10 Video Games That Got History Wrong
5. L.A. Noire
The major appeal of Rockstar's criminally underrated flatfoot sim L.A. Noire comes from being able to step into a fedora back in time to the romanticised, noiresque Los Angeles of the 1940s. Team Bodi went to extreme lengths to guarantee the authenticity of their Bogartian La-La Land, poring over contemporaneous maps and aerial photographs to finesse every little detail right down to traffic patterns and public transport routes.
They missed just one thing, though. One pretty big thing: the sky.
The real Los Angeles is famous for three things: stars, sun, and smog - and yet all of Cole Phelps' sleuthing takes place beneath a clear blue sky, almost as if that particular part of development was subcontracted to SEGA. It's not even the case that, as you might expect, pollution has increased proportional to population; the city's air quality was at its absolute nadir in 1947 - the year the game takes place - prompting California Governor Earl Warren to sign a law setting up an Air Pollution Control District in the county.
L.A. Noire was re-released for modern hardware in 2017, and like many updated classics, was given a quick spit and polish with improved lighting, weather and... smog? Guess Rockstar wanted to clear that one up - or not, as it were.