case by case: AAI 1-3: murdering amano
We are back once again with Case by Case, currently delving through the first Ace Attorney Investigations game! Last time we experienced a very unpleasant international flight; this time, it's time for a no-nonsense kidnapping and ransom-money-return. Spoilers below!
Unsurprisingly, this one becomes a murder case very quickly. Which, fair, it's a murder mystery game, not a kidnapping mystery game, I ain't complaining.
This one introduces us to Kay Faraday, who is the famous thief we learned about in the intro case, allegedly! We don't know what her connection to Edgeworth is (or, for that matter, to the intro case) but she does apparently have one. I like Kay, and am glad it seems like she's sticking around for a bit; I also enjoy this new investigation mechanic she brings in.
Kay has a holographic projector called Little Thief that can recreate crime scenes as they were in the past, or just in places where a billionaire has decided we aren't allowed to go; it's a fun little "okay, this is what it looks like based on what we know; can we learn anything from that" simulator that, if we're being honest, isn't so much a new mechanic as a new perspective on the existing mechanics, but that's still just as refreshing.
Ema Skye is also back! It's always fun having Ema around. She doesn't have a prominent presence in this case--my instinct is that we'll probably see more of her later, but this case also featured cameo roles from Officer Meekins and universally beloved figure Wendy Oldbag, so . . . maybe they just like doing cameos in this game? Who can say.
We are being constantly stymied in our investigation by a bad boy Interpol cop named Lang, who hates prosecutors and also doesn't like the idea of doing an investigation before arresting people. It's hard to tell if he is meant to be a dangerous loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules, or if he is meant to suggest that Interpol tends to operate as an extralegal organization that can do basically whatever they want even when they have no jurisdiction, but either way it's kind of fascinating.
This one felt like it had more complexity than the previous one; more twists which felt more substantial, more complex motivations, and I particularly enjoyed the detail of the weird angle from which the victim was shot. The bullet traveled from his abdomen through his shoulder, which . . . is weird! The initial explanation we get is one of those "this makes sense but it doesn't really answer the question of why this happened this way" scenarios, and then the final revelation that it happened during a grapple between the killer and the victim feels like everything is slotting into place.
Then at the very end we are given way more information than I expected about the overall plot. So, if you recall the first case in this game, a dangling thread was "what does this case from ten years ago have to do with anything?"; we find out that Interpol is here to investigate Amano, the billionaire who asked us to investigate the kidnapping, because Lang suspects that Amano had something to do with the smuggling ring that the previous case involves. We also learn that the murder man from the first case knows Amano, and that there is a corrupt prosecutor who is working with Amano (and therefore that the murder man is probably that prosecutor).
While some of this information was conveyed very directly, with Lang explaining why he's here and what he's doing, but the bits about corrupt prosecutor Jacques Portsman are, as the writing advice cliche would describe it, shown rather than told, which means it happens quite quickly and efficiently. I feel like I'll be going into the final case with a lot more knowledge of the major players than is usual at this point of an Ace Attorney game, but I also don't feel like the metaplot has been stealing the thunder of the individual stories.
And that's about it for today's murder! This one was fun. Join me next time for a trip down memory lane, apparently, to the first time Edgeworth met Gumshoe. This should be a good time.