The studio behind L.A. Noire and the production company behind Happy Feet re-announced their game for next-gen consoles on Thursday.
Team Bondi toiled for years on its ambitious crime drama L.A. Noire. When it finally shipped that game under Rockstar and 2K Games in 2011, few expected the Australian studio to shut down months later. The studio didn’t die though, its intellectual property and name was bought up by film director George Miller (Mad Max, Babe) and his multimedia production company Kennedy Miller Mitchell. In November, L.A. Noire mastermind Brendan McNamara joined much of his former staff at KMM studios and said that he was working on a game aggressively titled Whore of the Orient. McNamara described it as “one of the great untold stories of the 20th century.” The world promptly forgot all about it.
KMM and Team Bondi decided to reconfirm Whore’s existence with a public announcement about the game on Thursday. Concept art and a plot summary was released to the press, promising that the game was in development for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720.
“From the development team who brought you L.A. Noire and The Getaway, along with the Academy Award winning film production team of Kennedy Miller Mitchell comes a completely new and original IP being developed for next generation game consoles and PC,” reads the statement, “Shanghai, 1936. Whore of the Orient. Paris of the East. The most corrupt and decadent city on the planet where anything can be had or done for the right price. Boiling pot of Chinese nationalism, with the Kuomintang ruthlessly trying to suppress Communism and the labor movement. Home to the International Police Force, a group of Western cops hopelessly trying to keep the lid on and keep the peace.”
So… L.A. Noire plus Sleeping Dogs. Huzzah.
It’s nice that Team Bondi and KMM are keeping the dream alive, but it’s way too early to be talking about this game. KMM has made this mistake in the past, publicly discussing game projects so early in production that there’s no guarantee that they’ll get made. Back in 2008, God of War 2 director Cory Barlog joined up with Miller to work on an open world action game based on Miller’s film Mad Max: Fury Road. Both Miller and Barlog did an extensive interview discussing the project and their goals. The movie is still in production, but no one’s heard about the game since.
McNamara has the same problem. L.A. Noire was announced as a PlayStation 3 exclusive in 2005 and released a black and white trailer for the game. It didn’t come out for 6 years, a period in which it became a multiplatform title, in color, published by Rockstar and 2K.
Whore of the Orient is an idea in 2012. Nothing more.
Source : digitaltrends[dot]com
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