you are why leave it in the screening room of an abandoned film studio that you're also sourcing green lumber from to build fake houses what were you doing with him i was doing what you asked i didn't ask you to meet him in an alleyway you cheated on your wife with this lady and you get upset because she meets with kelso to discuss the case you told her to give him i kind of ironically love it when characters leave their headlights running just so they can have more cinematic lighting on themselves what's your hurry mac you got some place to go you ever do the cat and mouse routine without a gun in your hand no that's more like it that actually works and gets the thugs to put away their guns for a fist fight kelso escapes the trunk they stuff them in just by opening it and then someone stops their car in an empty street and gets out so kelsey can take it and erase dallas's apartment where the thugs are planning to go next but never show up since kelso collapses in the doorway and cole never mentions killing a bunch of home invaders once he comes too so i guess the game forgot about that detail colorful character mentioned your name the guy running for district attorney shows up and offers kelso a da's investigator job it's pretty out of left field and i guess it was the best i could come up with for keeping kelso on the case now that his boss tried to kill him and he's clearly fired from his insurance investigator job i'm looking for a da's investigator you get a gun and a badge and 120 dollars a month get 150 a month now yeah but your boss just tried to have you killed i think your employment there is over i guess i have to criticize kelso for breaking the law now that he's a da investigator holding a man at gunpoint so you can enter his apartment and search it is going to make for quite the issue if this era comes accord how old are you princess 16. mister how old are you really nearly 13. kelso discovers an underage girl in his boss's bed and tells her to leave since this is an optional discovery you can miss and not related to the case kelso never brings it up while interrogating his old boss that's right the game throws some optional statutory rape in that doesn't matter kelso may be the worst investigator ever if he let's statutory rape slide one thing you learn in the war boys you do your talking once the smoke clears you can't just kill some goons in self-defense inside a public building like the hall of records and walk out without giving a statement then again cole destroyed a chandelier here earlier by climbing around on it and didn't have to answer for that i want a minimum of noise and no prisoners no prisoners this isn't pele lou jack these guys are grifting gis d.a investigator by the way kelso put together a posse of former marines to launch an assault on leland monroe's estate insisted on taking no one alive and seriously injures monroe himself when phoenix wright is a better interpretation of the law than your game about police procedure that's a problem fontaine keeps a syringe poison in his desk jar in the event a naive student of his who just happens to have incriminating evidence on him comes to him and trusts us by his own friend telling him fontaine's dirty all so he can get rid of this one in a million possibility oh thank god where fontaine dead former patient kelso calls call to tell him he can come and question monroe if he likes and cole informs him that fontaine has been found dead and also taken captive by his former patient in the original release this led into the final case of the game now though it's oddly broken up by the last dlc case it has nothing to do with the housing scam i don't have a lot to say about the nicholson electroplating case except that it's absurd that only two arson detectives would work a case involving an explosion of a factory in the middle of la and the factory exploding and destroying a few city blocks isn't even the main point of the case the corporate espionage uncovered while looking into the explosion as we're working the big explosion at the electroplating plant found a part there that belongs to one of your planes i work head of security for mr hughes now i'll take full responsibility this former vice cop turned private security for hughes vernon mapes allows coal into the hangar with a spruce goose is being worked on mapes is also the one who was running the espy notch plot to convince the chemist who created the chemical aluminum polishing technique that accidentally caused the explosion to work for their company instead mape said no reason to go out of his way to let lapd investigators under the site which is ultimately responsible for his own undoing normally when setting a blade's on fire you burn it right after dousing the place in fuel instead mape's left and came back while cole was inside maybe he forgot to buy matches we're gonna have to go through all the security men first shooting soldiers just doing their job seems like something cool a former marine would never do i think this might be a mistake in the game's writing you see these guys are referred to as vernon security force but they wear military police uniforms and armbands while on the base where the spruce goose is being constructed for the military club did you think you would just reveal you knew he was dirty and walk out the door was there any point other than making yourself a hostage for the finale of the game and that ends dr fontaine having never really engaged with the two main characters hogaboom the mentally disturbed former weapons company flamethrower unit who fontaine put up to setting house fires comes and strangles fontaine to death rather than burn him which has become his mo and then he takes elsa with him for no reason into some drainage tunnels how are we gonna prove any of this coal doctor's dead monroe nearly bled to death but they get jacked we need the firebug yokie cowboy get him get elsa get him get all of them hogaboom suffers from severe mental illness and drug addiction i don't think his testimony would be as ironclad as you think but everyone seems to believe he's a linchpin in this case so all the crooked cops and monroe's goons converge in the tunnels to kill him in a game built around interrogation and evidence gathering it's all that for the finale it throws all that out to focus on the game's poor third-person shooting mechanics why not have the finale be the court case where you put all the conspirators away that would have been way more in line with the rest of the game's tone jack i need this guy to make the case hasn't this poor bastard giving you enough get out of here now forgot the second attack what are you going to do don't cry miss sergeant kelso has come to help ease my way you came down here rescue elsa and hoga boom since he can make the case against suburban redevelopment if you were just going to mercy kill him you could have just let the goon you fly your way through do that job for you and this also means the case against suburban redevelopment will go nowhere la received an unusual amount of rain just so cold could die and one of the lamest attempts at adding weight to an inning i've ever come across as far as i can tell the bad guys won fontaine died and apparently monroe was exposed but the mayor the chief of police in the vice squad got away with it and cole's old vice partner roy is the one giving the eulogy at his funeral you [ __ ] young boys valdez you

Channel: Dartigan

Views: 324,426

Keywords: la noire, everything wrong with la noire, game sins, dartigan, gaming sins, cinema sins, review, trailer, explained, list, funny, doubt, movie, cutscenes, cole phelps, dlc, jack kelso, detective, walkthrough, ending, opening, sequel, open world, guide, answers, video game sins, GTA, red dead redemption 2, cases, roy earle, elsa, noir fiction, rockstar

Id: IxDMAfhO46g

Length: 45min 52sec (2752 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 25 2021