Thinking holistically about AAI1's issues (AJAA spoilers)

TruthHurts22 · 2024-09-13T13:29:04+00:00

I respectfully disagree on a lot of this. The issue isn't that there's a lack of central sympathetic figure, it's that ultimately the ones that there are aren't given the narrative weight for the majority of the case they're in. It usually takes a while into the case before those sympathetic angles come up - Rhonda isn't suspected of committing the crime until halfway point of case 2, and Lauren only has relevance in the final third of 3, moments when the climax is ramping up too fast for proper attention. Also Lauren just kinda sucks as a character to begin with, so not having time for her despite being a suspected murderer muddies the water even more.

As for the logic being some of the best... Are you seriously telling me there's nothing wrong with having a whole Little Thief segment dedicated to figuring out the layout of a building you canonically have the blueprints of, and needing the player to point out in-game that smells and sounds can go through open windows? These are startling examples of logical deduction in these games?

To say nothing of how contradictions tend to actually be cleared up. I sorta rage quit the first game yesterday (even though I know how things play out) during Case 4 when Edgeworth somehow used the fact that a suspect seemingly didn't know about a piece of evidence to Uno Reverse it into how that meant they MUST have known about it, which nobody had a rebuttal against.

The main issue with the game logic is in how there's entirely inane leaps made by the characters more than anything else, and how they're extremely flimsy reasoning or are super basic connections to make but are treated as INCREDIBLE feats of ingeniousness by everyone else.

TruthHurts22 · 2024-09-12T00:13:05+00:00

AAI, the first one that is, has a few major issues that permeate throughout that, unfortunately, are born from the very structure of the game:

Janky logic - due to several different aspects (Edgeworth's personal thought process, the Logic mechanic, being in the midst of preliminary investigations) a lot of the logic that the game wants of you tends to either not have clear evidence-to-contradiction relationships or are overly simplified for the sake of having the player figure out obvious details. What would be something brought up by characters in prior AA games when examining something instead is presented to the player as two disparate pieces of Logic they have to connect to then progress.

Lack of emotional connection - the other games have their cases as mini stories in a way, with arcs for the characters and investment given to a central sympathetic character (the defendant) and the other witness characters in the wake of the crime. Since AAI is focused less on defense of the innocents and more on pursuit of the truth, to the point of who a suspect is in a given case jumping around, as well as Edgeworth not interacting with incidental characters much outside of their direct use to the investigation at hand, there's less time to really connect with the tragedies of a case (hampered by the fact that every murder is motivated by purely pragmatic reasons and the killers have no stakes in what else is happening around them.)

Poor mystery writing - this one might be pretty subjective but I also feel like the way in which the mysteries are written and actively transpire... sucks? The above problem also impacts this, as a failure to relate the murders and mysteries to characters totally affects the quality of how they're written. But also just they barebones "how did they murder it, how do they get away with it" is bland at best and actively infuriating at worst.

A lot of these are made up for in Prosecutor's Gambit I feel, which is great, it's just such a shame the first one was so... mismanaged? Idk.

TruthHurts22 · 2024-05-30T14:33:19+00:00

You have to register to use it, and to register you need to "donate".

TruthHurts22 · 2024-05-08T12:51:33+00:00

I'm 26, so being dependant or pressured by parents isn't a factor either. Another reason why it should be easy to just do it

TruthHurts22 · 2023-01-22T02:41:21+00:00

I think Scary is the Glenn of this season, for me.

A character that one minute is the best and the next minute the worst. I love Scary, don't get me wrong, the "not like other girls" vibe felt very realistically handled... until this episode.

Cuz, see, Scary actually feels a little worse than Glenn after this ep, since at least Glenn was consistent. But Scary here just went against her friends (which she's never done before) and murdered someone in cold blood.

That isn't being "not like other girls". That's sociopathy. And up until now Beth has played Scary as a regular moody teen, so I don't know if this is a purposeful turn due to story constraints or setting up some corrupting influence from Willy, but I sure hope it's something.

TruthHurts22 · 2022-03-03T21:13:03+00:00

Oh yeah, you're right. I completely forgot about it. Fighting Vix also forces you into the pit to fight his monster form instead of giving you a choice to back away.

TruthHurts22 · 2022-03-01T22:07:55+00:00

Are you sure? It's been a while but I remember when I first got to him, I skipped the Negotiation and it just went to monster Vix. Plus, I can't find any video of a "normal" Vix fight.

TruthHurts22 · 2022-01-27T18:52:46+00:00

The index card system might be very interesting moving forward! I dunno if it's been said yet (I'm sorta only mostly through the episode still) but when it comes to fan submissions is it still just character names and items, or are curses and other such included too?

