L.A. Noire releases 1947 Edition Crime Map

Rockstar Games is really ramping things up as we draw ever-closer to the eagerly-anticipated release of L.A. Noire later this month. Today's treat comes to us in the form of the L.A. Noire 1947 Edition Crime Map, produced in collaboration with the L.A. Times.

While creating the game, Team Bondi sat down and read through reams of newspapers from back in the day - including every single issue of the L.A. Times from January 1st until December 31st 1947. This included "countless" true-crime reports, and dozens of inspiring tidbits that have all added up to the fictionalised cases now included in the game.

As we pace nervously waiting for the game to arrive, why not take a moment to browse through the L.A. Noire 1947 Edition Crime Map, lovingly compiled by both Rockstar Games and the L.A. Times archives group?

Not only will you find the original cases which inspired The Red Lipstick Murder and A Marriage Made in Heaven, but you'll also find other cases which range from the fascinating to the frightening.

• 72-year-old oil man, E.J. Miley, who picked up three hitchhiking youths as he left on a drive from LA up to Fresno. The trio were petty thugs who thought they had an easy mark on their hands...
• A pair of weightlifting rivals in Pacific Palisades who agreed to head to the gym to “settle the question of superiority”, but it winds up being far from a fair lift-off...
• A horrible account of a young, disturbed returning veteran who, with no warning or apparent cause, murdered his bride and himself at his in-laws house one evening...
• Acrobat burglars who broke into a market by ripping off a skylight, chopped a hole in the ceiling, and slid down a pole to make off with $2500 in cash (yes, that was a LOT back then) along with several hundred pounds of meat – but not before stopping to apparently chug several quarts of milk.

Criminals these days just ain't what they used to be (with some notable exceptions).

You can read the original clippings from the 1947 editions of the L.A. Times, plus follow where they happened on a map of the area. Take a look, it's all on the game's website: http://www.latimes.com/lanoire - and there are more on the way!

Also on the topic of L.A. Noire, it seems that pre-release information isn't the only thing we'll be getting an abundance of. Thanks to the serious amount of voice acting and facial capture included in the game, it's going to be a pretty hefty end product. So hefty that while it will fit happily on one 25GB single-layer BluRay disc, you'll be picking up three DVDs for the Xbox 360 version to play the same content.

Fingers crossed that this means the gameplay itself is also pretty significant, and that they're not dedicating that much real estate to simply make things look awesome.

Article Details

• published: May 5th, 2011
• by: Jessica Citizen
• in: Company: Rockstar Games, Company: Team Bondi, Game: L.A. Noire
• comments: 0

Author Bio:

I like video games, fishing, Depeche Mode, long walks on the beach, writing discussion papers and cups of tea. Not necessarily in that order.

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