Here’s a cool thing to play around with while you wait for May 17 to arrive, and with it, Rockstar Games‘ long-awaited open-world period police procedural — no, really… that’s basically what it is — L.A. Noire. The game’s developer, Team Bondi, teamed up with The Los Angeles Times, specifically its Archives group, to create a special interactive map of L.A., the L.A. Noire 1947 Edition Crime Map.
The map is actually an offshoot of the LA Times’ own Crime Map project, which reports on present-day crimes and related statistics using data from the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The L.A. Noire map is quite a bit cooler, largely because it doesn’t present such a chilling picture of certain neighborhoods in present-day Los Angeles.
The idea is the same though: using an interactive map, you explore 1947 L.A. and learn about various crimes committed in the city during that time. Team Bondi conducted extensive research in putting together the story for the upcoming game, and many of the crimes protagonist Cole Phelps investigates are based on real-life events. The map actually links to scans of the original stories as they appeared in the paper at the time, a very nice touch. There’s some wild stuff in there, like the story of acrobat burglars who made off with $2,500 and “several hundred pounds of meat,” but not before drinking down several quarts of milk.
Expect more stories to be added to the site as the game’s May 17 release draws closer.
