Operation Backlog Completion 2026

What’s Going On With the Mysterious (Great) Ace Attorney Captions?

 Video games  4 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Aug 092024
 

Remember a few months ago when an Ace Attorney tweet of the Earth got fans stirred up thinking it was a hint?

Well, the latest stir is a lot harder to explain.

The Earth incident was simple. It was a difficult-to-recognize screenshot from Dual Destinies, accidentally tweeted without text to give it context. You can easily see how that would happen.

But how could new dialogue about Great Ace Attorney characters end up in the subtitles of Ace Attorney Investigations videos??

A fan on Reddit was the first to draw attention to this bizarre situation, and since then it’s spread as more people learned about it. In two videos posted to Twitter, one from July 6 announcing the updated profile picture and banner, and one from August 7 introducing the “Logic” mechanic in Investigations, turning on Twitter’s captions produces two perplexing, out-of-place lines.

In the first video, a caption immediately displays that says, “Van Zieks, you are the only one who knows the truth about this case.” In the second, around 4 seconds in when the dialogue starts, the caption reads, “Van Zieks, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Neither has subtitles for the rest of the video. While the second video is also on Youtube, the Youtube captions are only available in Japanese and just say that music is playing.

So… what’s going on?

This is incredibly bizarre. It’s the sort of thing that feels like it has to be an accident instead of a hint toward a new game, but at the same time, it’s hard to think of a logical explanation for two Ace Attorney Investigations videos with no voiced dialogue to have subtitles referring to a Great Ace Attorney character. Moreover, those two lines of dialogue are not from either existing Great Ace Attorney game or any promotional material that I could find. These are two entirely new lines of dialogue addressing Van Zieks.

Let’s run through the possible explanations for how this could have happened.

Possibility #1: It’s an auto-caption error.

What seems on the surface to be a simple explanation is actually the least plausible. When videos have automatically generated subtitles, it often results in lines that don’t match up with what is actually being said. (For example, I remember an Xbox video that started out, “I’m Larry Hryb, Xbox Live’s Major Nelson,” and the subtitles rendered it as “I’m Larry her black box lies Major Nelson.”) Automatically generated caption mistakes usually stand out not only because they’re out of place, but because they make no sense.

And these videos have no voiced dialogue! For automatic captions to misinterpret the soundtrack and text at the start of the videos as coherent sentences, and then not generate captions for the rest of the video, would be hard enough to believe, let alone that they managed to get “Van Zieks” out of it. I don’t think it’s actually possible that these lines could be automatic subtitles.

Possibility #2: They were intentionally added as a tease.

This was the first thing I thought when I saw it: an alternate reality game (ARG) using these mysterious lines to tease the existence of an upcoming new Great Ace Attorney game (possibly the Great Ace Attorney Investigations game I want so much). It would explain why each video has one line of dialogue. Presumably we would get another trailer next month with a third line of dialogue.

On the other hand, Capcom has never advertised Ace Attorney like this before, and there’s nothing else that would suggest an ARG. More importantly, the second video’s subtitle does not exist in the corresponding Japanese tweet, and the first video wasn’t posted in Japanese at all. It would be very strange for them to tease a new game through English channels first.

Possibility #3: They were intentionally added as a prank.

We can’t ignore the possibility that someone running Capcom’s social media added these captions solely to stir fans up, with no deeper meaning behind it.

But at the same time, it doesn’t feel like a joke. The lines aren’t funny, and they aren’t referencing anything in particular. If this is a prank, the whole joke would be just “you want another game and aren’t getting one,” which would be rather mean-spirited for an account that has otherwise engaged with fans in a friendly way.

Not to mention the lack of attention being drawn to it, which seems unusual for a prank.

Possibility #4: They were accidentally added and are meant for a new game announcement.

It’s plausible that the Twitter videos were supposed to have a “music playing” caption like the Youtube video does, but someone uploaded the wrong subtitle lines. Instead of adding the music indicator, they used lines meant for an entirely different video announcing a new Great Ace Attorney game.

Voiced trailers aren’t uncommon for Ace Attorney, which would explain why those lines have captions. They could also be for a video where the text is only in Japanese, with subtitles created to share it with the English-speaking audience. That’s the sort of thing that might happen if they were announcing a new Ace Attorney game in Japan with Japanese game assets for the trailer but wanted to announce localization from the start.

Since I really want more Great Ace Attorney (and especially The Great Ace Attorney Investigations), I can’t help but hope for this option.

