1Upsmanship: L.A. Noire

Possibly Rockstar’s most divisive open world experiment, 2011’s hard-boiled noir film homage gets the once-over by your favorite creative investigation duo. But beneath the glossy paint and ground-breaking motion capture is this game actually fun? How does the storytelling hold up in the twelve years since this game’s release? Does the game handle its problematic topics like race and gender inequality well? Would we want a sequel if they ever made one? Forget about it, Shipheads, it’s Rockstar. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, listen, dude, my claps.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
You're gonna thank me when you're editing, because I think
my claps are much crisper now because I caved and
get installed.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
On my desk a a mic arm.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
So I'm no longer doing the nineties stand up thing
where I hold the mic for five hours while we record.
Everyone should know. Yeah, tell me if I sound different.
But I'm a big boy. After five and a half
years of podcasting. I have a real mic. Therefore I
can clamp instead of what I used to do, which
is hold the mic directly down by my crotch and

(00:54):
slap my inner thigh.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
That's how we sink audio. That's idea. A little handbone, baby.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Oh, I love the handbone. That's why it always felt
so fleshy and true.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
When you're editing, you're like, why do Mike's clap sound wet?

Speaker 3 (01:08):
What is that? And why are they erotic? Why?

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Erotics?

Speaker 3 (01:14):
So now, yeah, well that's an investigation that I liked
the result of, sir, Thank you for connecting the dots
for me. Hey, so, welcome ship to this we're doing it.
Welcome to another episode of one of some ship. We

(01:37):
are your hosts. I am Adam, I am Michael, and
we are ready to dive into an underappreciated jim a
stellar game of its time. I think it is fair
to say the the.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Singles Blanket review immediately, I thought we discussed it first.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Okay, I'm coloring it. I'm coloring it, coloring it a
little bit. No. So it's a single serving outing actually
and made by our friends at Rockstar called La Noir,
the noir story from the forties about the lapd and
a lot of people from mad Men. So let's pass
our first checkpoint and somebody's gonna tell it. Somebody like

(02:19):
their eight bit. Am I doing that? Or are you
doing that?

Speaker 2 (02:21):
I feel like I better take it, because, yeah, you
never heard you introduce so much bias at the top.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
That's weird.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, or it's almost like a spoiler, like, well, I say,
now I listen to the episode. That's bullshit, because, as
you and I say to each other all the time,
the review is less important than it actually being a
medium for discussion about games. But yeah, I still think
you've skunked.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
The entire episode.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
And yes, I'll be using as much forties slang as possible.
Raspberries in a nutshell Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Go ahead, man, I was gonna say, I'm not selling
Wolf tickets. I really do love this game place, Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
I actually thought it was a stanc er, a bit
of a ploy. That's so weird to me because we
talked about this game earlier. I guess your opinion has swayed.
But interesting. We'll see, we'll see, we'll see. This is
not my rant player one unplugging because it's just tell
me like I'm made bit so if you never heard
l A Noir, it's rock Star, which is important to

(03:24):
say because all their games have a similar feel, or
at least during the same genre, this one being the
most notable outlier. But it's still like other Rockstar games
in that they're the studio who brought us, most notably
GTA and Red Dead Redemption. It's third person. You're a
guy with a pretty decent camera distance is one of

(03:45):
their things, right, Like, you're a guy you can see
most of your body, and you're running around either a
city or in the case of Red Dead, you know,
the Great American West or whatever, and you talk to people,
and you do missions, and you shoot at people, and
you steal vehicles and you take the vehicle's place and
get a new mission. So el A Noir was a
grand departure in that in all the Rockstar games and

(04:07):
other games, and most other games period to this day,
when you talk to someone, it cuts to a little
movie of you talking to them, and then in many
cases there's dialogue trees where you make options of what
should I say back and they react blah blah blah.
El Anwar focused on that interaction in a way that
was unprecedented or unique for the time and certainly is

(04:29):
not like other Rockstar games, but also unlike most other games,
it focused tremendously on fidelity of the actors performance. They
actually tried to land famous actors out and mentioned people
from mad Men, much more common today but less so
at the time, and even today, a celebrity will usually
be a voice in a game because it's so easy

(04:50):
for them to just go on the booth.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
This was more than that.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
They required more of the actors, and they treated it
like a real movie, and they had had GTA success
so they could swing their big money dick around and
be like, we could get famous people and shit, and
we've seen the movie La Noir fifty times and we
think it's so Keen Fellas, so they basically do.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Their own version of La Noir.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
If you've seen that movie, and I mean, like we'll
get into I don't think there's a bad source of inspiration.
But down to like Jack Vincenz, the Kevin Spacey character
is clearly yes, your vice partner, and like you're clearly
guy Pierce, sir. There's many similar through lines. You're the
buy the book the guy. You're the guy who's buy
the book to a fault. It's almost lame as rob shit.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Oh my god. Okay, we'll get into it. But just
so you understand the game.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
You're a cop in forties lah, you know, you work
your way through various desks, so you'll solve crimes and
like the arson desk, the vice desk, blah blah blah
as you do that by driving around a city interviewing
people with really in depth interrogation and dialogue trees and
a focus on can you tell if they're lying or

(05:58):
not based on the actors acting. That was the big
trick of the game, but it had not been done before.
And you also walk around crime scenes and pick up
evidence and examine it and put clues together in your
head and It follows a classic noir story where you
slowly uncover a web of corruption that goes all the
way to the top. We could get into details later,

(06:20):
but we don't need to now. If you've seen like
a hard bit and forties detective story, you know the
basic beats. There ends up being like personal tragedies along
the way in femfatales and people who are broken but
repressed so you don't know it till the end and
they reveal their horrible secret. It's usually about the war
because of the time period. The cops are corrupt, Some

(06:41):
are good, but most are corrupt, and they're hard, fighting, hard,
fucking piss and cussing racists, and they get the job done,
and you know, you reveal like a web of conspiracy basically,
that's right, yeah, and then you die, die heroically and
tragically of course, the end the.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
Movie, you're thinking of a La Confidential for those of.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
You I kept calling it itself, but yes, Ellie Confidential,
which you know, if you blow Kevin spaceyoff stuff off.
If you blow Kevin spaceyoff was unfortunate phrasing. He would
he would be thrilled, be thrilled. At this point, he
needs to if you blow off Kevin Spacey stuff for
political or moral reasons, totally, But if you don't, La
Confidentially is a good movie.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Russell Croud Guy pears, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
La Confidential is great, based on an Elmore Danny DeVito
as the narrator.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Very fun movie.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah, great movie, absolutely, Okay, awesome. I think that was
a helpful introduction which leads us to our second checkpoint.
We're going to pass it now, which means we've been
handed a new case by a suddenly disapproving captain even
though he loved our result last time. So what's the
fucking deal with that? Who knows?

