Instead of action, the focus in L.A. Noire is squarely on basic storytelling elements like narrative, character, setting and plot: 322 actors delivered voice performances for the game, and their efforts are generally superb. The Rockstar hallmark — gritty, believable, wry dialogue — is on full display.

Yet none of Rockstar’s previous games have been so emotionally powerful.

That’s because the big theme here is the difficulty soldiers have in readjusting to civilian life and the profound social trauma that can result when that goes awry. As one of Phelps’s partners remarks on the way to another murder scene, Los Angeles in 1947 is awash in young men who got used to killing every day in the war, then returned and were expected to take orders from their wives. Not all of them could.

As L.A. Noire unfolds, through flashbacks the game also tells the story of Phelps’s own war history and his fraught relationship with the men under his command. Without giving away the plot, the stories of past and present end up colliding in spectacular, heartrending fashion. Like so many of his suspects, our hero has demons of his own, and like so many of his suspects, he does not handle them easily.

The accounts and effects of post-traumatic stress among World War II veterans upon their return are not often brought up, probably because the war itself was a huge victory for the United States, and because the country soon embarked on a huge economic boom. In that sense these stories have been obscured. L.A. Noire treats this very human reality with a deft, mature hand that lends all the police-procedural gameplay an emotional heft rarely felt in video games.

Thankfully, there are a few straight-up villains to take out. But ambiguity is the order of the day, and L.A. Noire serves it up with flair. As in Red Dead and Grand Theft Auto, you have a vast virtual landscape to explore outside of the main story — in this case a broad swath of Los Angeles — but there is far less actually to do out there than in either the Liberty City of Grand Theft or the Old West of Red Dead. (One technical note: L.A. Noire is among the growing number of games that highlight the inadequacy of the Xbox 360’s current optical disc format. While the game comes on a single Blu-ray disc for the PlayStation 3, for which it was originally designed, it takes up three discs for the Xbox 360. This game is best played on the PS3.)

Along with Red Dead Redemption, my other favorite of last year was Heavy Rain, also a grim serial-killer story. L.A. Noire draws heavily from both games. The one thing they all have in common is that they are set in, and reflect, visions of the real world.

Perhaps the final frontier isn’t that far away after all.