case by case: AAI 1-1: breaking the faith
While Cohost's unfortunate imminent closure does mean I won't get to finish this series out on here, I intend to keep the party going until they kick me out, as it were. It's still Monday, and Monday means murder! Last week we wrapped up what I assume is usually considered the main series; this week, it's time to start in on Investigations! There will probably be some spoilers, below.
At this point I'd be more surprised if a tutorial case wasn't short, but at this point making that observation has become a tradition, so I can't stop now. In this case it was introducing me to the mechanics of this new game, so it was a tutorial that was actually teaching me something, and that's neat.
What's interesting to me is that, for this case at least, they have to some degree maintained the framing from the main series of games where we aren't just solving a murder, we are preventing someone (or multiple someones) from being wrongly accused thereof. My gut instinct tells me this will probably continue, because a big part of the draw of this series is being able to defend the weak with our mystery solving skills, but there is definitely a world where these cases play out just like a traditional whodunit.
So far, I like the mechanics of AAI. I love the investigation sequences in Ace Attorney, and one of the things I love about them is being able to start to piece together the story (the "traditional" formula of investigation/trial/investigation/trial makes this very satisfying), and the Logic deductions seem like they have a lot of potential to codify those moments of seeing the evidence and trying to piece together what it means, and how it all fits together, without having to wait for a witness to say something about it.
Narratively speaking this one is interesting because it has what, at first glance, does appear to simply be a coincidence: there was a murder, and also an unrelated break-in. The fact that we still don't know all of the key details about the murder suggests that these things may not actually be unrelated, but for now we don't have that link. And while I can imagine some people being bothered by that, I felt that it made for a satisfying answer to one of the early questions of the case, and I don't think this information was ever a hindrance to our investigation as a player.
Plus it gave us a moment of Edgeworth calmly saying "Ah, I just realized I had made an erroneous assumption about this case" when confronted with new information. This is a good little character moment! The attorneys at the Wright Anything Agency have an unfortunate tendency to freak out anytime their assumptions are challenged; Edgeworth seems like the kind of guy who understands that this is just a natural part of learning and investigating.
Anyway. Off to a good start! I'm looking forward to the next case, this is fun so far, and I'll be back next week for more. I will probably try to at least finish this game off this month because I have very much enjoyed taking this journey with all of my Cohost pals. Thank you so much for reading, and I will see you next Monday, for murder on an airplane.