I think it’s very complicated and surprisingly difficult to pinpoint when I first thought about the concept of a “what if” in a story, a branching point about what could have been. There are some very easy and clear-cut answers, of course. A visual novel with multiple routes, a choose your own adventure book with many game overs. But what else counts as a “what if”, exactly? Does it count if we think about what happens if Mario runs into the first Goomba he sees and instantly fails his journey? I’m sure people have pondered that before, at least for a laugh, though alternate universes tend to need more meat on them to really expand beyond just a simple gag. I mean, I could ask “what if Phoenix completely botched the very first testimony against Sahwit and failed spectacularly” but if you did that in actual gameplay you’d just get the regular game over screen. It also probably wouldn’t be much of an AU unless you were making a comedy or reinterpreting Phoenix as a character pretty drastically.
But then there are other ways to make AUs that do seem more plausible. What if Sahwit had been much more competent at covering his tracks, forcing Mia to take over the case since Phoenix wasn’t at that level yet? That idea has a little more meat to it. You could do something with that. Alternate universes are fun to think about, I mean I’ve explored the idea of alt history in my own writing so I’m speaking from experience there. To go back and answer my own question, my first time thinking of a “what if” was probably something very mundane, like wondering what happens after you game over in a videogame or the ever classic generic "what if this pure hero turned EVIL". I imagine a lot of people start off similarly before they branch out and explore more detailed AUs. People have been writing about them since roughly forever, I mean the history of fanfiction is quite ancient and mythology also has various different retellings of the same stories, if you want to stretch the definition of AU a bit.
There’s also the question of what counts as an alternate universe as well. When I write fanfiction, I usually tend to go for fanfiction that I tag as “canon-compliant”, meaning that it could have taken place within that series’ canon since nothing really contradicts it. Is it an alternate universe if I, for example, make a case set between
Apollo Justice and
Dual Destinies that doesn’t contradict either and could have happened quite easily off-screen, even if it’s obviously not referenced in the official games? Perhaps this thought exercise doesn’t actually mean much of anything though.
Of course, there’s also the idea of what ifs within what ifs. For example, a common AU I’ve seen in
Ace Attorney swaps Phoenix and Edgeworth’s roles as defense attorney and prosecutor, but everyone has their own idea of how that would shake out, and you could do several different types of endings with that setup. And perhaps just like in canon, Phoenix and Edgeworth would end up married despite the branching timeline, no one fact check me on this I asked my local AA BL fans before making this post. (I’m just rambling about nothing at this point, maybe.)
That said,
Appeal to Truth is billed as an AU, though exactly how isn’t made clear until later. With AUs, I find that there are (broadly speaking) two types of AUs: ones that try to justify where they split off (what if AJ-4 bad end timeline), and ones that just do whatever and don’t explain their changes (let’s have Moe the Clown as the elite judge mentor of nervous rookie Damon Gant and also they own a Gundam, sure why not). Either one can work depending on what they’re going for, and my point is more that I wasn’t sure which one
Appeal to Truth was until I was a fair way in. I really enjoyed the unusual cast dynamics. There are a lot of characters here who interact a lot who either didn’t interact at all in the canon timeline, or they knew each other under different circumstances. Even characters who did talk to each other quite a bit in the canon timeline, like Maya and Gumshoe, are obviously very different people now.
While the opening post says it a bit self-deprecatingly, I was very interested when I saw it mentioned that you were focusing “a bit too much on its characters” since I really like character-focused stuff, and when reading a mystery I will always prefer something that’s character-focused (yes hello GAA fan here). I particularly think about the second case during the second investigation day, where multiple talk conversations were focused on character building and had nothing to do with the case’s crime or solving it. It’s not that the crime is considered less important (especially since Pearl is the defendant) but instead that Apollo and his pals have a lot of things to focus on at once.
Something I really liked while going through the three cases released so far was that I thought each one was better than the last. I might be reading a bit too much into it, but I feel like that’s a sign that you’re improving as an author and getting more used to your own AU. I enjoyed the first case well enough, but I do have to admit that I found the character writing much sharper by case 3, while case 1’s characters were entertaining but not as memorable for me. It’s not that I disliked the case 1 OCs, they were fun enough, but I feel like by case 3 the OCs were a lot more compelling, even the ones who get less time overall.
