case by case: 1-4: delayed karma
Welcome back to my weekly consideration of each case in the Ace Attorney series! Last week we helped an actor who was framed for murder; this week, we get to do some cryptozoology, and we get credits! Let's dig in, with some spoilers.
We open with a news story about a cryptid being spotted at Gourd Lake, and then we find out that our boyfriend Edgeworth has been accused of a murder, also at Gourd Lake. It takes a bit of investigation before Edgie will agree to let us defend him in court, which means that by the time we officially have a case we already know that we're in for a complicated case--the DL-6 incident, which you may remember from 1-2, is coming up again. This time we're solving it! It turns out it's the one where Edgeworth's father was murdered.
There are some great character moments in here; what I didn't remember about this one is the extent to which we get a portrait of Edgeworth as someone who has been dealing with trauma for fifteen years, and the extent to which that informs just about everything that happens in this case. You would expect based on his portrayal as the uptight, proper, carefully composed prosecutor that he would avoid making such obvious mistakes as "picking up the murder weapon", but that's discounting that he has been having nightmares of his father's murder, by his account, every day for fifteen years. A gunshot at such close proximity . . . it's hard to act rationally when you're reliving a traumatic event like that.
The first big turning point here, much like in 1-3, is the revelation that the murder did not take place where we thought it was, and that revelation is only made possible by the best Christmas meme, "Almost Christmas means it wasn't Christmas!"--our good pal Larry shows up and reveals that there was a third gunshot, and it happened twenty five minutes before the two everyone else was talking about, and this helps make sense of the information we had available: there were two men in the boat; one of them was Edgeworth; no one else was on the lake. It's a good one, and the hint Phoenix gives for it is that "it's just like the samurai case", which I like as a hint. It invites you to remember the previous twist and try to place it into this context, given some new information.
This lets us do some additional investigation, including discovering that this case's prosecutor, the dreaded von Karma, has apparently sent a letter to our murderer detailing instructions on how to pull off this murder and frame Edgeworth for it. And then we get a quick confession from the murderer, and Edgeworth is like "but wait! actually I murdered my dad!" and von Karma's like "hell yeah let's do a quick trial, no investigations just the stuff you brought with you" and everyone else is like "sure okay that sounds good" and truly Japanifornian law is hell.
The final "I know you did it I just need to find a way to prove it" segment is an integral part of the formula, especially against the final antagonist, and I absolutely love that the key in the end is this random metal detector Gumshoe gave us. Dude got shot and just left the bullet in there so no one would know about it, and we're still carrying around Gumshoe's actual garbage and it works. (This case also has multiple "hey, present your badge to people, it's necessary to progress" moments, which is always very funny to me.)
If I'm left with one question here it's: why now? We are given the pretext that the DL-6 incident's statute of limitations is expiring imminently, but that should only matter if the intent is to prosecute; neither the murderer nor von Karma stand to benefit from that. But it's a minor quibble; we need some pretext for the big climax here, and you gotta meet these games where they're at (as with any video game, really).
This is a great conclusion to the first game's story. Edgeworth is a favorite for a reason; it's great to see Gumshoe's devotion to him, it's great to get some depth and backstory. The twist isn't a huge shift, but I think that's for the best: here we're focusing on characters that we know, and trying to weave together multiple narrative threads. A big earth-shattering revelation would detract here. So it works, and then we get credits.
Next week: 1-5! The DLC case! There's luminol, there's Ema Skye, and I feel like I remember DLC cases always being a fair bit longer than the other cases? We'll see! Stay tuned. (Editor's note from a future vaudeville ghost: I was extremely right about this, haha.)