Possibility #5: They were accidentally added and are meant for a non-game video.

Finally, it’s also possible that the previous case occurred but the accidental subtitles are meant for a video that isn’t a new game announcement, but rather something else. For example, Capcom recently held a lot of polls in Capcom Town where the results were presented by Phoenix and Maya, so it could be something like that with Great Ace Attorney characters (though it would be strange for that to be voiced).

The only problem with possibilities #4 and #5 is that this would require the subtitle to accidentally be added to the wrong video twice. With two different lines. In videos spaced almost exactly a month apart.

I’m baffled.

Once again, these are not existing lines of dialogue from The Great Ace Attorney. These are new lines of dialogue. No matter what they’re for, Capcom has new lines of dialogue addressing van Zieks.

This situation is bizarre. I think we need Professor Layton to help us solve this one, because while hoping this is a tease for a Great Ace Attorney Investigations game feels like a huge stretch, the “logical” alternatives are almost harder to believe.

When I finished The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, I realized to my surprise that I no longer cared as much about Ace Attorney 7. I wanted more time with the Great Ace Attorney cast instead. I especially wanted a Great Ace Attorney Investigations, but that hope felt impossibly out of reach. Now… could it actually happen?

I know one thing for sure: as soon as a new Ace Attorney trailer appears on Twitter, I’ll be checking for subtitles.

What do you think is the explanation behind these perplexing lines?

Even More Ace Attorney Investigations 2 Names Revealed

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , ,
Aug 022024
 

With Ace Attorney Investigations 2 being officially localized for the first time, one point of particular interest is how the names will be changed compared to the fan translation names.

(This post is spoiler-free, but you may want to avoid it if you don’t want any idea about the characters in the first two cases.)

Shortly after the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection came out, we came up with a list of names that had been revealed through the trailer and website: Eddie Fender, Verity Gavèlle, Eustace Winner, and Di-Jun Wang, as well as the partial names Knight, Lloyd, and Rook.

New previews went live yesterday, and I scoured them all searching for new names, only to find none… but then fans discovered that the French website Nintendo Difference had posted a ton of screenshots in both English and French that revealed more localized names.

First, we now have full names for two of those partials. The popular theory that Lloyd would be Tabby Lloyd turned out to be true, and I love it.

And Knight’s full name is Bronco Knight, which is… funny-sounding, but apparently Bronco really is a name. This is probably the one I’ll struggle to get used to the most (alongside good old Eddie Fender, of course).

Now, onto some characters from case 2.

Sōta Sarushiro, called Simon Keyes in the fan translation, is officially Simeon Saint. This name made me tilt my head when I first saw it, but after thinking about it, I like it a lot. The similarity between first names is amusing, but both translations were clearly going for a monkey pun and just took it in different directions.

Marie Miwa, whose name was Patricia Roland in the fan translation, is Fifi Laguarde. I think that’s a fantastic one. Ace Attorney has used the “patrol” pun so many times now that it pretty much had to change, and I can see her being a Fifi.

Shuuji Orinaka was known in the fan translation as Jay Elbird, and he will now be called Rocco Carcerato. If anyone tries to claim “Carcerato” is too on-the-nose, I repeat that his fan translation name was Jay Elbird. Subtlety was never involved here.

(Though I’m now really curious about what they’ll call his pet, since it’s unlikely to be Rocky if his name is Rocco.)

Finally, Ryōken Hōinbō was named Sirhan Dogen by the fan translation and now has the official name of Bodhidharma Kanis. Now, I have no idea how to pronounce that first name, but it’s the real name of a legendary monk. To be honest, I was never sure how to pronounce Sirhan Dogen either, so I’m on board with Bodhidharma Kanis.

I know there was some doubt about the new names when the first batch came out, but I really love some of the ideas they’ve gone with here.

Meanwhile, the screenshots confirm that Verity’s interjection is still “Overruled!” though no longer broken up onto two lines. The French screenshots also show that Eddie (though he’s Freddie Lapointe in French) called Edgeworth (Benjamin Hunter) “Benny,” and I love that too.

The Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is out on September 6, which means I’m just a little over a month away from holding an officially translated Ace Attorney Investigations 2 in my hands after all these years. I can’t wait!

Top 5 Things I Want From Ace Attorney 7

 Video games  8 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Jul 262024
 

Ace Attorney 7 is still only a dream, but I’m optimistic.