Speaker 4 (07:49):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (07:50):
And we're gonna investigate it in that case has right
labeled across the Manila envelope gamer ramps and I will
go first. Is that? Okay? Mike? Hmm?

Speaker 1 (07:59):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Great? La Noir is a great game trapped in a
mediocre body. That's that's how I feel about it. I
think there are some really great ideas here, and there's
a lot of like core, very fun things to do,
and it's kind of trapped in a GTA body, and
it really doesn't want to be in a GTA body.
I don't think. Here's what I mean by that, so

(08:22):
the idea of doing an actual investigation with real actors
and investigating crime scenes for clues actually lends itself to
different formats than this third person open sandbox that they
decided to do it in. I think it lends itself to, like,
I don't know, a point and click or something, and
I can see a version of a point and click
of exactly all these elements that would be distilled and

(08:45):
probably just as satisfying, to be honest with you, But
I think they knew, no, no, no, We're rock Star.
We got to do an open world. We gotta you know,
create La and drive around it and stuff. And for
my money, I'm not sure that any of the the
stuff that you would traditionally attribute to a Red Dead
or a Grand Theft auto works in this game that well,
like the shooting in it is fine. You don't even

(09:08):
really know when you're about to die. Sometimes you don't
know how many bullets you have. It feels very utilitarian
and sort of bare bones, as does the driving, which
by the way, has good physics for a forties car,
but that's not as fun as driving around, you know,
a somewhat contemporary vehicle like in GTA, and also the environment,

(09:29):
as gorgeous as it is, as faithfully rendered as it is,
feels like a movie set in that it's not very
detailed and there's nothing behind it other than the four
walls you're looking at. There's not a lot of people there.
You can't run people over, which is not that I
want to, It's that it robs it of the feeling
of fidelity and consequences, and you know, this is a

(09:49):
story about being an LA detective, so like. And also
there's chase scenes that always feel very scripted. Every chase
is very scripted. All the stuff that you do their
like the fights and things, all those things feel subpar
for a Rock Star game. Now. The actual interrogations also
have flaws, but the idea of them is so fun,

(10:12):
and the idea of putting a case together and doing
it this way is really rewarding. I love it, and
sometimes it works so well, like when you're doing the
Black Dahlia stuff. I think the murder stuff is fantastic.
I think it's strange that they do it in the
middle of the game and then kind of leave it
behind for this larger conspiracy, which is a bit more
effusive and harder to get your mind around. I think

(10:33):
they think that Mickey Cohen and the LA crime scene
is more interesting to us than it is. I think
Black Dahlia was the thing we should have ended on
for like emotional reasons.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
So that guy who always plays gangster played his own
brother in law like he played Mickey Cohen, and the
brother in law that you kill is.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
Not playing the brother in law. No, I think, Okay,
they look similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was also in
Mad Men, Mad Yeah, I love that guy.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
So like I think they thought Mickey Cohen that whole
thing was more of a draw than it is, and
so it kind of lays a little flat.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
The acting.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
You can tell this as like an early day's motion capture,
because a lot of the actors are really indicating and
indicating is I mean that in a technical way, like
they're playing emotions so that you can see, ah, they're lying,
you know, And so it sometimes feels a little schmalty
or silly. Sometimes it's subtle and rewarding. And I think
for a first draft of this idea, it's really cool

(11:30):
and it's stuck around and you know, the noir tropes
are fun and they do a pretty good job with them.
The larger story with Cole Phelps and his unit back
in Okinawa is like if I put it all on
a spreadsheet, it's an interesting story. The experience of it
as like interstitial between chapters, like cutscenes is for long

(11:54):
periods of times sort of like meaningless. It's like, what
are we getting at here? So he was like in
so Phelps like kind of an asshole? Sure, he's kind
of an asshole. Now what am I learning here? And
it felt like it took too long to tell us
interesting things about his relationship to his old unit, which
you know is the sort of undercurrent of all the
narrative in this game. His old unit stole stuff from

(12:16):
the army supply, like they stole morphine, they got in
the drug business, and like the whole game is about
unraveling the mess that created. And I would say, ultimately
the game feels a little rushed in all areas, Like
everything feels like they kind of just barely got it
off in time. The last cut scenes feel like they're
a little bit like they didn't quite nail it. But
I love the idea. I wish they'd make another one

(12:38):
that was like really polished and they would get rid
of the chase scenes we don't need, and like, really
just focus on if you want us to drive around la,
make that matter. Like if you want us to like
get in fights and stuff, sure, make it matter. Don't
give me like the bare bones, Like, really fill this
out and do it right. And I think that game
would be incredible. This one isn't quite. That's my rent.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Cool is whether I'm writing notes and I'm done, ready
to respond counselor are you cool to pass that controller?

Speaker 3 (13:12):
I'm so cool?

