Ace Attorney 6 news... And HOT RYU!

[inevitableentresol]

It's been confirmed that the sixth game in the Ace Attorney series is going to be localised in the West. The game is still in development and not even released in Japan, so I'm guessing that means 2017.

AA6 gameplay will apparently be all about dead people and ghosts, which is something I hate in my entertainment and go out of my way to avoid.

Meanwhile, they don't seem to be localising The Great Ace Attorney, which looks much more my style. It's set in Victorian London and has steampunk Sherlock Holmes. Out of the two of them, I'd much rather play that one. I'd been avoiding spoilers for it, and now I just feel stupid for having bothered.

I'm grumpy about the whole thing. I hated most of AA5, the last main game in the series, but the release at nearly the same time of the side game Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright more than made up for that.

But now in 2017, whether I like it or not, I'm going to be pushed out of the fandom if the next main game truly revolves around dead people. I felt really happy in this fandom. I've got a couple more years in it anyway, but this news coincides with me not being able to write much fanfic at the moment for stupid RL reasons, so that just adds to it all.

It really is good news, just not for this particular fan of the series. That background artwork does look nice. Seems to be Tibet-inspired, or in that region. (Edit: apparently it's set in a country where they have prosecutors but no defending attorneys, and the art indicates Chinese-occupied Tibet, so that's quite strong social commentary for a video game.)

But here's another thing that's been happening - I love that Hot Ryu from Street Fighter 5 is a thing that is being widely reported. He has a hot beard! Hot yet gentle eyes! He astounds local sheep with his hot, manly nipples! This is important hot information!


They do have a point, though. Hot beards are good news.

Comments

[dagbok]

Dunno, feels more like an attempt to bring the whole spirit channeling and by extension Maya and Kurain back one way or another (maybe she went to Tibet for her famous rigorous training?), the tease about her eventually being back in AA5 wasn't exactly subtle after all. The biggest complaint Japanese fans had about AA4 was that Maya and Edgeworth were nowhere to be seen, and since Miles already had his glorified cameo it's her time too. For the game itself I'm going to wait at least until the demo, trying to avoid other spoilers: Capcom tends to be a bit trolly with its reveals, so in the next future it might turn out to actually be a red herring, or just something related to only one case while the rest of the game takes place in glorious Japanfornia as usual.

As for Great Ace Attorney, despite what they're saying I'm sure they'll localize it sooner or later, it and Gyakuten Kenji 2 (although for this one I think they'll wait until they can get out a 3D remake and as a compilation with Investigations, like they did with Trilogy), despite the sales having slowed down in the 3DS era they're still cash cows, smaller than Street Fighter or Resident Evil but still good enough to bring back more than they cost to localize. Probably they're going to do like with AA5 and the Layton crossover, localize the main title first and the spinoff later even if in Japan they came out the other way around.

What I'm actually afraid of is that the franchise won't have other crossovers, PLvsPW sold so poorly for a Layton game it probably killed any other companies' interest. And that was a Takumi game, which usually brings back all the hardcore fans of the franchise. Also, what will happen after the 6th game: Takumi is clearly not interested into the main story any longer and just works on spinoffs and Yamazaki has been almost literally churning out a game almost every year, sooner or later he's going to get tired, and who is he going to pass the baton to?

That Ryu looks so buff he scares me. Like, if he flexes a muscle it's going to explode, horror movie style, or something like that.

[inevitableentresol]

I'm getting definite Maya vibes from the information about AA6 released so far. I liked her in PL vs PW, for the first time ever. So that's fine by me... as long as she doesn't do any channelling, which is far less likely.

I think a big reason why I liked Maya so much in the Layton crossover was that she didn't suddenly take on the spirit of dead busty ladies or dead murderers. I find that incredibly offputting, and it can happen at any time with her. I can't relax when she's about.

