Rockstar Games announced that L.A. Noire is coming to the Nintendo Switch for the very first time, starting November 14th this fall. The game will also receive a couple of other renditions due out on November 14th, including a new VR outing and a remaster for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Over on the official Rockstar website they announced that L.A. Noire was coming to the Nintendo Switch, and that it would feature gyroscopic controls and HD rumble support, allowing for gesture-based motions and even touchscreen support for when it’s in portable mode. All of the previously released DLC will also be made available, including some minor tweaks and improvements to take full advantage of Nintendo’s newest hardware.
Xbox One and PS4 owners will also be able to pick up a remastered version of the game in November, which includes native 1080p support for the eighth-gen twins, along with improved lighting, upgraded shaders, and new cinematic camera angles. For those of you who have an Xbox One X or PS4 Pro, the game will support 4K rendering.
And finally, HTC Vive owners will be able to play L.A. Noire in a new VR mode where it features seven of the game’s case files reformatted for use with VR headsets. I suspect that they will later add support for the Oculus Rift, but I’m guessing they’re going with the Vive first since it’s the most powerful and allows for full room-scale support.
The VR addition seems like it’s just going to be a tacked on experience to what the game already was, but the addition to the Switch is a nice touch.
While I’m not originally that fond of remastered games being re-released so soon after the initial games came out, I do think that L.A. Noire was underrated for how well it utilized the MotionScan technology and actually aimed to push video games forward. The technology wasn’t really viable for long-term support, and it was way too expensive. But alterations of that tech were made and were optimized for use in other ways, so that we could see how it was improved for better compact compatibility on higher-end systems and via middleware, such as Ninja Theory’s new plugin for the Unreal Engine 4, which accomplishes a similar level of fidelity without requiring a massive amount of equipment, and it could work alongside motion-capture performances for a total performance-capture session without having to separate the two the way they did with L.A. Noire.
The Frostbite also supports what DICE calls “4D scanning”, which allows them to capture facial data that can be used in real-time runtime environments, as depicted in games like Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 1.
Anyway, you can look for L.A. Noire to launch this fall (again) for the Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and HTC Vive.
