Yesterday I talked about case 2 in game 2 of The Great Ace Attorney. Since I’ve done cases 1 through 3, I’d now like to talk about case 4, but not so much for the case itself but rather the pattern it follows that I’ve seen a lot of in murder mystery stories. As always, spoiler alert!

This case isn’t really a standalone narrative on its own, rather it is part 1 of a 2-part mystery which makes up cases 4 and 5 of Great Ace Attorney 2. Now that on it’s own is perfectly valid, but here’s the catch. The general pattern of an Ace Attorney or other investigative mystery story usually goes like this: the narrative is built as a trail of breadcrumbs in which the hero starts with a mystery that they have to solve and a bunch of suspicious people they have to talk to. Each person they talk to or clue they uncover is another breadcrumb leading to the truth.  One by one each suspicious person is interviewed and gives their side of the story, so eventually these sub-stories SHOULD build together to create a whole story that tells you everything that happened in the case, right?  Except what often seems to be the case is that everything learned in the first half of the case is basically thrown out as irrelevant, while the real revelations all happen in the second half of the case.  

To get specific with this case: the mystery we start with is the death of Detective Gregson, long-running character for these two games. In case 4, we get a lot of breadcrumbs relating to how Gregson was investigating a Red-Heads Society, and some characterization of the witnesses who found his body. But neither the Society nor the witnesses from Case 4 actually get us anywhere closer to solving the mystery of Gregson’s death. This is because Case 5 reveals that Gregson was ACTUALLY killed on a boat in the English channel, and his dead body was delivered to it’s location in London to be “found.” So everything we learned in Case 4 turns out to be pointless and irrelevant to solving the mystery.

This pattern feels common in a lot of mysteries, the story seems to have forward momentum as each character is interviewed and their part in the mystery is uncovered, but for the most part these characters usually end up having hidden backstories and suspicious circumstances that are completely unrelated to the mystery at hand, and which doesn’t always give any information to SOLVE the mystery at hand except for the fact that this character definitely didn’t do it (usually). So when the final BIG mysteries are uncovered, they at times feel unsatisfying because they’re completely divorced from pretty much everything our characters have been discussing up to this point.

Let me remind you, the Red-Headed Society and every witness from Case 4 are irrelevant to the final answer of who killed Gregson, they could be completely removed and the story would little change. I get why mystery stories do this, you want the player/viewer to constantly feel like mysteries are being uncovered and they’re getting closer to the truth, but you also want the ending to be a BIG UNEXPECTED TWIST that throws the whole case upside down.  But I feel like just completely trashing the first half of the case does this a disservice.

I think there are good mystery stories that avoid this problem, by having later revelations recontextualize what we learned earlier, rather than entirely superceding what we learned earlier, but I also feel like I’d need to spoil have a dozen other stories besides Great Ace Attorney in order to do that conversation justice.

So for now I’ll leave with a final few thoughts: this case was really underwelming but in part that isn’t even the mystery (although it doesn’t help) but rather the emotional weight of the story. Gregson is someone who has been with these characters for 2 games, and the player for more than 40 hours of playtime (by my estimate). He’s someone the players and characters should have grown attached to, yet besides his sidekick no one in the game seems exceptionally broken up about his death. The story kind of has to do this as you find his body and then immediately have to investigate the crime scene, so there isn’t much time in the narrative for sentimentality.

Still I feel it could have been improved by having all the main characters get together for a wake in Gregson’s remembrance right before the Court section, and them all not only remembering him but vowing to bring his killer to justice. A short scene like that could have made the emotional impact of his death work a lot better.

Last week I talked about cases 1 and 3 in game 2 of The Great Ace Attorney. I know this is out of order but I’d like to put my thoughts to paper on Case 2 of that game. As always, this is a murder mystery game, so total spoilers below!

