Open world games typically have huge scripts with a lot of recorded dialogue, but 22,000 pages is excessive even for an expensively huge game like L.A. Noire.
Brendan McNamara, co-founder and head of Team Bondi, told Edge Magazine that the script for its upcoming L.A. Noire has grown to astronomical proportions. The title has been in development since 2004 and its release has been pushed back several times. The long development time, in addition to the game’s huge scope, has made it one of the ten most expensive games to make. No release date is set for L.A. Noire, but it is expected in Q3 2010.
Brendan McNamara seems excited by the hugeness of his game. “The script’s up to 22,000 pages,” he told Edge Magazine. “That’s two full years of a TV series and probably 12 feature films. It goes a lot of places!”
22k pages is really huge. Although McNamara compares it to TV and film, it’s also bigger than most literary works. All three volumes of The Lord of The Rings is only around 1,000 pages. Most Bible translations top out about 1,200 pages. The paperback of Tolstoy’s War and Peace counts in at 1,475 pages.
Hell, the total page count of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, largely thought to be the longest, most drawn out story of all time, is currently 10,508 pages. That’s less than half of the amount of writing in L.A. Noire.
Sure, there are less words per page in entertainment writing, but, still, the numbers here are staggering.
The really funny thing is that all of those pages are going to be read by one man. And that man’s name is Don LaFontaine.
“In a world, ruled by sex, greed and corruption…”
Source: ConnectedConsoles
Published: Mar 24, 2010 07:26 pm