dailynewsnblog
While all eyes are on Rockstar Games ahead of the release of Grand Theft Auto 6 in November, rumors are already circulating about what’s next for the developer. One unverified rumor claims Rockstar is working on an LA Noire sequel centered on hunting down the Zodiac Killer, one of the most infamous murderers of the 20th century. And honestly? That sounds far more exciting than GTA 6.
First up, those rumors. It originally popped up on the GTA Forums amid a flurry of GTA 6 “leaks” sourced from 4chan, which doesn’t exactly lend these claims any credibility. Even if the source behind them is flimsier than wet toilet paper, the premise alone is something I’d spend one of my three wishes on if I found a genie in a lamp. The post goes on to claim the game would be set in San Francisco and release around 2030.
Again, I’m taking all this with several pinches of salt, in part because Rockstar’s short-term focus will surely be on post-launch support for GTA 6 and launching GTA Online. It’s also worth noting that the developer of LA Noire, Team Bondi, shut down in October 2011 and the rights to the IP are owned by Rockstar Games.
The LA Noire franchise has been dormant for nearly a decade, with the original 2011 game being followed by The VR Case Files in 2017. However, there was a glimmer of hope provided to fans by Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick earlier this year, though it remains to be seen what the future may hold for the series.
I don’t believe for a second that LA Noire 2 is in development, but I would love to be proven wrong. The original game, warts and all, is one of my all-time favorites for its nuanced storytelling and impressive recreation of Los Angeles from a bygone era, as well as for being a detective game that required you to actually pay attention.
The key feature of LA Noire was its acting, brought to life by a rock-solid crew of performers–including a deliciously sinister John Noble–and advanced facial-capturing technology. Sure, there’s an uncanny valley effect to those facial performances when you look at them now, but back then, you couldn’t believe what you were seeing.
Facial capture technology has only improved over the last 15 years, as high-resolution cameras and scanners became more readily available alongside specialist software. Standout examples including the use of the RE Engine to resurrect the late Japanese actor Toshirō Mifune and the Decima Engine, which enables realistic, nuanced performances in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. Epic has also been making major strides with Unreal Engine 5, as the MetaHuman Animator plugin allows developers to map high-fidelity facial performance from a camera and create subtle micro-expressions in real time. I’d love to see what a new LA Noire game, placing an emphasis on this kind of tech, could look like.
And then you tag-team that with a story rumored to focus on hunting down the Zodiac Killer, one of the greatest mysteries of the 1960s. While the murders have been heavily mythologized by books, movies, and TV shows, the serial killer is still credited with giving rise to generations of armchair detectives thanks to all publicly accessible primary documents–police reports, letters, and ciphers–keeping the case alive in the public consciousness.
Would such a game be on the same level as GTA 6, when it comes to hype and a virtual city full of activities to take part in? Probably not, but as we saw with last year’s Mafia: The Old Country, a strong single-player game at the right price can pay off handsomely. GTA 6 looks like a fine expansion of Rockstar’s ideas—particularly with its added layers of immersion—but I’m not feeling the hype whenever I catch a new glimpse of it. I’m positive it’ll be good, and I predict it’ll earn high review scores across the board, but I’m not interested in a game that plays exactly how I expect it to.
In comparison, Rockstar Games has the talent and pedigree to pull off one of the darkest crime stories of all time, and after decades of massive open-world games, it would be a nice change of pace.