The case starts out strange but OK, we’re told that after the events of the first game, our protagonist (Ryunosuke Naruhodo) has been barred from lawyering in Britain.  This is… an odd twist as it kind of makes sense and kind of doesn’t.  So spoilers for the first game but in the end of that game the protagonist uncovered a massive spy ring operating in the heart of Britain.  On the one hand yeah that’s a big thing, on the other hand he didn’t do anything wrong so why is he being punished?  Whatevs, it sets this up as a flashback case since he can’t do real cases

In a neat moment, this case is somewhat closely related to a case from the first game, with several characters lifted directly from it.  One of them is a bit of a reach though, you meet a man in a Victorian costume for about half a second and wouldn’t you know it he’s the victim in this case!  He’s not dead though since we needed him to be a kooky character for this one.

At this point I’d like to talk about the best character in Ace Attorney history: Herlock Sholmes.  You may remember when he was called Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, but to avoid copyright lawsuits the developers of this game LeBlanc’d him up to having a new name.  Anyway he’s absolutely awesome. 

His gimmick is acting like the all-knowing Sherlock Holmes from fiction, while actually being a clutz and a goofball (but surprisingly astute when the plot demands it).  He’s awesome for bringing the best of Ace Attorney wacky humor into a character who can also be serious when need be.  His main gimmick is the “Dance of Deduction,” in which he points out a bunch of unnoticable Holmesian clues and then uses them to build an impossible and hilarious theory, which Ryunosuke then has to “correct” to find the truth.  Anyway, this case gets +10 points just for including him.

Now as to the actual murder mystery, it started off good, had some great moments, but also had just enough frustrating moments that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have.  It starts off well with the unexpected death of the guy in Victorian Costume (his name is “William Shamspeare” and he speaks in forsooth’s and thee’s naturally), who then unexpected isn’t dead and claims to have been poisoned. 

We totter about with a mystery about how he could afford to pay for gas heating when he was so poor (more on that later) until finding out that a victim of a stabbing from the 1st game (Olive Green) came back and tried to kill old Shamspeare in this game.  It’s all meant to be very tragic, as Shamspeare had poisoned her boyfriend, but it falls off for me at a few points with regards to its timeline.

The basic timeline of this case is supposed to be as follows: 

William Shamspeare learns of a buried treasure hidden in the second floor apartment unit of this lodge.  He is unable to rent the second floor however because it’s occupied by Olive Green’s husband, named Duncan.  So instead he kills Duncan by turning off the fire in Duncan’s gas lamps, causing Duncan to asphyxiate from gas poisoning.  The way Shamspeare does this is by blowing into Shamspeare’s OWN gas lamps, which disturbs the fire in Duncan’s lamps because they’re all on a single gas line.  Duncan’s death creates a rumor that the apartment is haunted, which allows Soseki Natsume (a real historical dude) to rent the unit for super cheap.  Shamspeare still wants the money though, so hatches a plan to kill Natsume too.

At this point Olive Green is distraught over her husband’s death, she hear’s Natsume talking about how haunted his apartment is and apparently deduces from this that her husband Duncan was murdered.  She writes a vaguely threatening letter to Shamspeare and then sneaks into his house, bringing strychnine poison with her. 

In Shamspeare’s room she finds proof that he killed Duncan, which causes her to deduce his method and put strychnine on his lamps.  Now when Shamspeare comes home, he wants to kill Natsume just as he killed Duncan, by blowing into his own lamps and causing a gas leak in Natsume’s apartment.  But since Olive Green put strychnine on them, he ends up ingesting some and very nearly dies.  The plot of this case begins with him (apparently) dead.

My problem is that Olive Green seems to deduce that Duncan was killed AND THAT SHAMSPEARE killed him on very little, almost no evidence whatsoever.  She overhears Natsume talking about how Shamspeare is weird and the apartment is haunted, and from that she concocts a scheme to kill Shamspeare.  The case when you play it implies that it was reading the note in Shamspeare’s apartment that causes her to hatch her scheme, yet she came to his apartment WITH THE STRYCHNINE so she was already planning a murder beforehand.  And she can’t have come into the apartment a second time after reading the letter because of the events of the case. 

So overall although there’s a wonderful bit of Agatha Christie-esque tragedy to the whole thing, it just feels weird to me that this lady leaped to MURDER on almost no evidence whatsoever.  The evidence she finds in the man’s apartment does prove her suspicion, but again she’d already decided on murder before even going in there.