I still find it so hard to believe that they'd rather localise a game with all that ghost mumbo jumbo in it (and I'm not the only one who hates it, I've seen others on forums who aren't keen) yet won't localise a game starring Sherlock Holmes, one of the most popular fictional characters there's ever been in the western world. He's had more television adaptations here than any other character ever. Yet Capcom want to sell us Japanese ghosts as the more attractive prospect.

But I'm not looking at Capcom's figures so I don't see what they see. The only clue so far that they might localise DGS has been in revealing the characters' English language names. Otherwise, indications say no.

The irony of the Ace Attorney series with me is that Dual Destinies was the first one that Capcom saw any money off me for, yet I hate download-only releases and didn't like that particular game much either.

Sales figures really are a poor indication of what the fans want. They more often relate to previous games. Yet a company has got to make its money.

I'm sad to hear PLvsPW sold poorly. It was a great game. Real quality.

I hope they do a second trilogy release of AJ, AAI 1&2! That would be outstanding! But I don't have my hopes high for that. What fans would like and what happens often doesn't coincide.

I have a feeling that the Takumi spinoffs are going to be the games I most want to play from now on, but they won't be released in Europe.

I never got into a Japanese series before. I've seen others moan about these localisation problems and always thought they sounded a bit...well, moany. There are lots of other games to play instead of complaining. But it's the waiting and the uncertainty. You see a game come out and it might be years before it arrives in your own country, or it might be never.

In Ireland in the past it would be sometimes two years between the US release of a movie and it hitting cinemas here. But at least it would eventually arrive. I'm sure you were used to that too, in Italy. Perhaps I've started to act more entitled now ta years-long wait isn't the norm any more.

[dagbok]

The supernatural element being so prominent is what makes the series stand out from other investigative games, at least among those that don't have a horror twist, so I don't think it's going to be dropped in forthcoming games. Also, we need to have some closure about Apollo's powers (and possibly about Thalassa's backstory), so I think this element isn't going to be dropped. So maybe that Tibetan-style place is Borginia or somewhere around it? Uhm...

But I do partially agree with you: as well inserted into the plot the whole channeling thing was in the first game, in the second and third it felt either tacked on or plot convenient, with Pearl having the power to channel whoever she wants but having a dozen different reasons for not being around when the plot demanded so. Also, as much as I personally think that the story of the Feys is the real protagonist of the first three games, the way it was wrapped up in 3-5 is terrible under many different aspects. Most fans think that case is the highest point of the franchise though, so I'm definitely in the minority there.

Takumi seems to be in love with that mumbo jumbo mixed with investigation: the other game he wrote, 'Ghost Trick', is about the spirit of someone being killed trying to find out its murderer before its time on Earth runs out.

Yeah, sales figures aren't really the best indicator of popularity (AA4 is the best selling game in the series but also the most divisive), but they do give an idea about whether a game will be localized or not and what the future of a franchise might be. Which is why while I'm afraid about future crossovers I can see the localization of DGS happen (160,000 copies in the last two weeks of July, the same as PLvsPW - the data for August sale isn't available yet, but they'll get out in a few weeks), just not immediately.

Actually if they're going to be released outside Asia at all, I think Europe is most likely to get them, Nintendo Europe seems to be pretty on the ball when it comes to this: remember that North Americans had to wait about six months for PLvsPW to be released there, despite the game already being translated and dubbed in English for the European and Australian release. Compared to the two days we had to wait for Trilogy to hit the Nintendo eshop is a much better situation.

I still have this thing about either loving or hating Takumi's games, or at least loving a few parts or cases of a certain game and utterly hating all the rest, so I usually rather suspend my judgement on his stuff until I see myself.

Here in Italy the wait is also made longer by the fact movies need to be translated and dubbed (as I said, most of the population isn't bilingual and subtitles put off a lot of people). We're still used to waiting for that stuff, no problem.

I don't mind localization, at all, even if some changes can be funny or baffling at times (and, for someone bilingual like me, it's fun to spot them and try to understand why they went with certain choices). The only thing you'll hear me say against it is that using less pop culture references that often are dated as soon as the game is out wouldn't be a bad idea, all the opposite.