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Oh man, it's still warm and a little sweaty. I
love it.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
When I was truly a kid and could only afford
one controller and we passed it around, that was an
issue where you'd be like, wipe that shit brow Yeah, okay,
player two, plug it in. I don't know why we'd
unplug the same controller we're sharing. Player two going now.
Interesting are as usual, which is happening more so lately

(13:43):
than different passages in the show. And that's okay, But
as is our thing lately, I've noticed I feel like
we observe the same phenomena, But it just comes down
to a difference of taste in like whether we think
that thing is forgivable or not, or that ruins it
or not, or the idea is still good enough to
overcome it or not.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Right, So you're right. I don't disagree as much.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
I do think it's stuck in being a GTA game.
That's only one of the branches of my NOx against it.
And I'm going to sound a little more negative, I think,
because I'm balancing out Adam, so I'll say up top,
I do like the I think what they did is

(14:26):
some kind of full motion video capture and then map
that onto a three D rendered face that's roughly the
shape of the actor's face. I believe that's true after
looking into it a little, and that is fundamentally different
than either modeling something or putting dots on someone face
and capturing it right. It was this weird attempt at
capturing real actors and catapulting how realistic looking at a

(14:47):
CG video game face could feel by Rockstar, and I
actually think, like Adam, they kind of succeeded there, and
it's interesting that we don't copy that more. And I
think that's because we found it, but new better technique
we leap from. We're like, now you can just put
dots on the actor's face and it looks even better.
That's cool, But it's cool that La Noir is this
weird little artifact of It's almost like claymation or something

(15:10):
where they're like, they found a unique way to do
it and it does work, Like the faces when they
look good, look really good. Interestingly, there's artifacts of the process,
like there's a particular guy you talk to whose face
is all blurry on his head, and it's because the
film wasn't recorded what they didn't have a good take
that was in focus right, and they couldn't get the

(15:30):
actor back, so they just plastered the blurry head on
the model. So it's interesting just because it's different than
anything you've ever seen. And the effect for the time
did work. It looked a cut above, Like the acting
looks real in a way that's a cut above. Okay, here,
come on, negatives. I think it's a great idea that
doesn't actually work in practice pretty much at all. There's

(15:51):
multiple reasons, and I'll get through them quickly and then
we'll get into it. One the GTA thing that you
already basically elucidated, which is I didn't need driving portion
at all. As soon as I realize I could skip
the driving portions. I was like, oh, thank god, because
the city's so featureless, it's pointless to drive around it
really is. The shooting's fine, like all Rockstar shooting is fine.
I would have kept the shooting parts though, But also

(16:14):
my point is it had enough stuff. It almost feels
unconfident when you're like, look, there's the interrogations, which is
wholly unique to you. There's investigating the crime scenes, which
is a detective thing but it feels good you did
a good job executing that, and there's shootouts you don't
need driving around. Also, like, I don't know, three things
is enough loops, I think, But I think that kind

(16:35):
of brings it down and I all, but beyond that,
the one thing that's most unique about at the interrogations,
here's my issue is it's based around the It's basically
a whole game based around the trope I like least
in fiction film fiction, which is that you can tell
when someone's lying, because most people you can't. And there's

(16:56):
this thing where actors indicate that they're lying and we
all'll just accept it, but it always bothers me. I'm like,
how would so the character and the thing will want
to indicate to the audience that they're lying, but you
want the person in the scene with them to believe them,
and that's not possible because if they act so big
that the audience can tell they're lying, then it breaks
the reality. To me, well, why doesn't that person in

(17:18):
the scene know that they're lying? Always bothers me, even
though we do it all the time and everyone accepts it.
So since that bothers me, it obviously bothers me that
the game is basically, did this actor act like they're
lying or telling the truth in a very obvious way?
And I would say even in the cases where you're
supposed to accuse them with evidence, meaning the game designers
want you to have thought about it more, they most

(17:40):
of the actors do a really even split between what
it is to tell the truth and what it is
to lie, and you kind of get the vibe of
that too, and it just becomes okay, is this actor
giving me lie truth or middle ground? Because middle ground
means accused with the evidence. But my other issue is
if you reverse that and made it really realistic, like
really great actors giving subtle performances, then the game, my

(18:02):
success would feel totally arbitrary because I'd be like, it
didn't look like you was lying though, So I don't
think this is a game loop that can work, in
my opinion, And I'll compare it to games that I
think owe a lot to it but did a better job,
like Immortality Wolf among us. There's even a contemp like

(18:23):
a Sherlock Holme Sega CD game that I thought, did
this really well. You don't need all the interstitial fucking around.
You could just cut from case to case, which is
something you said, and then the last thing I'll say,
you can take this or leave it, which is great
about life. I mean, the listener, if you've heard the
Call of Duty episodes, I'm definitely I have more trouble

(18:45):
sometimes separating art and artists, and like I'm the one
who will call out Call of Duty for being military
propaganda and it really bothers me, I think more so
than Adam. Not to speak for you, but it's a spectrum.
And so my last harping point, which I'm sure Adam
can predict.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Is it's really racist.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
And I will get into evidence without listing every piece
because there would be too many. But it's also racist
in a way that doesn't say anything about racism other
than granting, yeah, they're corrupt and racist. But even the
heroes are racist in an unexamined way. Almost all the
women you.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Meet are naked, dead bodies, and the cops say stuff
about them like you should have seen her, she was
perfect porcelain on the slab, and you're like, this is
the chief of police saying that the naked dead body
of the murder victim is really sexy. And what it
boils down to is that rock star writers really think
it's cool to be edge lordy, but they don't know

(19:42):
what to do about it.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
They don't know what to do with big themes like that,
And I think that's a real fumble. If you don't
know how to examine intersectional racial issues with tact. Don't
just throw out like epithets that I'm not going to repeat.
Don't just throw don't just write in a lot of
in words and S words and G words and ship
because you're like, it makes it feel adult, it makes
it feel sophisticated.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
They're all racist. Hate that ship, that's my rant.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
That's a great point. Uh. I think we should talk
about that a little bit, because that's an interesting point.
About that time too, But let's not do it yet. Instead,
let's go let's send our audience spiraling with these heavy
accusations into a couple of commercials.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
That's right, you touched, You touched the newspaper, but you
actually accidentally read the ads section.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
This ship is unskippable too.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
Oh god, you can't skip any of them.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
See on the other side, we're back after having listened to,
no doubt, the most stereotypical Southerner in the history set
up video games.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
You don't want to talk about how the actual noir
plot on a spreadsheet is good. So let's cross another
checkpoint and get into game on where we just get
to chat. And I will also just quickly start with
because we mentioned the newspaper thing and it made me realize,
so the unskippable thing was an issue for me. If