Anyway that’s all for the plot of this case, now onto the question of gas, and I’m wondering if anyone knows the answer here: during this case, it’s revealed that Shamspeare is incredibly poor, but somehow has the money to pay for gas heating in his house every day.  In this era, you could pay for gas heating via a vending machine installed in your residence.  It’s a mystery where Shamspeare gets the coins to pay, but a further mystery is raised in that when the meterman comes to collect the money from his vending machine, it’s always empty. 

Clearly Shamspeare is stealing gas, but how? 

The only clues are a small hole drilled into the bottom of the vending machine, and a puddle of water beneath it.  The answer to this puzzle is thus: Shamspeare cuts coin-shaped depressions into bars of soap, and then leaves water in them outside to freeze in the cold London air.  What he’s left with is pieces of ice in the shape of coins that he then puts into the vending machine to pay for his gas.  The apartment he lives in warms with the gas heating, and the ice melts back into water.  Then the hole in the vending machine lets the water escape into the room, removing any evidence of his crime when the meterman comes to take the money out. 

What’s most interesting to me is that this mystery was actually lifted directly from a different book which I don’t know the name of.  I told this mystery to a family member who told me she’d read a book in which this exact situation plays out, with a poor man paying for gas using ice “coins,” but she didn’t remember the name of the book.  Does anyone remember the name?  If you do, please tell me!  In the comments below or at theusernamewhichismine@gmail.com.

Yesterday I talked about the first case in the second game of the “Great Ace Attorney” duology. Today I’d like to talk about the third case from that game. Yes the second case was also good but I don’t have my thoughts in order about it yet.

Once again, this is my thoughts about a murder mystery game, so total spoilers ahead!

I liked this case, 9/10.  The first day of the case built up to be better and better as it went along, although there were a few moments in this case as in case 2 where I didn’t know what evidence to give people in order to succeed.  They developers of this series have slimmed down everything in the game to give you more hints (Iris will directly tell you when you still have shit to do) but it can still be very illogical what things you have to show to which people to progress.

The investigation section for this case was incredible though.  Both days’ investigations built up so expertly to interweave so many competing threads.  Even though I guessed a lot of it early, I still had a wild ride and I didn’t guess everything.  The character work was also top notch, I found Van Zieks (the prosecutor for this series) a lot more boring during the game that preceded this one, he felt like a sub-par Godot (the prosecutor from Ace Attorney 3: Trials and Tribulations).  But getting to chat with Van Zieks face to face and hear his side of things really rounded him out, even if it’s a bit cliche that they gave him Ace Attorney Prosecutor Backstory A: dead family. 

I also think case 3 was a case where the writers sort of learned a lesson of what NOT to do from previous Ace Attorney games.  This case featured a defendant who helps the prosecutor (like Wocky Kitaki in 4-2) and a completely impossible “murder” (like Max Galactica flying away in 2-3).  And yet both of them are handled very well.  The defendant has a much better reason for “helping the prosecution” than Wocky Kitaki ever did, since this defendant truly believes his “teleportation” machine worked and that the murder that occurred was all just a tragic accident. Although he is “helping” the prosecutor by saying his machine worked, and that fact implicates him for the crime, his reason for sticking to his story are understandable. 

And although teleportation obviously isn’t real, pretty much everyone in this case knows that and it’s clear that they are sort of just humoring Van Zieks, who also at least presents genuine evidence of the defendant committing the crime besides “your machine did magic.” In this way we have an “impossible” murder mystery that doesn’t stray into parody territory with genuinely impossible plot points.

I do want to say that on day 1, the only underwhelming part of the story was Herlock Sholmes (the obvious Sherlock Holmes expy).  They’ve made him a lot more like a classic Ace Attorney protagonist, in that he has money issues. 

Ask Apollo, ask Phoenix, ask Athena, the Wright Anything Agency is always going on and on about how they have no money.  In the first game I thought Sholmes was absolutely loaded with dosh. He has a massive house filled with valuable trinkets and machines, and a partner who is constantly publishing his exploits in serialized form.  He has steady income and a lot of wealth, so why would he complain about money problems?  In this case though he’s a poor scrounger and on Day 1 that made him a lot less “fun” to be around, he was less bombastic and more pitiable.  I even thought the Day 1 “Great Deduction” was underwhelming. 

