15 Years Ago, Rockstar Games Released One of Its Most Forgotten Video Games: 'L.A. Noire'

Nowadays, the only thing on Rockstar Games fans' minds seems to be the looming release of Grand Theft Auto 6 later this year. Though 15 years ago, the company published and helped develop a unique detective game that pushed facial recognition technology and player interrogation strategies to the limit.

Today, May 17, 2026, marks the 15th anniversary of the original release of L.A. Noire, which was published by Rockstar and developed by Team Bondi. The title would see players immerse themselves in 1947 Los Angeles as a LAPD detective named Cole Phelps who seeks to unravel the truth behind a series of crimes.

As its name suggests, L.A. Noire is, ultimately, a noir-style detective story, and with that came one of the most immersive video game takes on playing as a detective. Using state-of-the-art facial recognition software (at the time of its release in 2011), players had to engage in persuasive conversations to gather information and look for tells and clues in faces, voices, and movement to determine if NPCs were telling the truth or lying.

According to Metacritic, L.A. Noire sits at an impressive 89 metascore. Critics praised the game's interactive detective story, presentation, visuals, crime analysis, and non-stop gameplay that forced players to think like a detective. The game's combat and controls saw some criticism.

Since its release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, L.A. Noire has been re-released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2017, but other than that, the game and any potential series have been virtually dormant since then.

Rockstar Games developed and released Red Dead Redemption the year prior, in 2010 and then released Grand Theft Auto 5 in 2013. Both of those titles have been re-released several times since then, and Red Dead Redemption 2 was released in 2018. It's been eight years since Rockstar released a game, but that will be changing with the release of GTA 6 in November this year.

As of May 21, 2021, in a report from The Hollywood Reporter, it seems that a sequel is not being planned, and despite commercial success, it remains one of Rockstar Games' forgotten games.

This story was originally published by Men's Journal on May 17, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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This story was originally published May 17, 2026 at 10:16 AM.