(21:18):
you're a completionist like me, like something. We're also covering
another mass effect soon. I really appreciate that you can
mash that square button because in moral games where I'm
really role playing and I'm really fraud and invested, which
is what I assume the game designers want, I ended
up being wrong about some stuff and being like I

(21:38):
can't have this outcome and reloading my save right, And
that became very grating when I realized if I reload
that save, I got to watch a twelve minute movie
that I can't skip. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, that was so strange omission. I think it was
their way of Again, it's they're sort of in this
transitional time before they really had content like continuous accent,
access to good motion capture, so they will beholding to like,
you gotta watch this, you know, like everything depends on
seeing these performances, and like, I mean, I'm defending them.

(22:14):
That's my that's my assessment based on that.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
And dude, that was another thing I wanted to say
in its favors. I actually think this game influenced subtly
Premiere Triple A games. For example. This was early in
that trend and now it's very common, like Gotta War
Ragnark had unskippacable cut scenes. Cause it's like it's as
if Scorsese's in the room saying to you, no, this
is our you fucking watch it. You paid for it,

(22:38):
watch the ship we made. Uh, And it feels adult
and premiere, right, I get it.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
I think that this game was daring inas much as
first of all, this is like a daring idea to
put into a GTA body. I mean, I think we
both agree it doesn't totally work, but it's a daring
idea and that you.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
But I absolutely agree that the idea excel and I
wish more people tried games like this with various styles
and voices.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
Yeah, for sure, greed and like I think it was
proof in some ways for all video games, like we
can do legitimate cinematics, Like you can do a cinematics
story on this level, and like I would say, it's
a dot on that continuum that was important. Here's like
some external evidence for that, just you know, so that
it's not just some claim. This is the first video

(23:27):
game to ever be honored at a film festival for
cinematics and the film festivals Tribeca a not insignificant one.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
So like wait, wait, sorry, when did that happen?

Speaker 3 (23:37):
That happened in two thousand? It was selected, Uh, it
was twenty eleven May.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
But my favorite weird game, which I shouted out on
a recent episode that hasn't landed yet nine the Last
Resort One Tribe Beca and that specifically and that game
came out in ninety six. Boos, one of us is wrong.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Look it up some Okay, I'm looking at it on Wikipedia,
So maybe I'm not correct about that. It was honored
as an official selection. It was the first video game
at Tribeca. That's what it says. I don't know, so
maybe I'm wrong about that.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
I thought nine, but maybe I'm wrong.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah, go, we could both be. The point being, I
think the film industry saw.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
It well, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Mean the point being, the film industry saw this as
a momentous achievement in cinematics is particularly in this medium,
and everybody agrees with that.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
And so because they were coming off that sweet suite
like GTA three was so huge, right, this was a
company that was not the richest and now they're like,
we're one of the richest game companies. What's our big
swing with all our money? And it's cool that they
went with this, although I believe multiple projects were pipelined
at the same time, but regardless, it's cool they tried this.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
For sure, they took seven years to make this game,
so like, you know, this is a this is a
long term effort that you know resulted here. I guess
I'm pointing all that out because I think that's the
thing about it that makes it deserve our convers station,
you know what I mean, Like as far as like
is it is it a larger achievement I think beyond

(25:06):
like on any metric that you and I would normally
evaluate games for, like fun is the story super well told?
I don't think that this game like is a stellar game,
Like I'm wanted to concede that right off the top,
but as an influencer of the art form, it does matter.
Like right now, you play like I was just playing
a Horizon Forbidden West, which, by the way, the cinematics

(25:28):
and that just blow your mind, Like you know, you
keep playing, you blow your mind thinking, yeah, it's not
just pretty. The motion capture of it is incredible under
the umbrella pretty, but yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
It's you realize, like a lot of these games that
decided they can lean this heavily on actors' performances, they
really owe it to this game, you know.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Right, It's it's leaping over that uncanny valley in gaming
and we're not all there yet, and you have to
expend i think to this day, significant resources to do
that and so you really got to appreciate like the
Mortal Kombats of the world who tried ways to be like,
shall make the face because every video game face just
their brows don't move. They look like a mannequin. It's good,

(26:16):
it's fine, we love these games, but can we ever
make it feel like you're talking to a human being?
And I think still today, like only a couple games
a year really do actually successfully right, like playing Jedi
Survivor right now. I'm sure we'll cover it soon, but
I don't think it does it to the degree that
Horizon Forbidden West does it, and it does other things
that have focused on and so it's like even still,

(26:40):
this is rarefied air and that was a long time
ago to be doing very good facial expressions in gaming.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
It's also funny to see how good the facial stuff
looks and then go like, do like a forty five
degree rotation around their heads and see like the women's
hair makes them look like they have like head deformities
and stuff like the facial stuff is far beyond and
their ability in terms of like polygons for like bodies
and stuff.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Oh, it reminded me if anyone knows the Scott Thompson
recurring sketch on kids in the Hallway does the spoonhead celebrities,
because if you're familiar with rock star bodies, they're not
like the most sophisticated models of human bodies. So it's
super like these amazing faces are kind of walking around

(27:24):
on hilarious like stick figure.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
It's almost I mean, it still looked great at the
time in every way.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
You can see the scenes, yeah, I mean yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
I've also played this game four times, and the fourth
this most recent time, which we played for this episode.
I know, I was surprised by that too. It really
stood out how much it has fallen to history, you know,
I mean like history has just moved on like aesthetics
wise in the last you know, couple generations. How sorry,
we go ahead, No, no, I want to hear your question.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
Oh, I was just gonna say, I think I'd like
to talk about a little bit about what the noir
plot was, why it worked or white And Yeah, I
thought it was a good plot, sometimes well dispensed, sometimes
clumsily dispensed. I think it would have been way clearer,
and I don't understand why the first case was not
the actual morphine knockoff at the docks, and that's why

