Eurogamer
Controversial Team Bondi co-founder Brendan McNamara has blamed Blu-ray's disc size for L.A. Noire shipping without its planned Bunko and Burglary cases. Bondi's original plans would have seen L.A. Noire's crime-solving story expanded over 11 extra investigations. "We had a Bunko and Burglary desk - bunko is fraud and burglary is just people robbing houses and stuff," McNamara explained to PSM3 magazine (via CVG). "We had 11 full cases for that, which we wrote and did the design for to a certain extent - we even did the art for them too, but it just got to a point where we were never going to fit it on one Blu-ray." Team Bondi shipped L.A. Noire on a single PS3 Blu-ray, but had no qualms spreading the content over three DVDs for the game's Xbox 360 version. According to McNamara, going over one Blu-ray disc in size "just becomes super prohibitive", despite the fact that the game "might have been a better arc if we did do that - you get more of a chance to introduce different things." In-game dialogue still mentions the abandoned sections of main character Cole Phelps' career - the Burglary sections would have immediately preceded Phelps' stint in Homicide. Other dropped ideas include a penalty system for poor performance on cases, which would result in players having to prove they were still up to the job. "There was a kind of system where if you failed a case your captain would scream at you and you'd go out and do hot car chases or smaller robberies and muggings and all that kind of stuff in the world," McNamara revealed. "You'd have to do enough of them to get to a point where you get offered another case... It was too much of a distraction." Since release, publisher Rockstar has supplemented L.A. Noire with four extra cases not found on the game's disc. Available through the downloadable Rockstar Pass promotion, all have now been released. L.A. Noire launched to commercial and critical success, although McNamara-headed developer Team Bondi has since been blighted by controversy over accusations of brutal working conditions during the game's lengthy development period. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-21-bondi-cut-la-noire-desks-to-fit-blu-ray