I think his Day 1 great deduction should have gone differently.  The first part of the scene is proving that Tusspell smacked a man over the head with an arm when he tried to steal, the second part is proving that what Sholmes thought was a real policeman was actually wax and what he thought was wax was a real policeman.  The two contradictions together demonstrate that a famous waxwork called “the professor” was stolen from Madame Tusspell’s waxwork museum. 

But… the deduction doesn’t flow to me.  It should be flipped: the first part should be with the policemen, and finding out that the wax one has a missing arm sets up a mystery of where the arm is, while finding out the other is on the case looking for something sets up another mystery.  Then part 2 solves both mysteries, she used the arm to KO a guy and she called the cops because “the professor” was stolen.  As it stands when we saw the wax cop missing an arm, I wasn’t surprised because I already knew where the missing arm was.

Day 2’s deduction on the other hand is the single best “anything” in Ace Attorney I’ve ever played. 

Ace Attorney usually doesn’t do these kinds of scenes well, I remember in GAA1 Case 5, where Gina gives you the disc and tells you not to give it to Eggs Benedict.  Both of them are yelling at you then the game just zooms out back to investigation mode.  The whole tension of the scene is lost because you now have to click on Sholmes to progress with the Great Deduction. 

But in this case the scene worked perfectly.  You bust down Drebber’s door and see a time bomb and upturned furniture.  Everyone’s scared but Sholmes’ deductions is that the bomb isn’t real.  Then you solve his deduction and use the crossbow to find the head of the “professor.”  But the deduction isn’t over!  For the first time we get deductions part 3 and find that Drebber is in the safe.  But it still isn’t over because the bomb was real!  And Sholmes disarms it and everyone says funny stuff.  I’m not describing it well but honestly this was the best Ace Attorney anything I’ve ever played, better than using the metal detector on Von Karma, better than using the Mood Matrix on Blackquill, this was just A++++++

This case was allllllllllllmost perfect.  I think my biggest quibble besides Day 1 Sholmes was when Ryunosuke had to name the accomplice to Drebber.  It was Courtney Sithe, but she was such a minor character that by the time I got to that point I had straight up forgotten what she had done up to that point.  When I finally named her I vaguely remembered the “500 scalpels” bit in her notebook, but that was not the part of the investigation that stood out to me.  If we’re going to make her part of this case she needs to be more involved, otherwise in such a broad ranging case like that she faded into the background of my memory and I was floundering to remember who she was and why she was in this case. 

We had focused a lot on Asman (who was a con artist) and Harebrayne (who had been duped).  Either of them could have fit the description of “accomplice” with  a little tweaking.  Maybe Harebrayne was told to do things and didn’t realize he was accidentally moving the body?  Maybe Asman set up this whole get-rich-quick-scheme with Drebber but Drebber double crossed Asman at the last minute?  We had focused on them so I picked them before picking Sithe, about whom I remembered absolutely nothing aside from her short blurb in the court record. 

I feel although there isn’t anything totally illogical about who you’re supposed to finger for the crime, but I just had so little to go on that there isn’t a compelling reason to pick the character you’re “supposed” to pick.  Sure it works as a shocking swerve, but it isn’t as compelling in a narrative sense.

I also find Sithe as the accomplice incredibly lazy.  I’ve noticed a trend in AA games (and other mysteries) wherein making one of the cops or lawyers part of the guilty party gives carte blanche to explain away any and all inconsistencies with “well the people investigating the crime covered up their own misdeeds.”  My challenge to mystery writers (and Ace Attorney writers in particular) is to make an entire narrative where the law enforcement is never part of the crime. 

Using them to upend the entire mystery isn’t out of the realm of possibility, there have been real detectives who used their position to cover up their own crimes, but narratively it lets you ignore all the “impossibilities” that had been driving the case up to the point the law enforcement is indicted.  GAA1-5 was a great case, but it also did this.  As did Rise From the Ashes, which this case in some way mirrors.  It starts to get a little predictable when at least once a game they need to make law enforcement be the villain so as to allow themselves to change up the evidence of the case half-way through.  There are other ways this can be done, law enforcement wasn’t evil in 1-3 (Steel Samurai case) but the facts of the case changed naturally as the thing built up, without ever contradicting themselves or needing to bring in “someone changed the evidence.”

