L.A. Noire to keep casual players safe from harm
Rockstar and Team Bondi add option to skip action sequences
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Rockstar and Team Bondi are giving video game rookies a bit of a break in their upcoming detective title, L.A. Noire. Studio reps have revealed the 40s-era game will ship with the option to bypass any and all action sequences, leaving casual consumers to enjoy the game's cerebral challenges and story without worrying about pesky things like being good at video games.
Above: Press 'X' to skip
In a Q&A session following a live demo of L.A. Noire at the Tribeca Film Festival – the first of its kind for the popular film event – Rockstar's art director, Rob Nelson, discussed how L.A. Noire will offer players a chance to skip through the game's more action oriented bits after only a few failed attempts so they can “still experience the bulk of the narrative."
Emphasizing L.A. Noire's focus on storytelling, Tribeca's chief creative officer, Geoff Gilmore, added the game's script is one of the bulkiest ever for a video game, stating it “has over 20 different cases, some 400 characters and a script that is over 2200 pages.”
L.A. Noire is looking less and less like typical Rockstar fare, and more like Heavy Rain with fedoras. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you, only that Rockstar risks turning away its regular GTA-esque fanbase (aka 'old money') in its bid to appeal to casual gamers with cinematic tastes (aka 'new money'). We'll see if it manages to satisfy both demos when it becomes available for PS3 and Xbox 360 on May 17th.
Apr 27, 2011
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Matt Bradford wrote news and features here at GamesRadar+ until 2016. Since then he's gone on to work with the Guinness World Records, acting as writer and researcher for the annual Gamer's Edition series of books, and has worked as an editor, technical writer, and voice actor. Matt is now a freelance journalist and editor, generating copy across a multitude of industries.
