The ambitious open-ended adventure game LA Noire is quite a huge title.
In fact, the file size of the game is so big that during development, it filled up six entire DVDs for the Xbox 360. “We’ve always been called stupidly ambitious … we make very big games,” said developer Team Bondi representative Brendan McNamara in an interview with the Official Xbox Magazine.
“It’s the biggest map that we’ve done and that Rockstar have done, so there’s a lot of detail in there, and also a lot of actor’s performances – 21 hours worth,” he continued.
LA Noire is designed to be as much of a cinematic experience as it is a powerful gaming experience. The game has employed brand new technology to increase the realism of digital characters, down to a sophisticated new way to animated facial expressions.
Although it is such an enormous game, with enhanced compression technology, the team was able to reduce the Xbox 360 size down to three discs. But, “It took a lot of effort to get down to three discs,” McNamara said.
Nevertheless, this highlights that despite the Xbox 360’s “future-proof” Internet connectivity, the system is still starting to be outdated. The PS3’s version of LA Noire is just one disc, without any compression issues, because the PS3 uses Blu-ray Discs.
Additionally, it’s widely believed the next version of the Wii – to be unveiled next month – will also operate on Blu-ray media. That would leave the 360 as the only one still using DVD discs, and despite the advancements Microsoft has made with the format, it is still a last-generation medium.
