We already know Rockstar is set to publish Remedy Entertainment's Max Payne 1 and 2 Remake after GTA 6, but that may not be the only project the studio has lined up. A resurfaced leak now points to something that will surprise a few people: not a new IP, not Red Dead Redemption 3, but an L.A. Noire sequel, reportedly targeting a 2030 launch.
The leak originates from a December 2023 post on GTAForums by user Shahansha, which has recently gained renewed attention after some of its GTA 6 claims proved accurate. According to the post, the sequel is set in San Francisco and built around the Zodiac Killer case. Rockstar was reportedly in the very early stages of development at the time of writing, with a 2030 window floated as an internal target. The post also claimed Rockstar was "talking about doing the face scanning stuff again, but making it insane," a reference to MotionScan, the facial capture technology that made the original L.A. Noire genuinely ahead of its time when it launched in 2011.
The reason this three-year-old 4chan post is being taken more seriously now than when it first appeared comes down to two specific GTA 6 details the leaker got right before anyone else. He described the relationship and criminal profiling system that has since been confirmed in Netflix's extended look at the game, and he mentioned that GTA 6 was initially designed around four protagonists before being narrowed to Jason and Lucia, a detail Rockstar North boss Rob Nelson confirmed in recent previews.
We would obviously suggest taking all of this with more than just a grain of salt until something official comes around, but there are also a few other threads pointing in the same direction.
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Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said earlier this year, when asked about L.A. Noire specifically, that the company is "looking at doing something in the future with all of our intellectual property." In 2020, a draft soundtrack labeled "L.A. Noire Part Two" was accidentally uploaded to YouTube before Take-Two pulled it with a copyright claim. Rockstar also recently acquired the original L.A. Noire team, now operating as Rockstar Australia, with the studio's director, Brendan McNamara, rejoining as its head in March last year. Before the acquisition, the studio worked on L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files and GTA: The Definitive Trilogy.