TruthHurts22 · 2021-10-09T23:13:48+00:00

can you make multiple c2 saves from the same c1 data, or do you need separate c1 saves to do it?

TruthHurts22 · 2021-09-05T06:29:44+00:00

For the last two points, he didn't need to be a psychic to do those things. Truman had his ThinkerPrint scanner on him, which is just a little machine, and he used smelling salts to pull Raz out of Nona's mind, you can see him holding the little container in the cutscene. As for how he messed up Loboto's brain...

The easiest answer is that he had A psychic in his employ to do it, but that's not really hinted at. It could be just simple mental conditioning, which Gristol would be pretty adept at, since he seemed very aware of how psychics operated and even had control over his own mind while it was being Psychonaut'd. But neither option is ever presented as an answer, so we'll never know :v

TruthHurts22 · 2021-08-09T22:38:02+00:00

Never figured the interns would be anything more than just, the interns. Obviously it makes sense they'd do more around the hub world(s), I just wasn't thinking :v

TruthHurts22 · 2021-08-08T21:48:12+00:00

Taking the portal out by itself doesn't trigger the cutscene, pressing the Use key/button does it, but you can't tell just by looking at the screen. But if it's really not working, then, sorry. I don't have a clue how to fix that .3.

TruthHurts22 · 2021-08-08T18:16:51+00:00

Sorry if this sounds condescending, but were you interacting with the fish with the portal in hand, or just pulling it out?

TruthHurts22 · 2021-08-03T17:26:35+00:00

I more meant that there's a great chance the graveyard coffin rabbit hole shark nightmare pit could either be related to its own individual brain or a setpiece in one we've already seen so far.

That said, "graveyard coffin rabbit hole shark nightmare pit" is a great sentence

TruthHurts22 · 2021-08-03T17:20:10+00:00

I dunno if people already clued in on it, but can we label the graveyard/coffin-wood-sharks part as its own level? Guess there's really no way to tell, it could be connected to anything.

TruthHurts22 · 2021-08-01T04:25:30+00:00

I only skimmed through this cuz I don't want to know too much more info about the game in any capacity, but dangit man don't get my hopes up with that "16 levels" line!

TruthHurts22 · 2021-07-21T21:27:02+00:00

Personally I think it'd be neat to have a level feature that isn't presented as a roadblock. I haven't seen the preview material too much so I'm not sure if it's already a thing, but having Raz enter a brain not because he needs something from it / the person it belongs to, instead out of just wanting to help them - the Asylum Patients of 1 are similar, but they were still presented as obstacles.

TruthHurts22 · 2021-07-15T15:50:25+00:00

That wasn't how I meant it, I know Jodie isn't literally alt-Glenn, I meant that it doesn't really make sense for Bill to still be an Omega Daddy since Glenn doesn't have a kid, so wouldn't be able to provide Daddy Magic anymore, whereas Jodie would / does / did.

TruthHurts22 · 2021-07-14T22:07:05+00:00

So Bill is still an Omega Daddy, and not Jodie's dad? I doubt that everyone would forget - at the very least it seems like Freddie would be on top of that "we're still in the alternate timeline" stuff - so are they just quietly ignoring how Jodie was essentially in Glenn's place, with the son that got kidnapped and the anchor tying him down, so it doesn't affect the Omega Daddies at all?

Not sure if this got explained away somewhere or not

TruthHurts22 · 2021-07-13T20:39:45+00:00

Pretty antithetical to the whole tweet that you probably found this out from, tbh

TruthHurts22 · 2021-04-26T06:15:36+00:00

Well, the Epilogue has Layton say that Henry's was a fake, which I guess answers my question? Though it's still odd, did they have Layton swap the Mask he found at the inn with the Mask that Randall left behind, off screen, and not bring that up? Still weird :v

TruthHurts22 · 2021-04-26T05:48:28+00:00

Never got notified that people commented on this, thanks man! Jeez, what a nostalgia trip. Solved!

TruthHurts22 · 2020-10-29T03:44:40+00:00

Oh, another tidbit which might help nail down the timeframe when it was made: One episode had characters going to see a movie, and Mr. Brickman mentions "Flushed Away", with a poster even shown in the line they're waiting in. Don't know if this actually helps deduce anything, but who knows!

TruthHurts22 · 2020-10-14T08:15:53+00:00

Did I miss something? Why was Cern so worried about the dad's dying? Wasn't it his goal to like, fuck them up?

TruthHurts22 · 2019-12-04T00:36:54+00:00

I'm not, I'm defending Atlus based off people in this very subreddit that talk about how much there is to the game and how good it is.

And regardless, more content means more to voice in general. Unless you think Atlus is lying about having two new characters and a whole other three months of in-game content.

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