Dearest Rockstar...

How's life in California? The wife and kids thriving? Glad to hear it. Colorado is doing well. Unemployment is down, the Rockies have been blanketed with a foot of fresh powder, and the seventy-foot-tall series of statues portraying John Elway fighting off a horde of ninjas whilst riding a flaming bronco Pegasus and swinging Excalibur in front of the capital building are coming along steadily.

I'm writing about a matter of great importance: your upcoming blockbuster title, L.A. Noire (which looks all kinds of fancy, by the way. Good, pipe-smoking, rustic gentleman fancy. Not 80s glampop music video fancy). I couldn't help but notice that it shares a release date with last year's mega-hit Rockstar title, Red Dead Redemption. Does this represent a shared development timeline between the two games? If so, then I'd like to discuss L.A. Noire's inevitable Hallowe'en downloadable content.

I'd like 50s style aliens to invade Los Angeles.

The famous 'Battle of Los Angeles' photo, taken during a supposed alien encounter over the city in 1942. Somehow, your conspiracy theorist neighbour will link this to 9/11.

Space music.

You may already have a plan in the works for new Hallowe'en DLC. With the rich history of corny B-movies being shot by-the-minute in 1950s Los Angeles, there are a cornucopia of zipper-suited monsters you can pull from. That said, tin-foil suited, antennaed, green-skinned visitors are the best choice. The fear of malevolent, subvertive life forms from outer space, abducting cows^[1] and plotting the destruction of humanity, beats at the heart of America's cultural identity during the awkward pubescent years of an age heralded by changing lifestyles, frightening new technologies, and a neverending showdown with a quiet, leering enemy - the Cold War.

L.A. Noire is set during this 'Cold War'. I'm just sayin'.

Imagine Cole Phelps, detective on-the-beat, discovering through a series of clues that the City of Angels is being secretly invaded by little green men. Without any help from the city government, he follows a trail of oddities across his urban jungle. Characters Phelps knows (from L.A. Noire's campaign) walk and talk awkwardly, as if puppeteered by invisible strings. Quiet, black-suited federal agents tail Phelps, then disappear without a trace. Blurry photographs of levitating saucers hovering above the city skyline somehow find their way into his padlocked desk drawer.

It would work perfectly.

Alien invasion film noir has been done well before. Where, you ask? How about a forgotten short story in a tattered old anthology found on the top shelf in a dank, labyrinthine library in a quiet little hamlet known to its shadowy denizens as... The Twilight Zone.

Here's a taste of Martian invaders, complete with Rod Serling's famous pun-infested conclusion. As you watch, imagine a hardened human detective listening in the back of the diner, face hidden by a fedora, but for the cigarette he sits tending. As his offhand rests on his revolver, his heart threatens to hammer out of his chest at the exchange he hears.




Now conceive a different invasion scenario, in which the supposed conquerors are not conspiratorial at all, but friendly and outgoing. As the rest of Los Angeles embraces their Samaritan extraterrestrial benefactors, one doubting Thomas-in-a-trenchcoat suspects that the city's would-be messiahs are too good to be true.




L.A. Noire's aliens could be boldfaced warmongers, assailing Los Angeles with saucers and death rays with a head-on attack, à la War of the Worlds...




...or honestly come in peace, for the good of all living things, like those of The Day the Earth Stood Still.



Hell, it could be completely zany, like Destroy all Humans! or Invader Zim. The point is, any alien-themed Hallowe'en expansion would be the greatest DLC since... well, since Undead Nightmare.

It's in your hands, Rockstar. If you can mate this with this, then you'll have created something beautiful^[2].

You see, Jimmy? This is why you never get in the car with strangers - they'll fatten you up and turn you into pie. Now finish your broccoli.

You don't have to respond right away. I know that when it comes to far-off development plans you're a little shy, Rockstar. That's okay, you're human. I only suggest that you do this: go outside on a clear, moonless night, when the stars are so clear and vibrant they fill the sky and the Hubble telescope seems unnecessary, listen to some jazz, and think on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Then put on your thinking cap, light a fresh cigarette, and ask yourself whether or it's possible that human beings are, in fact, alone in this universe (or in the saxophone-echoing streets of Los Angeles, circa-1955). Who knows? Maybe there'll be a life-form somewhere out in that vast expanse looking back at you.

Thanks for reading, Rockstar. You're a real pal. We've been through a lot together, which is why I swear to you, with Thor as my witness... if you make this alien invasion DLC, I'll forever erase my memories of the drunken mistakes of your past.

Good luck with the L.A. Noire release, buddy. See you at the review party.

Footnotes

[1] But they're covered in nipples!^
[2] Inversely, not doing so will make the baby Jesus cry.^

Labels: 2011, DLC, Feature, film noir, Greg Mengel, L.A. Noire, Open Letter, Rockstar

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