Last week, Grant Theft Auto franchise publisher Rockstar Games released their latest title, LA Noire. Unlike many of their “open world” games, LA Noire’s gameplay does not focus on action. Rather, it has the player play the part of a detective with more cerebral based gameplay in discovering evidence and questioning witnesses. The other defining feature of the game is that the game world is a faithful reproduction of Los Angeles circa 1947.
That’s right, you can drive around what LA would have looked like in the 1940s.
Local TV station KCET has an interesting feature on how Team Bondi, the developers of LA Noire, painstakingly researched from UCLA, USC, and LAPL regional history libraries in order to recreate 1947 metropolitan LA. Not only did they look at geography, they also looked at real criminals at the time, including real mobster, Mickey Cohen:
A former boxer with ties to the Chicago crime syndicate once ruled by Al Capone, Meyer Harris “Mickey” Cohen grew up Boyle Heights, once a predominantly Jewish Los Angeles neighborhood. In 1937, he fell out of favor with the so-called Chicago Outfit and returned to L.A. to work as an enforcer for mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Cohen quickly rose in influence and, despite serving two stints in prison for tax evasion, became a national celebrity. Cohen is pictured below, hat on his lap, at his 1949 arraignment in the Los Angeles Superior Court.
Even if you’re not a big gamer, you gotta admit that’s kinda cool.
via KCET.
