L.A. Noire Needs a Remake Before It Gets Left in the Dust

I keep thinking about Cole Phelps, motion-captured sweat and all, asking me if I believe that alibi. It's been 14 years since L.A. Noire was released, and it has never had a proper follow-up. If Rockstar has any interest in preserving its legacy beyond GTA and Red Dead, this is the moment to strike. A full L.A. Noire remake — not just a 4K touch-up — could be massive.

While everyone’s dissecting GTA 6 trailers and dreaming of chaos in Vice City, let’s go back to 2011. L.A. Noire wasn’t just a genre experiment — it was a tech flex. The motion scanning used to capture facial performances was cutting-edge, even if it often wandered into uncanny valley territory. You didn’t just shoot your way through cases like in GTA. You had to think. You had to read faces. You had to interrogate suspects and cross-reference evidence. It brought slow-burn detective work into an open-world format, and that was wild at the time.

But that tech didn’t age well. The stiff animations now feel more awkward than revolutionary. The exaggerated lip curls and eyebrow twitches were groundbreaking in 2011. Today? They’ve become memes. “Press X to Doubt” is almost more iconic than the game itself.

“X to Doubt” became a meme for a reason: it was clunky, but the core idea was brilliant.

What if you could bring that same mechanic back — but powered by current-gen tech? Imagine what Rockstar could do now with Unreal Engine 5 or their updated RAGE engine. Subtle expressions. Natural motion. AI-assisted conversation trees. Instead of guessing if a guy is lying because he won’t make eye contact, you could actually second-guess because the performance is believable.

Because L.A. Noire Fits This Cultural Moment

Detective fiction is booming again. From Knives Out to The Batman to The Case of the Golden Idol, players and viewers want to solve things. L.A. Noire was ahead of its time, and the world’s finally caught up. Games like Disco Elysium, Pentiment, and Return of the Obra Dinn all pushed narrative investigation forward in unique directions. Rockstar already has a blueprint. They just need to update the chassis.

Even GTA 6's story, as we know it, is leaning on Bonnie-and-Clyde-style narrative crime. A revived L.A. Noire could bring back the old-school noir flavour GTA doesn’t care for — grimy streets, 1940s jazz, cigarette smoke in every cutscene. It’s not just about mechanics. It’s about tone. L.A. Noire had that in spades.

The Detective Game Landscape in 2025

To show where L.A. Noire fits, here’s a table of iconic detective-style games. These aren’t just whodunits — they’re titles that make you feel like you're actively solving cases:

L.A. Noire was the only one that married blockbuster production value with serious sleuthing. Most others go for minimalism or abstract mechanics. Rockstar could bring the prestige back into play.

What Would a Remake Actually Fix?

Let’s be honest: the original L.A. Noire had problems. Besides the interrogation system, the open world felt empty. Los Angeles looked authentic, but there wasn’t much to do beyond driving to your next crime scene. Gunplay was decent but forgettable. Case structure got repetitive by the end. And Cole Phelps? Not exactly a relatable protagonist.

But that’s all fixable.

• Better writing could give Cole real depth — or they could reboot the story with a new detective entirely.
• Modern city design could bring LA to life with dynamic events, unsolved cases, and side stories.
• More flexibility in investigations — let the player actually fail or go down false leads, not just pick the “right” facial twitch.
• New cases based on real history — imagine a noir retelling of the Black Dahlia murder or the Zoot Suit Riots.

Even the interrogation mechanic could be smarter. Combine motion capture with procedural dialogue, context-sensitive reactions, or even real-time branching based on evidence you missed. The doubt system doesn’t need to be a meme anymore.

GTA 6 launches in May 2026. That gives Rockstar an entire year to do something else, especially since Red Dead Redemption 3 won’t be around for a while. A surprise L.A. Noire remake reveal at The Game Awards later this year would break the internet. And it doesn’t even have to be a sequel (though we’d take that too). Just a full rebuild with modern systems. Make us feel like detectives again.

There’s a reason players are still making tribute videos, memes, and mods for L.A. Noire. There’s a reason it keeps coming up in "underrated Rockstar games" lists. It tried something no other AAA game had done before—or since. It didn’t stick the landing perfectly, but the ambition was unmatched.

GTA is chaos. Red Dead is freedom. L.A. Noire was control. Tight, investigative, moment-by-moment decision-making. It's a different energy entirely, and Rockstar needs that contrast more than ever.

So while everyone’s lining up to preorder GTA 6, I’ll be over here waiting to press X for a remake.