[inevitableentresol]

It's been confirmed, they have no plans to localise DSG.
http://forums.court-records.net/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=31412

I started off with AA4 so that was my benchmark. I liked Apollo's bracelet as his special power. So going back and playing the first game there were certain things I didn't like with the original and felt Apollo Justice did a lot better. This definitely includes the ghost channelling, the comedy suicide threats from Larry, and above all Mia's exploitative upskirt death pose.

AA4 has been their biggest seller, and that reinforces that they probably did that off the back of the trilogy. It's common for (even bad) sequels to sell more than the great game that went before them which might not have sold so well, because word has had time to get around.

It also means a lot of people will have started at AA4, like me.

The channelling has definitely been there from the start and it's a core part of the trilogy, but that doesn't mean everyone likes it. The lack of sales of Ghost Trick in the west is telling. Those who have played it say it's a great game, yet most people don't even want to try it once they've heard what it's about. At first, I thought it was just me, but I've seen half a dozen other comments on forums saying "I'll pass".

I'm probably unusual in how much I dislike the ghost plot device. From what I can tell, the most common response is bewilderment and lack of interest. It's just not subject matter that appeals to the west. And I love Death in the Terry Pratchett books and Grim Fandango - but in those, they're treated in a very western way. Dead people are skeletons. They wear robes. They can't be mistaken for the living. They have their own realm of the dead.

I once read a book of ancient Chinese detective stories and the translator even had to warn western readers in the foreword that in one of the stories the detective only solved the case after a ghost told him what happened. The translator explained that this wasn't meant to be seen as ridiculous or as a cheap cop out, but was meant to be taken seriously.

Even Wikipedia notes this about the east/west literary traditions.

"These novels differ from the Western tradition in several points...

the stories have a supernatural element with ghosts telling people about their death and even accusing the criminal;"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detective_fiction#Early_Chinese_detective_fiction

I'm sure there are some westerners who're attracted to AA because it includes ghost channelling as a valid and legal means of solving crime, which is something new and different over here. But I suspect there are more who are either just bewildered by it and set it down as just one of those crazy Japanese things, or put it down to cultural differences and try to ignore it because it's creepy, like me.

But still not as creepy as that Mia death scene upskirt pic. If I'd started with the first Ace Attorney game, I might not have got through that.

I've spent far too much time googling "hot ryu" already. That thread I linked above is a goldmine for giving other examples of video game fanservice aimed at gay men and ladies who like men. I'm pretty sure the Ryu above is aimed at men who like men, given the number of "hot daddy" and "woah bear" comments, but I'm enjoying it just the same. That's one way Japanese games are great (and sometimes terrible). They don't care what their customers are into, they're going to give them that fanservice, no matter if it's straight, gay, or much shadier indeed.

[dagbok]

Say what you will, but I still don't trust them on that: they had "no plans" of releasing PLvsPW either, and even if it took two years eventually they did. And nothing it taking off my mind the idea that the main reason why GK2 wasn't localized was because it was a DS game that would have come out during the launch of the 3DS, call me a conspirationist if you will. It's just that Capcom isn't the kind of company that hates money, even if it's just a quick buck. The only thing they seem to have problems with are new games that don't have an established franchise behind themselves, and AA definitely isn't.

Still, the supernatural element is an integral part of the series, whether people like it or not. What I don't get is the whole getting upset about this forthcoming game and treating it as if it's the franchise jumping the shark, when Trilogy has established that spirit channeling is a thing that exists and works, that there's a mystical object charged with the spiritual power of a 9-years-old medium that gets used several times during the second and third game to find out whether someone's lying, and that somewhere in the courtroom records of that world there's a report about a trial during which the spirit of a criminal that had already been executed for her crimes possessed a medium and carried out other crimes in revenge. Among the other things, that is. I can understand fans being afraid that Yamazaki might end giving a lame explanation to the Fey's powers and/or retcon some things about how spirit channeling worked so far for the sake of building up the world he's creating in his take on the story, but saying that "it doesn't belong in an AA game" or is a departure from the original concept feels like fanboyism (and this comes from somebody that has about as many problems with Yamazaki's writing as with Takumi's).

