I thought several of the characters were out-of-character, but I'll focus on the whip.
If they aren't Franziska or anybody in flashbacks, you are free to think that :^)
Cross-Examination and Contradiction Design wrote:[T]he player may be privy to all the needed information, but see no reason to apply it. Perhaps the detail seems too irrelevant or pedantic, such as the distinction between a "spear" and a "polearm". Or perhaps a trivial concern is buried in a massive testimony upon a different subject. Either way, while misdirection is a valuable tool, it is dangerous to misdirect the player away from a point that is already subtle.
Gamer2002 wrote:What the player has to do is to remember that Neela's blood is on the whip (and she is the only person that Franziska whipped so far), catch on the significance of Manfred telling Dahlia that you can bribe people running civilian registry, and listen to the narrative's screams about Danielle being an evil liar (her taking place of Dahlia after the flashback, Franziska seeing in her Ini and Acro, not to mention Danielle's insulting lack of subtlety in Part 2...).
I claim that it is not reasonable to expect the player to connect the relevant information or even see it as relevant.
Based on, "But it was my intention to have this be not very obvious, not without Phoenix's hint you get from getting Athena declared guilty," I assume the stronger statement that it was your intention to have Phoenix's hint be how the player
starts finding the solution and that you believe it is unreasonable to expect the player to make the connection or see the relevance otherwise.
My intention was that what is the problem and what you should prove isn't that hard to guess, and only what you have to do to is nearly impossible to guess without Phoenix's hint. I fully expected genre-savvy players to read her police interview and right away bet on her being Redd White's daughter, but I think even for them the whip wouldn't be obvious solution.
So, how does Phoenix's hint of "It runs in the blood." help? A player
can reasonably infer that Danielle is suspicious. If the player hasn't, I imagine they would get it quickly, since that is the easiest way to explain her testimony, and the Ini/Acro would be easy for a player to take note of on a second playthrough. Once the player makes that connection, then the immediate interpretation is to look into Danielle's parents.
I'd like to note that I believe the player can pretty easily realize that they should consider Danielle suspicious during the first run, because:
- Franziska states the Danielle could be a liar, right before the trial
- Edgeworth suspects her, even if he downplays it due to the possibility of being biased
- Ema is reserved about trusting her
- if you consider that Athena is innocent, Danielle has to either be a liar, or somehow mistaken
- if you believe what Apollo said when he perceived her, she does lie about having no reason to observe Phoenix's office
- Danielle rehashes April May's role in a crime that is a rehash of 1-2, and April was an accomplice of the true culprit
- the article that caused Edgeworth's removal suddenly popped up solely to shield her from suspicions of the Chief Prosecutor
- in part 2, she isn't even subtle about being suspicious
- in part 2, I MYSELF am not even subtle about her being suspicious
- thinking that witnesses can be 100% trustworthy in AA is genre blindness ;P
And yes, her hiding something about her own identity is the first thing that comes to the mind, when you suspect her.
This should recall for the player (and if they don't already remember it, the line in the testimony should make it obvious) that Edgeworth has already done an extensive background check on the witness and found nothing out of the ordinary there. Besides, the only information we have on her family is her photograph, which we may not have even seen yet.
Ema's report also states that Daielle's identity was checked, though only in Ema's testimony you learn how this process went down.
As for the photo, it was Danielle having a picture of some random rich-looking people, as her cheap play on emotions to drove others from the subject of her parents. If you get the photo and present the whip, Franziska will point out why that photograph was fishy - it doesn't make much of sense that Danielle had one and only photo of her own parents. And it didn't even have her on it, to believe that she gave you a photograph of her own parents is to take up her word, nothing else (although Ema says that Danielle's story fits civilian record, but about that, later). The player shouldn't blindly trust any information from a person that everybody (louder or quieter) calls a liar, especially if they themselves suspect her.
At this point, I see no "obvious" next thing for the player to conclude, so I turn to a more systematic analysis.