Between Ace Attorney’s recent success, the full series (except for the crossover) being available on modern platforms, and Capcom’s assurance that the series will continue, I think we’ll see a new entry sooner rather than later.

In fact, with the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection coming out in September instead of being spaced farther out from the Apollo Justice Trilogy, I’ve still got hopes for a Tokyo Game Show Announcement.

Now, as much as I’d be even happier with a new Great Ace Attorney, it’s probably best for the series if we get a new mainline game first. So with that in mind, here are my top 5 hopes for Ace Attorney 7.

(Note: I will touch on Spirit of Justice ending spoilers in points #3 and #4, so skip those ones if you haven’t played Spirit of Justice yet.)

5. More than 5 cases

Ace Attorney has had a pretty standard structure since the beginning. Every game has either 4 or 5 cases, with 5 being more common now. But The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles bundling together two games with a single overarching story made me realize how great (no pun intended) an Ace Attorney game with more than 5 cases would be. Having room to carefully set up its world and characters is one of the things that makes the story in The Great Ace Attorney work so well, so I’d love to see them do that again in a single game.

Of course, I’d still be happy with a 5-case Ace Attorney game. Actually, even a 4-case game would be fine.

More than anything, I don’t want them to feel so constrained by the 5-case structure. The last few Ace Attorney games have felt like they were forced to have 5 cases when they should have had 4 or 6, so I want the next game to have as many cases as it needs for its story, whether that’s more or less.

4. Let Phoenix step into the background

Phoenix Wright has been the main protagonist for most of the main series. Even two of the three games in the “Apollo Justice Trilogy” are Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney titles. For a long time, it was assumed that Capcom believed the series wouldn’t sell without Phoenix Wright in the title, but it looks like that has finally changed.

Therefore, I’d like to see Phoenix step back into more of a mentor role, with either Athena or a new protagonist taking the lead.

Back when Spirit of Justice was fresh and we all assumed Ace Attorney 7 was right around the corner, I remember speculating about how they would handle Apollo. Rather than split the whole game across two countries again, I’d like to see the main story focus on the home office, with a filler or DLC case to show us how Apollo is doing in Khura’in.

Speaking of Khura’in, part of the reason it exists is because they’d run out of threats for Phoenix to believably be challenged by at home, which is another reason to let him step out of the spotlight. That brings me to my next wish…

3. Lower-stakes story

As Ace Attorney has moved toward more focused overarching plots, the scope has crept up as well. Overcoming corrupt officials is one thing, but how about widespread conspiracies and threats from enemy nations? They seemed to feel a need to make the stakes higher in each new game, which culminated in Spirit of Justice where we helped a revolution overthrow a tyrannical queen (and the head revolutionary was a defense attorney, going up against a government that specifically hates defense attorneys, for maximum stakes).

We can’t get any higher than this without it feeling ridiculous. Even Spirit of Justice was pushing it. We don’t need Ace Attorney 7 to try to top the scope of overthrowing a tyrant.

So I hope Ace Attorney 7 scales it back. The emotional stakes are highest when they’re personal, when it’s something that will affect characters we care about regardless of the impact on the world at large. That’s what I’d like to see in the next game.

2. Normal Ace Attorney gameplay

This one feels too obvious to be this high on the list, but you don’t know how many times I’ve seen people hoping the next Ace Attorney game fundamentally changes the structure or gameplay. Being able to choose which protagonist to play as, timed investigations, multiple outcomes to each case with branching story paths, an episodic release structure with a new case every few months… There are a lot of ideas out there that could be fun in another game, but wouldn’t feel like Ace Attorney.

So it’s my greatest hope that Ace Attorney 7 is still an Ace Attorney game at its core. A new gimmick mechanic here or there is fine, as long as the core progression stays the same.

In fact, I want that more than any of these other things. They could have a game starring Phoenix Wright with 4 cases stretched into 5 as he defends clients in Galactic Court (Phoenix Wright: SPACE ATTORNEY!) to save the world from being destroyed and I’d probably still like that better than if they fundamentally changed the core gameplay too much.

(While I’m at it, I hope they never return to the streamlined investigations from Dual Destinies. Let me freely investigate every area for funny dialogue, please.)

1. It to exist

Please just announce a new Ace Attorney game, Capcom. Please.

…

…You know, I kind of want Phoenix Wright: Space Attorney as a spin-off now. But let’s get a real Ace Attorney 7 out there first.

Anyway, if and when Capcom finally announces Ace Attorney 7, what are your hopes for it?

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