You don't even need to go look for historical stuff, in most of today's bookshops in Japan there is a section for supernatural detective novels alone, whether it involves ghosts, reincarnation or just folklore monsters. I've always been curious about this, but never really read many essays or research on the matter.

Personally I like of this kind of stories (although of course I don't take them as masterpieces of the genre) because of how different from the Western way of depicting it is. Also because due to the supernatural element they end focussing less on the investigation itself and more on development, thinking things outside of the box and so forth, which is an interesting approach to it, even if in the end the resolution makes no sense. In a way the Layton series is kind of a response to it, since all games seem to have a supernatural event which in the end turns out to be perfectly explainable scientifically (even if, like in the novels I mentioned above, the explanation and resolution in the end make no sense).

Well, people into female breasts and legs did get their fill with this picture of Cammy and Chun Li (looking damn good indeed), gotta give other fans their share too. This however makes me kinda curious about how Vega will be portrayed in this version for those who are into prettier men, he's already over-the-top and flamboyant as it is.

[inevitableentresol]

The last time I played street fighter was back on a console in an arcade, back with Double Dragon. Ryu has always been boring as fuck until now. His backstory still is. That's not what fighting games are good at.

I actually like the new Cammy, although I miss her plaits. The new art in general is a thumbs up from me, although it's not like my opinion matters since I'm not going to buy it.

I've developed a fascination with Amiibo although I'm not going to buy any of them either. The mania that has gripped many people is fascinating. An Amiibo recently went for 25 thousand USD!
http://www.gamespot.com/gallery/20-super-rare-nintendo-amiibo-figures/2900-138/

I was reading the comments on the official Nintendo YouTube video, and it looks like the bubble isn't going to pop soon. The craving for those amiibo is unreal.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TSpD2X2eG00

There are going to be hundreds of new amiibo cards for Animal Crossing, but they'll be sold in blind packs of three for £3 a pack. So you might potentially have to spend thousands of pounds to complete your collection, as the chance of landing the exact card you want in a certain pack is minuscule.

It's a scalper's wet dream, unless Nintendo offers to also sell cards separately at the end of it all, and there's sufficient stock for them to do this.

This is going to be insane. Unless the bubble bursts first, which it will eventually.

The cards don't even seem to unlock much content. I'm so glad I never could get into Animal Crossing.

There are many comments on that Nintendo video where people say "I only want X and X cards because they live beside my house in the game and they're my friends". That's exactly what Nintendo are trying to tap into. I find it a little heartbreaking. Meanwhile, the chances of someone buying a pack of three amiibo cards and getting the exact two or three characters they want are not good.

Let me do the maths. Say there are 100 cards released (they say there will be more) in packs of £3.49 for three (the official price on their website).

You want only one specific character. If that character isn't a special card, you have 1 in 50 chance of finding it per pack (two cards per pack). So you'd have to spend £175 just to have an even chance of getting that one character you want. If it's a special card, that cost goes up to £349.

£349 just for one card! And that's just the even chance of finding that card. If the odds are not with you, you could pay much, much more.

Hoo boy.

There are those saying AA6 has jumped the shark? If anything, it's gone back to its roots

However, there will many new players of the game who came in at AA4 or AA5, which had very little supernatural content and mainly know the game in that format. I had a strong feeling I wasn't the only one who disliked dead people and spirits taken seriously.

That's one thing I love about Professor Layton, there's always a rational explanation for all the mysterious goings on, no matter how unbelievable that final explanation is. Giant robots, hallucinogenic gas and so on. It's very Scooby Doo.

