After the success of Bully, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Red Dead Redemption, where could Rockstar Games go next? At the time, Max Payne 3 and the open-world giant GTA 5 were still years away. The answer came in the form of a trip to 1940s Los Angeles, where players hunted killers, chased robbers, and uncovered police corruption.
Released on May 17, 2011, at 15 years old, L.A. Noire continues to attract new fans. In November 2017, Virtuos brought the game to Nintendo Switch, marking it as the studio's and Rockstar Games' first release on Nintendo's handheld system. I spoke with Andy Fong, Jake DiGennaro, and Jeremie Boehm about the game's development and which Rockstar title they would most like to port next.
While we're celebrating L.A. Noire's legacy, I think it's important to shed light on the Nintendo Switch port. It feels like sorcery to see it running on the handheld, especially on something as lightweight hardware-wise as the Switch Lite. Cruising along at a sturdy 30fps, it's an uncompromised version of the game that holds up well. For Virtuos, despite cutting its teeth in big IPs for other platforms, L.A. Noire is a crucial turning point.
"Bringing an iconic title like L.A. Noire to the Switch, particularly during such a pivotal moment for the platform, was one of the more energizing projects we took on leading up to the Switch's launch. This wasn't a straightforward port. L.A. Noire has a legacy that demands respect, and we took that seriously. We ensured we had people in the room who understood the soul of the game, not just its technical architecture, but also its intent," Jake DiGennaro, chief delivery officer of Virtuos, shares with me.
There's something different in the air about L.A. Noire, and much of that identity comes from Team Bondi. Before the studio closed, it employed former Team Soho developers, the team behind The Getaway series. Their attention to detail and talent for creating believable, lived-in worlds clearly shaped L.A. Noire. Without The Getaway, the game likely would not exist in the same form. Today, few developers would take the same risks The Getaway did. The series boldly used real-world brands throughout its open-world version of London and portrayed street violence with an unfiltered style inspired by gangster films.
This authentic approach is all over L.A. Noire's atmosphere. From the ashtrays in interrogation rooms to the cheap suits LAPD detectives wear. But it's also a game with, at the time, revolutionary facial scan technology and a unique gameplay hook. Reading faces, listening to voice cadences, and making deductions is still a fantastic thrill. To make it work on the Nintendo Switch, technical director Andy Fong expresses that "compared to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the Switch's CPU and GPU are indeed less powerful, so we invested significant effort into performance optimization […] the GPU was a primary bottleneck, and we aimed to reduce its workload while improving how the game processed visible objects on screen."
On a deeper level, Fong says that the studio "enhanced rendering performance by adopting a voxel-based occlusion culling system and breaking down overly merged meshes to improve culling granularity. These optimizations enabled us to reduce GPU time at a small CPU cost." In simpler terms, Fong says the team improved the game's performance by making the graphics engine smarter about what it needed to render on screen. The game stopped wasting power drawing objects the player couldn't actually see, and the developers also split large environmental models into smaller pieces so the system could hide them more efficiently when they were out of view.
It's one of the oldest tricks in the book: out of sight, out of mind. Although L.A. Noire's Nintendo Switch port preserves a lot of the original experience, it also adds a few new touches. Senior executive producer, Jeremie Boehm, gives me an insight into that aspect. "Our approach to production was guided by the direction to keep the game's atmosphere intact while enhancing it wherever possible within the possibilities of the Switch hardware. A key advantage we had was having an art director from the original production team, who knew exactly where to focus our improvements while respecting the performance budget."
Fong goes on to explain that Virtuos learned a huge amount while bringing L.A. Noire to Nintendo Switch, especially since it was the studio's first release on the platform. Early in development, the team split into two groups: one worked on improving the game's rendering on PC, while the other focused on getting the game running properly on Switch development hardware, and it wasn't without obstacles. One of the first major challenges came from the game originally being built as a 32-bit application. The team realized they needed to upgrade it to a 64-bit system so the Switch could make full use of its available memory.
I ask about how Virtuos came to work on the project. While the exact details aren't shared with me, DiGennaro has nothing but praise for Rockstar Games. "We'd long admired Rockstar. The level of craft, care, and ambition they bring to every title they touch is exceptional. So when Nintendo opened the door to exploring a collaboration, we didn't hesitate," he says. It's a return to Nintendo territory, too, for Rockstar Games. Before L.A. Noire, the developer's last game on a Nintendo platform was Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars in 2009.
"What surprised us, in the best possible way, was how quickly we found our footing together. There was a near-instant chemistry with the team at Rockstar: a shared language around quality and a mutual respect for what this game meant to players. That kind of alignment doesn't always happen, and when it does, it makes all the difference," DiGennaro says. Fong adds to his comments, as he reiterates that "we were very privileged to work on L.A. Noire and gained valuable experience developing for the Switch along the way."
Whichever way you play it, L.A. Noire is beloved to this day. There's still a fervent playerbase looking for a sequel, which we came very close to with the spiritual successor, Whore of the Orient. Yeah, it's a pretty awful title for a game, but another police procedural set in 1930s Shanghai had potential.
On the game's appeal, DiGennaro reckons that "the pairing of neo-noir and detective genres remains underserved in games today, and I think that's part of what makes L.A. Noire so enduring. It draws from a rich tradition of mid-century crime fiction and cinema, evoking a world of moral ambiguity, atmosphere, and psychological tension that feels almost cinematic in a way most games don't attempt."
Aside from working on L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files, Virtuos hasn't worked on any other Rockstar Games ports. Instead, the studio's work can be seen on versions of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Its biggest project to date, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, launched last year. However, I naturally want to know if the team is keen to work on any Rockstar titles.
Fong reveals that the Virtuos "team is eager to adapt Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 for the Nintendo Switch. We're personally big fans and believe these games can shine again on the Switch, delighting even more players." I'd like a 60fps console patch for RDR2 before that happens. I'll keep dreaming.