(28:16):
you get tangled up and all this, but you don't
realize it for a while, so it's like the benign hook. Yeah,
just makes more sense. And it was weird how the
last thing was Arson, as I'm sure you were also
waiting to. Yeah, the desks your work seem to be
in an odd order.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
They really wanted to sort of travel through like all
the aspects of a detective, like like what they do,
or like the most substantial detective departments, you know, And
like I get it, and I understand the the why.
That's cool, Like you know, now you're gonna do traffic
cases and that's a different thing than Arson cases. But

(28:53):
really the traffic desk and the Arson desk both feel
just unsatis fine, you know.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
So may I read just a little synopsis I wrote
of what literally the plot is, because I think if
this was a movie, you'd be like, that's a fairly
good noir plot. A gi kid who witnessed a bunch
of horrible shit in the war and legitimately has like
good intentions, you could say, because he knows chemistry, like
recruit some of his down and out vet buddies to

(29:23):
knock off a morphine shipment so he can get vets
aftercare because they can't get it from the state. But
they don't realize that you need to dilute it a
tremendous amount and it starts getting out as into the
economy as they like sell it to like buy things
to the vets, and then there's a rash of overdoses,
so they freak out. He goes to a doctor guy

(29:44):
he knows who is the southern gentleman we referred to
who's obviously like a malicious canniver in the real lynchpin
of the plot, and he knows the mayor and the
chief of police, and they're all in it together and
he's super well connected, and he says, I'll take care
of this for you and just cover it up, and
then sits on the morphine and like slowly releases it.
Uses the money to make more money by buying houses

(30:07):
that he says he's going to give to Vets and
then burning them down for the insurance money, and it
all goes into this police slush fund that everyone's dipping
their beaconto. Like it really rolls up into quote unquote
the whole system is crooked a very smooth, good way.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
Like I liked it.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
And of course Courtney Courtney ends up dead in a
gutter or whatever, and everyone's betrayed except the powerful people,
and you got to bring him down. It's good case.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
That's the case that like undercover whole case right the
moment to moment, you're following a detective who knows that
those guys, by way of having been their commander.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
Who is also counted by his warshit.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
Correct and he you know, we find out he was
not a very good commander, and he made some mistakes,
and he's trying to redeem himself through his like you know,
virtuoso performance as a Los Angeles police detective, and through
a series of like you know, disappointing revelations, comes to
understand that the department is corrupt.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
And you can't redeem himself and he or maybe he
can by sacrificing his life. So he does correct, maybe
that will do it. And forgot to mention the little wrinkle,
which is good gets involved with the fem fatale. His
marriage is ruined, for his reputation is smeared, so he's
literally in the sewer or like you know, figuratively, which

(31:27):
is where the climax takes place and the whole time.
The Southern doctor obviously doesn't burn houses himself, so he
has a mentally ill patient that he's convinced into thinking
he's like avenging the Lord or something by burning all
these houses. He accidentally burns a house with a family
inside and completely snaps, and this leads us to the
climax where you realize he's another guy who is in
your platoon from the war and you try to talk

(31:49):
him down but you can't. It's like, as I described,
but I'm good. It's good stuff, man, it's even as
a homage Telle confidential.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
It's good.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yeah. Then they're stealing from some other thing, but just.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Like Red Dead steals from a Milanja Western stuff that's there.
That's their thing.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
It's well done. Like, let me tell you the points
that I think don't land emotionally, that sort of subtract
a bit from the ethica.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
It kind of glossed over. But now that's the.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
Thing that's the one that really missed, and the reason
it missed is that it doesn't super land for us.
Why our protagonist gets involved with this lounge singer who
is German. It also doesn't totally scan emotionally like oh
she's German. That would seem like a betrayal of America

(32:34):
in nineteen forty seven.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
And you going to his wife at all because there's
essentially no female characters in this who have any like
well rounded development.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
So what are the stakes? You're like, oh, he had
a wife. I didn't even know he had a wife,
And also.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
Like, why is an affair such a big deal because
you don't know that in nineteen forty seven, like that
that was almost a criminal offense or might it was?

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Like I was able to gather that from context and
remember like, yeah, that probably is, or like I believe
them if they say that's that bad, but it is
funny and not rock Star's fault that like you know,
he can shoot a guy in the back because he's
black and he like shotlifted and then they're like, great job, Cole,

(33:17):
and then they're like, you fucked your wife.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Get out. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
The weird double standards are a thing that I think
they're trying to explore. I don't know that they're doing
it super well.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
They're doing it sometimes, and I'm not laying that at
their feet nor am I a person who thinks, And
I do think you should have representation in your creative
team if you're going to represent racial issues. But I
don't think you can't ever like put the inWORD anything right,
like obviously, like Donald Glover can't you know, and I
can't tell, so like my point is, and I don't

(33:55):
need to make myself seem righteously superior by like dunking
point by point. I'll just say that in my estimation,
playing the game for many hours, it was a pattern
of unexamined, of just doing it, not really having anything
to say about it, and trying to earn cool points
in being oblivious to patterns like scrupulously bad patterns like

(34:17):
the uh, let me say, I'll just do one point
that really stuck out to me and then say, and
it went on like this, but but uh uh. The
second case at the train tracks, the first guy you
interview is a black guy who's completely honest and clear.
But it turns out the one correct twist is that
even though you can't prove he took money out of

(34:38):
a wallet, you're you're supposed to be a bad cop
and say he did anyway, And it turns out that
he did. And then the third case is immediately you
interview an old man and he says, three Mexicans did it,
and the correct answer is yes, that's true, good cop.
And then you later murder those Mexicans and the You know,
my point is the writers controlled that it was true.