[dagbok]

See how many fighting games have plots nowadays amuses me, especially those where in the story mode some characters are best friends/lovers/related/allies with others while in the free fighting mode they just beat the crap out of each other.

I've always had a thing for Chun Li, even as a kid. Like Cammy is strange to see her with a different hairdo, gonna miss those hair buns.

By the way, I found out that the voice actor that plays Ryu in the localization of SF also played Edgeworth in AA5, and since I'm a 12-years-old at heart I like to imagine Hot Ryu with a cravat now. It would enhance biceps and diaphragm so he can spam Hadouken and loudly object at the same time. Even against kiwis, as you proposed below.

Me and my cousin have been talking about the possibility of DGS not being localized (not that he cares, since he's a fan of the series he's going to buy it anyway, then make me play it and explain it to him), and he joked about the reason being that the version of Sherlock was too faithful to the original to the point of having him offer Ryuunosuke some cocaine at some point. I'm a bit ashamed I thought that I'd actually like to see that.

Well, now I'm also glad I'm not into Animal Crossing, or that any of the series I like don't have amiibos. Yet. Although this weekend I went to a mall and found some of those amiibo that are listed as rare in that article (especially Luigi, they had enough to sell them at 10 euro instead of 15). I guess certain zones had different shipments, or certain figurines sold more in some regions than in others, and since amiibos aren't region locked the work of certain scalpers is less difficult than others.

[inevitableentresol]

I didn't know about PLvsPW at the time, that its localisation was in doubt and they'd even said "no plans". I'm glad I didn't. It's one of the strongest games in the series for me. In terms of personal enjoyment, my top three would be Apollo Justice, AAI1 and then the Layton crossover. The cut scenes and voice work in the crossover are just excellent.

I'm imagining Ruffles Ryu now as well! I have to factory reset my tablet this week, so no drawing until I finish that, but I want to draw that mashup very much.

The amiibo shortages are very localised. I've seen a photo an Australian posted of full shelves.

I also want to see DGS Sherlock offering Ryuunosuke cocaine like he's offering cookies. That DGS Sherlock looks fun. He has definite Cumberbatch hair, only blond. Apparently he gets everything wrong in that game, which is something some reviewers found jarring, but I'd like to see that. I want a silly, wrong, steampunk Sherlock.

Edit: have you seen this newly released art for AA6? The woman looks very like an older Maya to me. Not sure if her or just referencing her appearance.
http://aceattorney.dreamwidth.org/7394.html
Oh no, it looks much less like her here.
http://www.capcom.co.jp/gyakutensaiban/6/

[dagbok]

Didn't see them before, thanks for linking them. That woman had a Fey-ish thing to her, I could see her being introduced as one of Maya's cousins or something (that hairdo reminds me of Pearl and the jewel on her scepter is clearly a magatama), but those bright green eyes make me think she's not Maya. Unless she's gotten possessed or something, but for what it's worth it's definitely a sign we'll see Maya, and maybe some Fey family feud, again.

Not really a PLvsPW fan myself, and not just because of the ending. While it's not bad it's definitely one of the weakest games in my opinion, story and gameplay-wise, so much that by the end it felt like I had gone through an expensive overlong demo instead of an actual game, even if I have put more than twenty hours in it. I wanted to love it, but I just didn't get into it. Maybe when I'll replay it I'll be able to see why.

Well, in my post about the demo I said that he felt a bit like a mix of Klavier and Gumshoe. I like to imagine he's actually the result of some scientific experiment Ema did, or maybe something Gumshoe himself did while trying to fix his home-made metal detector or something, accidentally created Detective Fop and sent him back in time.

Yes, I like it. Now you'll have to rip this headcanon off my cold dead fingers.

[inevitableentresol]

A mashup of Klavier and Gumshoe! That could be nothing other than awesome. Detective Sherlock Dick Fop. I don't really like the original Sherlock Holmes as a person so that sounds like a great improvement.

