gamingsuggestions

TL:DR. Looking for something that mixes an atmospheric open-world setting with a serious, realistic investigative gameplay, similar to LA Noire.

I've been playing through LA Noire and the storyline, investigation gameplay and 1947 LA setting are all excellent. I haven't found many other similar games like it that also offer an explorable open-world and a down-to-earth investigation story.

Other games I've played and liked with a similar investigative gameplay include the Ace Attorney series, DanganRonpa, 999 series, AI: Somnium Files. The common thread with these games is that even if they have really great gameplay they either add too much comedy (which lessens the gravity of the setting), go over the top or tropey with their characters, or they add some sort of fantasy element (which makes the story a lot less convincing/believable).

The closest game I've liked that matches the tone of LA Noire is the Hotel Dusk series, which also had mature multi-dimensional characters and a story that did not go off the rails to full-blown fantasy. The setting limited and just in a hotel but it was appropriate for the scope of the story.