8 Video Games That Faced Development Hell (And Turned Out AMAZING)
8. L.A. Noire
L.A. Noire is Rockstar's most underrated game, but for the longest time it wasn't even a Rockstar game at all. The project started with a team of just six people all the way back in 2003, then set to release on a "next-generation Sony platform". Somewhere along the way, though, that deal must have fallen through, and in 2006 Rockstar came in to publish the ambitious detective thriller instead, taking the title multi-platform in the process.
The reasons for the shakeups were primarily down to the then-revolutionary motion-capture technology developers Team Bondi were after, with the end product living or dying on how well players would be able to analyse the subtle gestures and facial tics of interrogated suspects. However, even when that was nailed down, Rockstar and Bondi proceeded to clash over pretty much everything during development, with the latter getting annoyed at the former for taking too much creative control.
The game did eventually come out in 2011 to damn good reviews and strong sales, but by then the relationship between the developer and publisher had deteriorated. At one point Bondi were poised be become the next big Rockstar studio, but after L.A. Noire came out, the partnership ended with the developers going out on their own to their eventual demise.