New details about Whore of the Orient, the canceled spiritual successor to LA Noire, have been revealed by a former writer on the project.
I recently sat down with Daniel McMahon, a writer who worked on LA Noire for a YouTube video celebrating the game’s recent 15th anniversary. In the second half of the video, we dove deep on Whore of the Orient, a controversial game that would’ve served as a spiritual successor to LA Noire. The game was in the works at Kennedy Miller-Mitchell, the production company of the Mad Max films, and was being worked on by ex-Team Bondi staff, including LA Noire writer and director Brendan McNamara.
It would’ve been yet another historical crime story, but this time set in Shanghai in the 1930s. McMahon stated that the game would’ve been more dense than LA Noire, opting to focus on more detail rather than overwhelming scale. He compared it to the shift between Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag and Assassin’s Creed Unity, which traded the open seas for a crowded version of Paris.
Players would’ve filled the shoes of a British detective in Shanghai, but Whore of the Orient would’ve taken a different approach to crime fighting than LA Noire. In LA Noire, players would solve murders and mysteries, meaning the crime had already happened. In Whore of the Orient, the goal was that you would work to prevent crimes before they happened and patrol the city to stop crimes.
Of course, as a British detective in a non-English speaking city, there would’ve been unique challenges. The team was developing concepts of a language system that would level up with XP as you progressed through the game, allowing you to speak and interact with more people. Similarly, an evolved version of LA Noire’s conversation system would’ve also been featured, adding more branching paths to the game.
In LA Noire, the player could interview or interrogate people over the facts of a case. The player had to then study the facial expressions of the interviewee to detect whether they were telling the truth, withholding information, or outright lying. There was only one right answer, but Whore of the Orient would’ve had a more dynamic approach.
If the player felt someone was lying, they could choose whether to bully the information out of them or they could try a gentle approach. It allowed players to choose the kind of cop they wanted to be and roleplay, but it also meant that they might get different answers or outcomes based on their approach. There was no “right” answer in WOTO’s interrogations, but there would be answers that would be more helpful than others.
“If you hit the suspect just right, you would get the entire truth revealed to you,” said McMahon. “If you tried strategies in the middle, you might get an address or a name, and then you would have to go find more suspects and put more information together with.”
Whore of the Orient was also exploring a more engaging combat system, with the team taking inspiration from the rhytmic combat of the Batman: Arkham series for the hand-to-hand action. Of course, there would’ve been gunplay as well, but there was a lot of extra attention being paid to the melee combat.
Ultimately, Whore of the Orient was canceled due to funding and publisher issues. McMahon estimated that the game was only 15% done when it was scrapped and they had a lot of work left to do. A lot of the ideas were just that: ideas. He noted that he wasn’t sure all of them would’ve panned out and they had to nail down a lot of specifics, but it still seemed like a really exciting concept and one that would’ve helped expand the detective genre in gaming.
Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN’s news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
