L.A. Noire emerging from shadows May 17

Late last week numerous retailers agreed on a April 5 premiere for L.A. Noire, but according to a leaked trailer for the title, the marketplace listings were off by more than a month.

A trailer dubbed "Serial Killer" for Team Bondi's L.A. Noire found its way to the Internet on Saturday, and on top of offering 90 seconds of new gameplay footage, a release date was shown. According to the video, L.A. Noire will be released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on May 17.

[UPDATE] On Monday, publisher Rockstar Games confirmed the release date and revealed the game would arrive in Europe on May 20. It also released the "Serial Killer" trailer, viewable below. The trailer is composed entirely of in-game footage and reveals some new narrative details. It shows that at least one of the crimes that gamers will solve in L.A. Noire is that of the case of a serial killer, heard at one point bragging about the number of women he's murdered.

L.A. Noire is in development at Australian studio Team Bondi and follows a detective entangled in a violent web of vice, corruption, and crime in 1940's Los Angeles. Players jump into the seedy underworld of the metropolis and are tasked with solving a series of murders in what Rockstar describes as an "open-ended challenge."

The title will also use a new facial animation system called MotionScan. According to Team Bondi, reading the faces of characters in L.A. Noire will be a pivotal point of the title. For more on the new technology, check out the tech demo video below.