Final thought: this is the ONLY time so far that I have truly liked the Jury in these cases.  In GAA1-5 I thought they were acceptable, but this is the first time I’ve LIKED them.  On day 1 at least.  Day 2 they again just get in the way, but on day 1 they actually add to the trial in a dynamic way.

Ace Attorney is a wonderful series of murder mystery games that I’ve enjoyed for years now. A while ago they brought their “Great Ace Attorney” duology to Steam, with 2 games set in Victorian London/Meiji Era Japan. I really really liked the games overall and I urge anyone who’s a fan of murder mysteries to pick them up. But the first case of the second game really really bugged me and so I’d like to write about why.

Note: total spoilers ahead! This is a mystery game so read only at your own risk

The day after I finished Great Ace Attorney 1, I started Great Ace Attorney 2.  I really loved GAA1 and wanted to dive right in, but the first case of GAA2 was just so damn frustrating, that I left and didn’t return to it until months later.  I’ve pulled up the notes I wrote on this case, both months ago and today.  I enjoyed the characters, the main character (Rei) and her friend (Susato) had a great dynamic going, and I think Susato is a great character to play as, perhaps better than Ryunosuke (main character from the first game).  Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut…

I predicted this entire case from about minute 1.  The moment I saw the photographer taking pictures of the writer, I blurted out “are you the fucking killer?!”.  The moment I was allowed to inspect the fountain pen, I knew it had been used to administer the poison.  The moment I saw the first picture of the hut, I knew the victim was stabbed from outside it. It’s just that I felt a lot like this awkward zombie comic, which I never have felt much like before.

Normally I do not do a good job predicting these cases.  I get taken for a ride by the story and am as shocked as the characters when twists happen.  So I’m perfectly fine with being misled in a murder mystery story.  What I do not enjoy is being punished for being correct.  As soon as you are allowed to examine the fountain pen, you need to use it as evidence make a contradiction about the facts of the case. 

I tried to use the pen as a contradicting piece of evidence because I knew it was used to administer poison. However, because the game wasn’t ready for it to be used as evidence, I was punished for being correct even though I was correct.  I haaaaaaaaaaate when mysteries punish you for being correct, it’s one of the big reasons I hate LA Noire and do not at all consider it a good mystery game.  All mysteries want to have that moment like in the very first Ace Attorney game with the metal detector, where you go “aha!  this seemingly useless piece of evidence turns the whole case around!” but when the evidence is too obvious, then the player realizes what is happening long before the game is ready for it, and the players’ attempts to honestly answer the game with their knowledge turn into the game saying “no you’re wrong.”

I ended up playing this game in such a way where I always second guessed what I was saying, not because I thought I was wrong, but because I wasn’t sure if the game was ready for me to be right yet.  “This contradiction seems obvious, but the last obvious contradiction gave me a penalty, so is the game ready for me to be right yet?” is not a fun way to play. 

Finally I just didn’t think the mystery in this case logically flowed.  A lot of the contradictions they used to meander around (before finally letting us use the fountain pen) weren’t actual contradictions, and at one point I’m pretty sure the game contradicts itself.  It says that the victim in the case mentioned the poison while visiting a University, and the witness Soseki then demanded to see the poison.  Another witness, Professor Mikotoba said ok and showed the poison to them, but the reporter Menimemo was not allowed to go in and see the poison since access to it was restricted.  However later in the case it is necessary information that Menimemo DID go in to see the poison, because that was when he stole it in his fountain pen.

So in the end I was correct, the photographer killed her, he used his fountain pen for the poisoning and the characters were all great.  10/10 characters, -5 for case logic and general gameplay flow.  5/10 overall.  When I put down the case I would have said it was the worst case I’ve ever played, because no case before has ever made me put it down in frustration like that, but after replaying and finishing it, it’s ok just really clumsy.  A shame since as I said I really like Susato as a lawyer, and this is probably the only time we’ll see it unless Ryunosuke gets Maya’d (kidnapped) in the final case.