Thayala’s World

I’m two and a half hours in and I wanted to jot down a few notes about Rockstar’s latest offering. The post-World War II Los Angeles setting is gorgeous, and the character and vehicle design is spot-on. So far, everything the developers promised about the character facial animation (based on motion capture by 32 cameras surrounding the faces of live actors) is true: these are some of the most nuanced character performances I’ve seen, but manage to avoid the “uncanny valley.”

The gameplay (at least so far) is separated into cases that advance the career of Detective Cole Phelps and incidental street crimes that are announced over the radio as you drive from one location to the next investigating a case. There’s no feeling of a sandbox here. While the setting is vast, aside from the street crimes there’s no motivation to wander the city. You’re always heading to some destination involved in a case.

So far, cases have started with a brief flash of the crime being committed (but with the details artfully left out, like many police procedurals) followed by Cole being assigned the case by his C.O. When you arrive on the scene, you investigate the scene for clues, which largely consists of you moving Cole around the scene waiting for audio (a soft chime) and tactile (controller vibration) indicators that you’re standing near something that you can investigate. Cole dutifully picks up the object, and you’re informed by the game whether what you’re examining is a clue or not.

This is one area that’s bothering me a bit: searching for clues feels a little too binary. Nothing might be a clue. If you pick it up and it’s not relevant, the game comes out and tells you so. Anything that is a clue is added to your notebook for later reference.

As an aside, it’s strange to play a detective in a setting before forensic science became a key investigative strategy. Cole nonchalantly picks up weapons, moves bodies, walks through blood spatter, etc. So far there’s been no gameplay that requires dusting for fingerprints or looking at trace through a microscope. Which is a good thing.

You proceed to interview witnesses and suspects, which consists of you selecting a topic from your notebook which causes Cole to ask a question. You then judge the response by selecting one of three choices: truth, doubt, or lie. If you select “lie,” then you must select a piece of evidence from your notebook that refutes the statement. If your intuition is wrong, then Cole’s reaction causes the suspect to omit some piece of information that would help your case.

If you don’t have direct evidence that the character is lying, you’re left with studying your suspect’s reactions and emotional state based on the character animation. Which actually works pretty well, most of the time.

Then you move on to the next location (a suspect’s house, the notification of death, the morgue, etc.) and repeat the process until you’re lead to the suspect.

Anyway, so far I’m having fun, but there are a few things that bother me about the gameplay, most of which seen to be inherited from the GTA games. Driving feels really loose, resulting in cars that sway back and forth on the screen and frustrating car chases. You can skip a lot of the driving by having your partner drive, which is the equivalent of taking a cab in previous Rockstar games. Combat is weak—hand-to-hand fighting feels like it’s taken a step back from GTA4, and shooting mechanics aren’t great.

So far, the end of every street crime and nearly every case has resulted in the death of the primary suspect. It’s likely that I’m missing something (have to go back and check) but I’ve yet to subdue anyone in the game. Most of the “pursuit” skills feel clunky, in fact, so whether chasing down a suspect in a car or on foot, both feel clumsy. Cole seems to be channeling “Dirty Harry” in his approach to law enforcement despite my best effort, and although you’re strongly discouraged from doing damage to the city or its citizens, there have been no repercussions from the fact that I’ve inadvertently run over two pedestrians while trying to catch a suspect.

Edit: Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s noticed these things.

Overall, I’m having a good time with the game, but I’m already concerned that the gameplay will start feeling repetitive.

More later.