(34:59):
They made it so some Mexicans did do it, and
it turns out it's the case of a young Mexican
man who's being hassled by a serial rapist and the
rapist gets away and you arrest the young man and
you seem fine with that, and your chief is like,
good job, Cole. So anyway, it just goes on like
that in a way where I realized and it was true,

(35:20):
I had more success in the game on average when
I realized I was role playing as a racist cop like.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Cole is also a race.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
They want you to think the.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
World is racist, and I don't know how comfortable I
am with that.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
If you are, you can play it. If you aren't,
it might bother you. I'm just saying, well, it is like.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
I don't disagree with you at all about anything you said.
I found, in particular the case where you are investing
the console's car to really be like not a very
well examined thought about racism. So I would say this
game sort of subscribes to the mad Men's school of
problematic issues. And what I mean by that is, if

(35:58):
we put it in there, we've said some thing about it.
And sometimes they're saying something about it in a direct way,
and sometimes it's kind.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Is it's a period piece reflecting the reality of the time.
You can't touch us.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
Yeah, I mean yeah, I or they or they diludedly
but honestly felt that they were saying something by including it.
I would say they do a better job on the
whole addressing misogyny then they do race. I think the
race stuff. They don't really have a lot of commentary there,
and consequently they inadvertently sort of support they do.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
Okay, So I want to hear you speak on this,
just because what do you say about the like their
fixation seemingly on the homicide thing is like just mutilated
naked lady after mutilated naked Well, they're all they're.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
All black Dahlias, you know what I mean. Like that's
like if one guy who's killed, I mean, I agree
that it's really upsetting. You never see a male victim
in the homicide desk ever ever right, and it's like
it's it's a bummer, like in those cases are a
bummer in that way. And I don't know if that
I don't know is that instantly wrong. I mean, they
do the they do the kind of justification that they

(37:04):
should do when they're talking about how all these patriarchal
forces are oppressing women and they get victimized and nothing gets.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
Fixed and they.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
And Cole ultimately comes to the resolution that he's irredeemable,
but not because he was racist, Like he never even
thinks about that.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
No, No, the race part. That's I think that critique
like can stand un like without any context. For me,
I think you're one hundred percent right. I felt it
when I was playing it this time, was like, oh,
this is not in particularly the console's car one is
very upsetting.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
And I'm actually not about like trying to earn limitless
righteousness points.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
I'll stop there.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
But I also thought, uh, it was interesting that his
name is Cole Phelps because Cole is what you give
a bad person and Phelps is like police helps.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
So I bet that was intentional.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
No. Actually, the last thing I'm gonna say is I
think it's I think it's like an offensive joke.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
Man.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
To me, this is how I navigate. Everything is unique. Unfortunately,
if you're dealing with offense and trying to be an
empathetic person, everything's a complicated prospect most things. So it
is what it is. It's an equation or like it's
a formula. So with an offensive joke or storytelling, that's edgy,
and the authors are like.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
I didn't mean anything bad by it.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
You have to experience the whole thing and decide if
you think it carried its own weight, like was the
message valid enough to counterbalance the unpressingness of blah blah blah,
And it's.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Just not for me and recks.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
There's stuff usually I've talked before, like GTA five the
script had the most n words of like anything in
the history main kind, and it was written by two
white guys, and I think that's weird, but maybe you don't.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
And with this issue and also after this, like they
made that game after this game, no no, And so
just for the record, I'm not arguing with this single
thing you said. And what I'm doing is what I'm
trying to say how I felt the game did or
did not comment on these issues, Like I don't think

(39:12):
they did comment on race issues. I think that they
or they did a little bit, but not much. And
I think it's really hard to justify that. You know,
somebody maybe can, I'm not going to. I think I
also don't know the value of of even if you
say something about it, like pointing out relentlessly that misogyny

(39:32):
is a thing. I mean, and that's what they did,
and pointing out the police corruption and brutality is a thing,
and they did point that out.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Relentlessly beat women at every chance they get and talk
about He's like, it's an emergency, where's that guy? And
the Secretary's like, I don't know, and he just punches
are in the It's a pretty funny scene since they're
just polygons.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
It's I mean, the things that your partners say about
women are are all like man man like, it's really
gnarly and like they have a they have a there's
a molestation case that happens on the track of the
thing that.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Was glossed over is you could find this little thing
or not find it, and if you find it, they're
like that guy you busted for grand theft auto he
also had like a twelve year old girl as a
sex slave.

Speaker 4 (40:21):
Right, You're like, okay, whoa okay, yeah all right, yeah, so,
like I don't know, the game is definitely like as
all no our stories do direate to the shitty stuff
that is.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
True to the surface.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Everyone's a piece of shit. Yeah, that's part of the genre.
That's part of that.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
And I'm yeah, this is not a defense. I'm just
explaining how I feel, like what I thought about it.
Like I we're safe, Okay, it's forecast, so people need
to hear that. I feel that I would not make this.
I would not sign off on this now if I
was the creator, I didn't feel that way in twenty eleven.

(41:02):
I think, you know, so I in some way my
sensibility has evolved, and I think socially our sensibility has
evolved a little bit. It's it feels, uh, it's not
enough to just put stuff in a game and say,
you know, that's how life was. Yeah, but you know
you're still putting it in there. So so you know,
if you make a meaningful comment about.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
It, if that logic doesn't compel you, I do highly
recommend an explainer viit on YouTube called lampshading and the
Big Bang Theory, which explains this phenomenon so that we
don't have to get into it very well.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
But I yeah, so again, just to say one more
time for the record, I do think the game is
trying to make the point that the police are were
always corrupted, especially in this time, that they were constantly
trying to find ways to beat up on the low
lifes of society put low lives and quotes, and that
includes people who don't are unhoused, people with mental illness,

(41:56):
includes people of color, like the police were intentionally in
the game's logic oppressing those people and accusing them of
crimes they didn't commit.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
From the game is since when does the LAPD care
about black men getting murdered?