I suppose "this point" is the moment when you receive the hint from Phoenix. Let's get back to the moment the player, on the first run, reaches in her 2nd CE the statement about her identity being checked by Edgeworth. I believe that, at that point, the player can realize:
- Danielle can likely be a liar, due to the reasons listed above, and can be hiding something about herself that ties her to Phoenix.
- Bluecorp's link to the current crime isn't out of option, due to current case's similarities with 1-2.
- Danielle was repeatedly stated to be rich, and even if we put aside the flashback with Manfred and Dahlia, that alone indicates the possibility of influence and bribery that could alter civilian record, which makes official background checking not very reliable
Now happens the defense's "no-press" of her statement. My intention was that the player would read it as Danielle saying "haha, the correct answer is HERE, you KNOW IT, but you have NOTHING that can prove it!", without flat-out saying it. This, plus the above, is why I expect from the player to realize that Danielle is clearly hiding the truth about herself, and the key is her true identity. The player can also likely start suspecting that she is connected to Redd White himself, maybe even as a daughter.
But, as I've said it earlier, it's nearly impossible for the player to realize how anything can be proven. So the guilty ending happens, and we have the final scene with Danielle and Edgeworth.
Now something happens that I suppose I didn't execute as well as I should have. Danielle uses a word from Redd White's vocabulary, highlighted in orange. This was supposed to be the final confirmation of her being connected to White, though I guess I expect from the player to remember too much from 1-2. I think I should have in the flashback with Gant have him mock how White talks, and those words be also highlighted.
But even without that, this scene is a final confirmation that Athena is innocent, Danielle is evil and everybody got played by her. The player can also (after this ending, or before it) get the ending where the trial is postponed for the next day, but Danielle states that nothing anymore can alter the outcome. I don't explain how this can work (as it would provide answers to the player), but I intended this scene to validate Apollo's claims and Edgeworth's suspicions that something with influence, like Bluecorp, was involved in the crime.
And in both endings Danielle calls Franziska Edgeworth's sister, so it should be clear that she is knowledgeable about them.
Assuming the player got Phoenix's hint and also saw the postponed ending, this is what the player should realize:
- Danielle is a liar and knows even about things like Edgeworth-Franziska's relationship
- Danielle very likely lied about not having any reason to observe Phoenix's office
- Danielle hides the truth about her background, but the defense can't prove anything about it
- some sort of conspiracy is likely, possibly Bluecorp
- "It runs in the blood"
Even if the hint with Redd White's vocabulary wasn't clear enough, I believe the player has enough to notice the like-hood of Danielle-Bluecorp connection. Phoenix's hint also indicates that her parents are important, and Danielle claims that her parents are dead rich people from her photo. Even if the player didn't get it earlier, they should remember they could ask about her parents during the recess and get back there. Besides, the player is very likely to use the possibility of returning to the recess and using saving to check all the answers to the last question to Danielle.
So, I can expect from the player to learn about Danielle's "parents". After guilty and postponed endings, I can expect from the player to be aware that Danielle is a lying liar with influence. Here, I expect from players to realize that Danielle shouldn't be trusted about anything she says, and her sob story about one and only photo doesn't add up. I don't think it would be, at that point, hard to guess that she would lie about her family. So, Danielle is:
- a confirmed liar
- likely lied about her family
- rich and with influence
- likely linked to Bluecorp
- hides the truth about her background that would break her testimony about not having any reason to lie about Phoenix's death
If the player didn't suspect her before to be related to White, this + "it runs in the blood" should make it evident. What's left for the player is to realize that they do have Danielle's blood on Franziska's whip, Edgeworth didn't think about trying DNA tests, so they can present the whip to point that there was another way to check Danielle's identity.
There are three things the player can do to make progress:
- Search for facts. For this game, that means replaying and rereading the dialogue. This is simple comprehension.