I agree with you about PLvsPW feeling like a demo. There's a lot of hand-holding (there also was in DD) and an abbreviated episodic feeling to the story. Main AA cases are usually a lot longer than the ones in that game. But I kind of like that. Some of the AA games feel a little unfocused and meandering to me.

I got halfway through AAI2 and then stopped. I just couldn't get into it and everything felt too long winded. Now I'm going to have to wipe my tablet, do I'll have to reload and play AAI2 from the start if I want to continue. I might just not bother, at least for a while.

[dagbok]

Oh boy, this sounds like yet another OC coming straight from the kink meme, right next to Hannah Fright and Paul the Cravat. I'm tempted to start planning fics about him.

DD had way too much pointless hand holding, but some points in the cases were still challenging enough, while PLvsPW felt like I had accidentally put the difficulty on easy. And jokes aside, there seriously should have been an option to switch the bubbles with the exclamation points off during the multiple interrogations.

Investigations 2 really throws too much stuff at you at once. For me the slow pace helped taking things in (even if I really didn't like the game I have to admit that playing it was strangely relaxing), but I can see people getting bored or lost.

[inevitableentresol]

I liked using Little Thief in AAI2. That was fun.

The main thing that turned me off AAI2 so far was that there were no characters I warmed to, apart from slightly to the journalist. I liked Ray, but then he was rapidly de-aged and had a personality change.

I found most of the new characters in the cookery segment really boring. It was nice when Larry popped up. I like him best when it's just him and Edgey. On the other hand, there were so many characters in AAI1 I loved.

I don't play AA for the mental challenge, so I don't care what the difficulty level is. Easy is the same to me as anything else. I play for the character design and humour so I find it irrelevant. I've seen lots of comments about DD being too easy, but from my standpoint AA gameplay ranges from either unthinkingly obvious to illogical-try every option type gameplay. There's nothing in between. It's not satisfying to me at all.

I find the Layton puzzles much more satisfying, especially the maths ones.

I do really like that I have to push a button in AA in order to get the next line of dialogue. I find it really relaxing. I think that setup makes for great comedy as well, because the text spools at different speeds sometimes, and you can't see the next line, so you have that timing feeling of a joke being set up and then landing. It's really well done.

[dagbok]

That's actually been almost the same for me: Ray is actually the only somewhat memorable character in that game for me, even if his change of mind about Miles feels too out of the blue and just to make the plot go on and while Nicole/Mikiko was okay during the first case, when later on she appears again next to Lotta she ends feeling just like yet another typical sidekick. Every other new character was just too bland or stock, and whatever sympathy I could have had for Kay completely disappeared with that pity grab that was the fourth case (although, still not as bad as the pure hatred I had for Larry at the end of Trials and Tribulations. If anything I have to thank the Investigations games for making me like him again).

AA games for me got really enjoyable as games only around the second half of Justice for All, when I had learned to embrace their logic (or, more appropriately, lack thereof) and went along with them, if one tries to apply normal logic to them they're either too easy or too frustrating. During the first three games I've found myself at least three times having already understood who did what and why around halfway through the last day of trial and felt like I could have ended the case there by presenting the incriminating piece of evidence I already had, but instead I had to go through every other single loose end first, even ones not really relevant to the case itself, and present all the evidence I have about it, and only then present the final evidence to corner the real culprit. Pretty sure that's not how anyone's priorities in a case like that would be.

And about Bravely Default, you're welcome. I really liked that game, even started New Game+ despite having already spent more than a hundred hours on it, so if you need tips or anything else about it feel free to ask.

[morbane]

*squints*

Is there a reason Hot Ryu is apparently standing in front of a takahe?

(google image search results of takahe)

[inevitableentresol]

I've seen other comments about this as well. Apparently Ryu is on a worldwide trip to build up his fighting experience, which also explains his lack of shirt and beard, and the exotic menagerie in the background.

I guess he's about to challenge a kiwi?

Nice to know his bare nipples have all been explained with proper backstory.