The real beauty of L.A. Noire comes next, when you start talking to witnesses and suspects. L.A. Noire uses some amazing new motion-scanning technology. I won't overload you with the details and process -- because all that really matters are the results. Every face in the game is the actual actor. There are no touch-ups, no animations added. If you talk to a woman with bruises on her face, then she had to have makeup applied before the shoot. The faces are so real, and they are all actors (more than 300 all told), that it can be a bit distracting to see familiar faces that can't quite be placed.
Rockstar has captured every shift of the actor's eye, the furrowing of a brow, the slight downturn of a mouth. What you see is exactly what you would if watching an episode of a police drama. These are actors, conveying the reliability (or lack thereof) in the smallest facial gestures, with their posture, and the inflection of their voices. And that's important, because in L.A. Noire, it's up to you to watch and judge the people you speak with to determine if they're telling the truth, hiding something, or flat-out lying.