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Oh, you're right, we don't.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
That's a direct quote. It's wild. So like, you know,
I don't know. They are trying to say something. Is
it enough? That's the question, you know, right, I can
move on to another point if that's okay. Oh, by
the way, I think I'm ready. The ball station case
really bummed me out, Like I thought it.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Was comically glossed over it first being such a high stakes, like.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Whoa Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
So yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
Would you like this game better if it was point
and click.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
No, Like I'm saying, Wolf among Us is the perfect analogue.
They kind of refined it down to its base elements. Yeah,
if there weren't, if they didn't even try to have
driving stuff, and it just went case case case, I
would find it really compelling. Actually, and I didn't like
how often they relied on good cop, bad cop, especially
bad cop to just hunch or bully people under the truth.

(43:03):
If it was like eighty percent, you had to deduce
the connections between the evidence and what they said and
actually disprove them. That's more fun for me, and I
understand their reasoning. Their thought is probably being a real cop.
It's more eighty twenty the other way, you're usually i'll
guessing on a hunch and trying to get people to
break so you can use that confession against the person

(43:24):
in the other room.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Totally.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
I bet that's more realistic of being a detective. But
for my money, to be a fun puzzle game what
tickles my brain, I would love an le noir game
with no driving, exact same kinds of setups, but way
more evidence and puzzle base. So like I briefly alluded
to the earliest game I can remember, like this was
there was a Sherlock Holmes game on Sega CD where

(43:48):
you would just, oh, you know it, you would just
several rounds the area of London. It was all full
motion video, so still real actors, and you had to
tell whether people were lying, but never based on the
actors performance they had.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
They didn't, you know. The deav seemingly didn't even think
of that.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
It's all clues.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
It's based on the clues and what they say indexed
with the reality of the clues.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
That's more fun for me. Less realistic though.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
Yeah, and also less the experience they're trying to deliver,
which is what if you were playing a noir movie,
I like more than trying, Like, I don't think they're
delivering what it's it like to be a cop or
even a forties cop. I think they're delivering. Sorry, are
you playing a noir film? This is what that is.
I do want to say one other thing, but go

(44:31):
ahead and make your point.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Well, I was just gonna say I think that's part
and parcel with why. Another thing I didn't like about
it was that no matter what no matter how many
you could be wrong every time, Yes, and you would
still inevitably barrel ahead towards the end of the case,
and sometimes you'd rest the wrong person, but sometimes you
always get the right person no matter what, Like, it
doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Most of the cases don't have a right person.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
Right because oh because at the end, the whole reveal
is this crazy guy's been doing it the whole time.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
That's accurate. But my point being, I think you already
absorbed it. I would like to fail out if I
was wrong and do it again. That's my sentiment. Yeah, agreed.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
I think that the system they used to guide the
interrogations is was not didn't quite work. It was almost there,
but it didn't quite work. And I know that they
know that because they actually changed what those things were
labeled in their remaster. Originally, the three options that you
have to investigate like an interrogation were truth, doubt, and lie,

(45:36):
like so are they telling the truth of you out there?
And they changed it to good cop, bad cop accusation,
meaning that it wasn't clear to people from those three
buttons what action to take down on me? Right, Yeah,
and they wanted to make it clearer. I think narratively, like, oh,
this is the action the Kopp is taking based on

(45:59):
what they've told you, not whether you can trust them
or not. So because like sometimes truth isn't necessarily about
like did they tell you the truth? But are they talking?
Like are they are they being cooperative or not? Like
they couldn't make those distinctions, those graining their distinctions clear.
Another thing that happens a lot in this game is

(46:21):
they want you to accuse somebody of a lie, but
they didn't say something that was directly a lie, like
a provable lie. So what you do is you accuse
them of a lie. You say I don't like, I
don't buy it, and then the character responds with, why
don't you prove this other thing that that is the
actual lie? Right, So like what they always say they
want or but let's see you prove and then you're

(46:43):
proving actually a different thing was a lie than what
they said. So like sometimes you're in these trees and
you don't really know which thing they want you to pick,
and the only way is to try the wrong thing
and it works out.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
The star always does, like I'm surprised there wasn't wasn't
a paperwork mini game, like they try to do too
much and they can't nail every aspect there are. The
seams are very on the surface with Rockstar, but it's fun,
you know, but it's still fun, Like like I thought
it was so funny how over and over I'm like,

(47:16):
you couldn't quality test this and be like, we need
to fix that because I skipped all the driving portions,
which you do by like holding X next to the
passenger seat. Every time, I'd have the same broken, nonsensical
conversation where my partner would go, we better get over
to this location and I immediately go, okay, let's go,
and they go, where are we going? And I'm like, bitch,

(47:37):
you just said where? And yeah, we laboriously walk from
the driver's seat around to the passenger side and get in,
and it's like everything's so comically nut belabored.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
It's belabored.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah they.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
I do feel like this game, no matter how many
times they remaster it or whatever touch it up, it
does feel like it didn't totally get finished. Like like
it does feel like they needed at least one more
cycle a polish to really make all the interactions smooth.
Like sometimes, for instance, you're holding up an object and

(48:13):
like that object is a clue, but if you don't
hold it at the correct angle, the zoom thing doesn't happen.
And you're like, come on, man, like I know this.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Is a clue, you know, like, yeah, man, just start
like one. I forget what it is.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
But I'm like, because the clues that aren't clues because
they do have red herrings, you end up seeing them cycle.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
So like, that's right.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
You know, a cigarette box and a can are always
not clue. They're just to try it. But yeah, one time,
so there was like a key with a ribbon on it,
not really I forget what, but specific enough where I'm like,
I know you're a clue.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
I turn it over and over and over and it
won't go like you just said.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
And I spend like forty five minutes fucking around. I
finally cave and look it up and they're like, yeah,
it's on that key, and I go back and I
just do it and longer, and it finally clicks, and
I'm like, fuck you, Like that is a Yeah, that's
quite a hard thing to come back from in terms
of your enjoyment of the game.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
I agreed.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
So I also next the hour.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
I mean it's frustrating. I also want to say, uh,
the original game was released without I want to say
they had like five or six DLC cases something like that.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
I played them. Yeah, I played them all.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
I think the DLC cases in Isolation are all fun
in some way or the other, but they really really
ruin the larger game.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
They pay Yes for example, yeah, like you end up
with things because there's a new story beat chimmeyed in
where Cole goes towards the end of the third act,
like you just found out who the serial killer Burner
of Children is or whatever, and you're like, we gotta
go now, and then it cuts and it's like, hey,
you should do this other unrelated case that's just beginning now.