I want to be a bit careful with this next compliment because it’s kind of an awkward one to give to anyone making any kind of fanfiction. I really like your handling of canon characters. That in itself isn’t an awkward compliment, but the fact that I enjoy a version of a character you write over their canon counterpart can be, since it’s sort of like asking you to be like “that’s right, my writing is better than official”. But that sometimes happens, doesn’t it? It’s not exclusive to
Appeal to Truth, all throughout fanfiction there are characters who I’ve disliked in the source material who I liked a lot more when handled by a fanfic author. In
Appeal to Truth’s case, it would be Godot whose canon self I am charitably not a fan of. Of course Godot came from someone else’s brain who had to consider how to write him under completely different circumstances (fangames and official games are made under very different environments and understandings), hence why I try not to directly compare the two versions. But I will say that your version of him is one that I enjoyed reading, especially since he gets Owned a lot more (affectionate), particularly once he warms up to Maya and she gets some good jabs in. Oh yeah, also I appreciated the multiple co-counselors idea. A lot of people (myself included) tend to feel like there should only be one co-counselor since there's not really screen space for more, but this is kind of a silly rule that just exists in my brain and Godot and Maya providing co-counselor help at the same time by the end was well worth any oddness that resulted.
The other canon characters also fulfill their roles really well and I enjoyed how much time is spent on them and how different they are in this AU. I alluded to this earlier in this ramble that I call my brain prison, but I feel like this is most evident in the conversations between Maya and Gumshoe. Two characters who do interact quite a bit during the original trilogy, but whose dynamic has shifted due to the differing circumstances as well as them getting older and wiser. Actually yeah, I think Maya’s probably a major highlight, which makes sense considering how much the branching timeline would impact her specifically. She’s probably my favorite character in this. Of course I do enjoy Pearl and Yumihiko well enough, but I really think Maya stands out. Our oomfie has come a long way in this timeline (for better and for worse).
Oh yeah, wanted to throw in some kudos for the amount of optional dialogue too. There was a good amount of it, occasionally there were moments where I was left wanting more (the example I can think of most clearly is in case 3, where I felt like Dean’s profile should have gotten reactions from people it didn’t get reactions from). But for the most part it was fun stuff. Present everything redundantly, that’s my motto and path to failure! Losing is fun.
I really appreciate the fact that walkthroughs are provided for the player. Since I’m very new to PyWright I’m not exactly sure whether this is considered common courtesy or not, but I definitely appreciate it in case I need them. I found that there tended to be a major stumbling block in each case where I needed them, from skimming the thread it seems like you’ve been made aware of most points I’d consider hard to figure out but I’ll just list my own hardest spot for each case. In case 1, it was the contradiction about how the body got the injuries from Clay’s car. In case 2, it was the contradiction about how Perune used her shipment of flowers to help reach some things (this was the one I struggled most with overall in
Appeal to Truth, I didn’t even consider that the flower shipment would be arranged in such a way that standing on them would be possible). And in case 3, it was completely missing that the vent was a thing you could examine in the initial investigation (it looked like part of the ceiling to me honestly), and the Mysterious Note contradiction (I had no idea what the note was meant to show to be honest with you). On the other hand, I do really appreciate the variety of cross-examination objectives and I like the variety in terms of crimes and settings… Even if I am eternally cursed to always be penalized because I assume pressing further instead of backing down is always the right choice.
There were some typos I noticed, though the script is generally free of them and they tend to be minor enough. Mostly they happen when they’re things that a spellchecker wouldn’t catch, such as a missing word or wrong word usage that’s still valid, and I found them more common in out of the way failure text (for example
this from a penalty conversation in case 3, or like
this from near the end of case 3’s second investigation when getting the generic Present text for Dean). Still, they were infrequent enough to not bug me, and your dialogue is flavorful enough that I looked past that stuff.
Thinking about “what ifs” once again, it’s sort of a two-way street, isn’t it? If you’re absurd like me, you can spend your time wondering about what happened to the DeLites in this timeline, or what happened to Tender Lender. Or perhaps a bit more relevantly, what’s up with the Gavins or where Trucy’s at. Or how the
Investigations games played out with Edgeworth surely having a very different mindset after the alternate outcome of 2-4 (this is my AU micro-fanfic cage now, get in the cage). But it works the other way around, sort of. I could hop on over to the canon timeline in
Apollo Justice and wonder what cases Yumihiko’s taking without Apollo’s involvement. Or if the victims of cases in
Appeal to Truth would still be alive. How about those involved in crimes? Are Edwin Sharp and Andrea Medina hopping on
Fortnite while talking about research? Who knows? What ifs are funny like that since answering every question is often self-defeating and ruins a lot of the appeal of the concept in the first place (show don’t tell is garbage fake advice meant to destroy your writing, sometimes you must Tell Forever, never Show Me Anything Ever - wait, I'm getting sidetracked). I can only focus on what you choose to shed light on, and make up my own ideas of what the rest of the world is like. Sometimes the audience has to come up with their own ideas, probably. So far I think you’ve been doing a fine job balancing what aspects of this universe you choose to push towards the front, and which you leave out.
I had fun playing, wishing you the best of luck in the future Masq.