‘L.A. Noire’ developer Team Bondi sleeps with the fishes, but the ‘Whore of the Orient’ may live on

By Anthony John Agnello Published April 18, 2013

Controversial L.A. Noire director announces new game, ‘Whore of the Orient’ — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The years have not been kind to Team Bondi. Nearly a decade ago, it appeared that the Australian studio was primed to be one of the trendsetters on Sony’s still mysterious PlayStation 3 thanks to its beguiling L.A. Noire. Brendan McNamara’s studio took more than six years to finish that game though, and when it finally did release to critical acclaim, it also left the studio savaged by layoffs and embroiled in legal disputes with its partner Rockstar Games. While things seemed to be on the mend at Team Bondi in 2012, the studio’s fate as of April 2013 is grim indeed.

MCV Pacific reported that Team Bondi, still hard at work on the next-gen title Whore of the Orient, was laid off from its current owners Kennedy Miller Mitchell. KMM is the multimedia production company owned in part by George Miller, the famous film director behind Happy Feet and the Mad Max series. The production company brought Team Bondi into the fold in August 2012, announcing that it was backing the production of the 1930s noir, Whore of the Orient, a game that had never been described outside of a press release and some concept art. Rumors suggest that Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment initially planned to publish the game on PC and presumably the PlayStation 4 and Next Xbox in 2015, but the publisher backed away late last year.

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As of this writing, KMM has yet to officially comment on whether or not the Team Bondi staff is still employed, but it did say that the game isn’t dead quite yet. “Whore of the Orient is a unique and extraordinary story and game, and we are still actively pursuing the right investor to partner with,” said Miller partner Doug Mitchell.

KMM has a history of announcing ambitious game projects that never materialize. It was in 2008 that God of War 2 director Cory Barlog, having left Sony Santa Monica, joined KMM and announced a wildly ambitious open world game based on George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. Barlog left KMM years ago though, having since joined Crystal Dynamics.

Despite the quality of L.A. Noire, Team Bondi was reportedly a miserable, taxing place to work even under the best circumstances. If the remaining staff has been let go, cut free even from KMM, it may be for the best. May those intrepid developers land on their feet elsewhere and in a healthier environment.

Anthony John Agnello

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. He works as the Community Manager of Joystiq.com and his writing has…

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1.
Once you finish the A Nun in Trouble mystery you will get Guiliana's Key. Take it down the Borgia tower and find the gap you can swing over with your whip and unlock the door with your new key. The bottle is just ahead on a box in the corner.
2.
While you're doing The Mad Priest side quest you will be given the Sewer Key and sent down below the city through the Tower of Nicholas V. Once through the locked gate, climb up and swing across the upper area onto a ledge leading to stairs going up into the palace. The bottle is at the base of these stairs.
3.
Go behind the Post Office building and look for the bottle resting on a wooden bench.
4.
Starting from the Belvedere Courtyard, head down the street toward the Post Office, and take a right into the short alleyway. The bottle is on the table next to a set of closed doors at the end.
5.
At the entrance to Via Di Belvedere, go into the Blackshirt's tent. There is a Medicine Bottle among the belongings on the long table.
6.
Climb up the scaffolding of the church being constructed near the Borgia Courtyard. Use the chandelier to swing to a window and onto a balcony, then platform to the left onto a rooftop where a single guard is posted near the bottle.
7.
From the Borgia Courtyard, go east from the entrance toward the Apostolical Palace. Find the area where the construction workers are stationed and locate the bottle on one of the barrels on the ground floor.
8.
Sneak or wear a disguise to enter the Blackshirt Barracks. Once inside the upper floor, the bottle is in a room just next to the staircase leading from the first floor.
9.
Head to the southern side of the Tower of Nicholas V and find a staircase up to the Passetto di Borgo. Take it all the way to the Castel Sant'Angelo and up another set of stairs to a dead end with this Medicine Bottle.
10.
Go through the main doors of the Apostolic Palace via the Borgia Courtyard and sneak or fight the many guards inside to get to the center of the room below the staircase. The bottle is on the little working area set up here.
11.
While you're in the Apostolic Palace, make your way all the way up to the top floor into the bright green room. Guards will be outside so you can either fight past them or sneak in through an adjacent room and across the balcony. Either way, the medicine bottle is on one of the desks against the wall.
12.
Back outside in the construction site outside the palace, go into the wooden storage shed and grab the bottle on the bench below the bulletin board.
13.
This bottle can't be obtained until you go through the main story far enough to meet Gina. Once you have and got out of the Underworld, use a zipline on the balcony to get over to a nearby rooftop. From here, find the hole in the fence to slip through into a tent where a group of guards are undressed to wash themselves. The bottle is on a bench next to a disguise you can snag if you haven't already.
14.
Putting that disguise to good use, infiltrate the restricted area to the north of Belvedere Courtyard and hug the south fence until you find a hole you can sneak through to get into a tent. The bottle is on the table in the middle of the room.
15.
For our final bottle, you must have the Blackshirt Uniform, so take a second to change. Now that you look the part, head to the Blackshirt Barracks and find the tent that needs the Blackshirt Key to open. Open it up and snap up the final bottle.
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