- Process facts into clues. Deciding what dialogue could be useful for making progress and what likely is not useful.
- Combine clues to make conclusions.
In this case, the player needs to come to the conclusions that Danielle may be related to somebody in the case by blood but hid that by falsified records, and we can test this hypothesis by testing the blood on Franziska's whip from when she whipped Danielle earlier. The player also must conclude this before their patience runs out.
This is very difficult for the player to do:
- Without any indication that the clues are likely to be in a specific part of the game, the player has to replay the whole game to look for clues. This both makes it harder to search for facts (because there is so much dialogue to search through) and reduces player patience (the player knows sorting through the dialogue will take a lot of time, and some players will find this tedious).
- Both of the above problems are worsened by the nonlinearity of the game and the delayed response time decisions have. When entering court, Franziska emphasizes that the choices she makes will change how the case proceeds, but will not do so rightaway. This introduces combinatorial complexity, where players feel the need to try many possibilities because the clue might be there. (Remember, there was never any indicator of where to look for clues!) Franziska gave four different theories the defense could advance. "Maybe," the player can think, "if I get the "right" combination of responses in part one, I can change change the defense's theory in some important way, and that changes their press conversations in a way that gets you what I need to proceed." Hence they try many different possible responses.
- The game is not very clear about what the players should look for. All they have is a cryptic hint, and unless they pick up on the conversation with Dahlia, the game never gives them feedback that they're on the right track. Even a player who correctly suspects that they need to show Danielle's true parents are connected to Phoenix may be dissuaded from that theory. If it never occurs to them that there may be a way around Edgeworth's background check and they believe the photograph Danielle gave them, they may think that was a false lead and look for something else. So players may not know how to evaluate how relevant a fact is, which further reduces patience. This is precisely what happened to me. I had completely forgotten that the details of how Edgeworth conducted the background check were mentioned, and after seeing the photograph, I was inclined not to spend any more time on that theory anyways.
- As the trial goes on, player focus starts slipping, and they can "fall into a rut." While a much slower process, it's very hard to stop once it sets in. It results in less player patience, less attentive reading, more uncertain deciding what the facts are, and more uncertain making conclusions from them.
The path I took was to replay the second part of the trial a few times, get the additional pieces of evidences, not find a clear use for what to do with them, lose confidence in my thought that Danielle's parents were the key focus, have my hypotheses that "maybe I need to let the Perceive or the Mood Matrix work" shot down, conclude that I would likely need to replay the first part of the case several times, and then decide that it was not worth my time and quit the game.
Eh. Pretty much the first play-tester, aside from myself, was the competition's judge, and he received a guide to every puzzle. Which is why the only guide I gave at first only revealed how to get guilty ending, so people would gave me feedback on near-blind play-through. But then DWaM finished this without bigger problems and I assumed it wasn't that hard after all.
Without having played the rest of the case, I recommend the following:
- Have Phoenix give more hints. First, he should be absolutely clear about whether the player has "enough" information. If they don't, he should specify what they need to change. If they do, he should specify that the moment to change the trial is in Danielle's final CE. This greatly reduces the space where the player has to go searching for clues.
I intend to have Phoenix be clear about the player having every evidence they need for her last testimony.
- Give the player another clue to make them dig into how Edgeworth conducted his background check. I imagine that on Danielle's statement about the background check, Apollo would object that maybe there was a way around it, and Franziska can object that they explored that issue in Ema's testimony, and if he has an objection, he had better have evidence. Apollo, of course, will fold, but this still hints to the player that Ema's testimony is available for searching.
I'll think if Danielle can add something useful, when she can't stop herself from mocking the defense.
- I'd also recommend additional hints on "close but not quite" answers, such as presenting the Family Photo when Danielle says there is no relation. Yes, it may be horribly speculative from the player, but this would be a good time to tell the player they have the right general idea.
I'll think about some photo-specified penalty conversation.