(49:52):
We just have a dead body and we don't know
anything about it, and you calmly go about doing that
and you're.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Like, what's going on?

Speaker 2 (49:58):
It makes it seem like a TV show you're watching
out of order, or like you missed a beat.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
The most egregious of them is they they really wanted
to get a Spruce Goose case, like they thought that
was so cool. Sure, okay, so like you're really zeroing
in on like the end of the narrative. You've been
playing this game for thirty hours or whatever. It's in
the third act, like we're chasing bad guys and like,
you know, dodging the law and stuff, and then there's
like a nuclear sized explosion in the middle of Los

(50:25):
Angeles because of this like that's airline drift and you're like.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
The meat packing plant blew up and you're like, I
was wrapping up my whole Yeah, thing that.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Would have been Chernobyl, Like that would have dramatically changed
history if that had happened, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Like it's uh, it's just one of those things where
it's explosion of nineteen forty seven.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
Yeah, they wanted to. They want to deliver the fun
of spruce goose and a wild goose chase and this
guy's ex military and and like espionage and shit, like
they want to do that. But if you play it
now and you can't remove the cases, it destroys the
continuity of the original game that was better paced, like

(51:06):
it was beef it did. You should have seen it right,
exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
I think we're ready to thoughts.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
Yeah, Okay, let's let's put the siren on and we'll
hustle over to our next case. On the other side
of the break.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
We are back with our final segment, and I also
passing out the checkpoint.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Thank you editor for adding that effect later.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
I also wanted to say, speaking of sirens as you
were before the ads, funny that in a game with
so many failed states, like if you hit a pedestrian,
if you damage your car too much, act too weird
or not like a cop aim your gun, it a
bunch of you know yeah uh, you could roll up
to where you know a suspect is hold up with

(52:04):
your sirens blaring and they wouldn't notice. I thought that
was very funny, so I did it every time.

Speaker 3 (52:09):
It just really yeah. Like the again, the GTA pieces
of this game didn't work very well like I like,
for instance, did you ever have a good time running
down a criminal like the running stuff you know on foot?

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (52:25):
No, me neither, and so the one so like if
you were doing it even Wolf of Wall Street, Wolf
among Us style, I would maybe have a couple sections
where you drive a car and run someone off the road.
That was fun, and your partner shoots out the tires.
That was kind of a fun mini game. Yeah, but
not driving to get to the location, nor the running
on foot to get to catch tackle someone. Fuck that,

(52:48):
because it's if you've played any GTA Rockstar game, you
know it's mash X to Run, which I still think
is even in GTA five. You're like, this feels so dated.
I got to continuously press something to sprint.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
Yes, I agree. I completely agree with you. I think, yeah,
they're never going to make another. They're not going to
make Elle Noir too, because this studio was disbanded like
almost immediately after the game is released, which is sure,
oh yeah, we know that's in development. Elle nor I
could have been a really great game, Like there is
a version of that. It could be awesome at least,

(53:24):
I know it. Really, it's going to bother me to
the day I die. All right, well, here we are,
keep her delete. We've already passed the checkpoint. So, Mike,
I feel like yours the least surprising. Do you want
to go first? Do you feel this tack at least
is worth preserving.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
For its Let's put it this way.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
I think, well, I'm gonna say more strongly than I
mean for comedic effect.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Listen to the episode.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
You know my opinion but I think in the end,
i'd recommend watching Eli Confidential over playing El l a
noir and it stars a rapist. No, but they're both
fine media products. Well that's a delete, Adam.

Speaker 3 (54:07):
Well, I like Confidential is fantastic for those of you
who have never seen it. It's a wonderful film.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Yeah, keep hush hush, very cute tea.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Yeah great, I love it so much.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
Yeah, I love this game like it's it's everything I
love out of like case stuff, you know, and you
get we all.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Know that generally.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
Yeah, I love noir stuff. I don't think it's a
good enough game to keep. Uh, And I wish it.
I wish it was. I wish it was, and I
think it's one of my favorites, although I don't know
if i'll play it again because I got tired of
it this time and I was like, you know.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
What one of your favorite replay its comfort Reach.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've replayed it a bunch of times,
I I but I yeah, it's just not good enough.
It's just not executed at that level or or as
consistently fun as it could be, which is a shame.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
I like when you bad cop a lady with lady.
If you don't tell me what I want to know,
I'll put you and your baby in jail. I do
not think that's how that works. They're gonna put your
baby in jail because you committed a crime.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
There's a used car salesman that keep it in the forties.
There's a used car salesman that throws like eight or
nine one liners, and they're all really dumb. The first
one being walked this way and he does a wacky
ass walk with those fats right excelated legs, and you're like,
all right, man, let's cut to the chase. Is a
long game, like what are we doing here?

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (55:31):
Yeah, I didn't love him. He also called the female
suspect as sharp as a bag.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
Of mice, and you're as full of crap as a
Christmas case comes up at one point.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well we had a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
You got our big old swing in Double D's rack Starlite,
we out on our sunnglasses, motorcycle, dust cloud boom.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Taking her space or a space police car. Uh No,
I a lot of fun. Wish it. I wish we
could have kept it, Mike, I does it for us
for today, don't you.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Except for plugs.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
If you want to hear our other stuff, type small
Beans into wherever you get podcasts, then you'll get our
free feed where we do a bunch of other shows
on very sure media topics, and then if you end
up liking the free feed, we have bonus series about
even other other things at patreon dot com Slash small
Beans that includes shows about directing as an art form,

(56:27):
the works of Steven Spielberg and the show Star Trek
and Futurama sort of paired together in combination, and other stuff.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
Buddy, I love our ride alongs see good app Yeah,
shang work completely ha