Okay, so the Ace Attorney games are full of awesome (it's why we're all on this forum, after all), but one of the criticisms often leveled at the game is that the investigation portions don't stack up to the excitement of the trials themselves. Ever since the first game, the developers have tried out a few different ways of spicing up the detective work. As a result, we get stuff like the psyche-locks and forensic investigation which give you more to do, but in my opinion don't address one of the biggest drawbacks: progression through the investigation feels slow.

Investigating a scene, talking to people, presenting evidence, it all works out well enough, but sometimes the game starts to fall flat when you need to easily get from one place to another. Moving around one location at a time gets old really fast if you need to cover a lot of ground, and sometimes the locations are networked so oddly that getting where you want to go can be just plain unintuitive ("okay, I can access the detention center from the office and the park entrance, but not from the clinic?"). I think most everyone who's played the games has had some degree of boredom or frustration caused by the clumsy movement system.

Well, after about two minutes of thinking about the matter, I came up with a system that I'm amazed the developers haven't implemented already. I could forgive this for the first three games, since they were based on GBA ports that were more limited, but when there's a touch screen at your disposal it becomes surprisingly easy to develop an elegant solution. I've even created a few mock-up screenshots to illustrate my point.

So here's my suggestion. Once you select "move" from the list of options, a little node-map of the available locations appears, like so:



The Lawyer's Badge icon indicates Apollo's current location. Tapping on a node with your stylus would show the name of the location and accompanying image on the top screen, not unlike what appears on the bottom screen in the current games. If you wanted to make the map even more intuitive, you could replace the plain circular nodes with mini-icons of each location. This type of map lets you see very easily how to go to each location, and lets you move to very distant locations much more easily.

I can tell already that a few people would like to yell OBJECTION! at me and point out a particularly large shortcoming, but I'm already prepared with a counterargument. Part of the process of the one-step movement used so far is the ability to "bump into" important witnesses while you are on your way to some other place. For instance, the writing of the game would force you to converse with Valant outside of the Sunshine Colosseum, even though your original goal was to head inside and do something else. That can still work in the same way by simply displaying your movement route on the map as you travel. If you come across a node where a new character or event has taken place, you'd simply stop your trip short and appear at that location, like so:



Now you don't lose anything from the old "one step at a time" approach, and it's a lot easier to comb the map for new witnesses if you're not sure what you should be doing. The whole idea here is to speed up the downtime between important conversations.

So what do you think? Is this a workable idea? It's a really simple mockup, and an idea devised in a very short amount of time by an amateur. Think about the kinds of things that a whole team of experienced game developers should be able to come up with. I really hope the GS team doesn't keep things stagnant, because as much as I love the stories and characters of the franchise, it feels to me like it's already starting to creep into Megaman territory when it comes to (lack of) gameplay innovations.

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0_0 Coolest idea i have ever seen

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Wow, that's a really good idea! I always felt like going from place to place one at a time was too slow. Your system pretty much solves all the problems.

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This system is great except that right now we have no idea what each node represents. Would you put this information on the top screen? :)

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Send this to Capcom, holmes.

That would most likely be the case, with a second tap of the stylus required to actually move to the location in question.

Additionally, a "Last known location of <NAME> at <TIME> on <DATE>" thing might make for a more interesting addition to the investigation sections, and help to keep tabs on the movements of some key characters (And might also allow the game developers to help themselves prevent any "But they couldn't have been there! They were in <LOCATION> when I saw them at that time!" discoveries made by the players.

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I could actually see this working. Nice.

That's an awesome idea.

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I like this idea. It would make movement a bit easier and would streamline investigations.

Basil is happy.

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I've thought of something like this before; I think actually using a map (a la 4-2 or 2-3) would be even better.

I also noticed you used Edgeworth's background for you mockups.

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I considered using an actual map, but I think it would end up being too limited when you consider the number and distance of locations you tend to go to. It works in Turnabout Corner because the majority of the places you go all take place in that one particular area, but that doesn't work very well in every case. Take 3-5 for instance: you have the normal locations around the city (office, detention center, Criminal Affairs), but also a ton of locations of various distances at Hazakurain on both sides of the bridge. You'd have to split the map up into several sections, and I think it would start to become more troublesome than it's worth when taking distances into account.

Plus, it means that the team might have to develop an actual map of the main city, and that would place limits on their ability to bring in new locations.

And yeah, apparently according to my mockup, you play GS5 as Edgeworth. Really, it's because his was the only background image I could find on the site.

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Veeeery interesting. I could definitely see this working.

How about an actual map? I'm not the only one who thought that the map from 4-2 was awesome, was I? It could be like a bigger version of that.

But as for the actual idea - awesome. Makes things that desperately need to be simpler, well, simpler.

lol, random witness encounters

HOPE YOU SAVED

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This idea = WIN



This idea = DOUBLE WIN

(Sorry, I just felt it needed to be said.)

Also, I get frustrated about having to go back to the Wright and Co. law offices when I want to talk to Andrews after chatting to Matt in 2-4. Is there anything within this, that would allow me to go straight to Adrian's room instead?

I believe I would highly appreciate a system like this. It would also make it easier to find new locations and such, instead of having to wander around to where the "logical" location is...

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WILD DARYAN APPEARED

-shot-

But seriously, I think this idea is awesome and should already be in AJ.
But the game designers are lazy XD;

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Here's one of 1-5, if anyone doesn't believe that locations with names can fit on the DS screen:



Most GS cases don't go beyond this, and even 3-5 could fit with a smaller font. And having a bunch of dots is a bit confusing.

Also, other investigation innovations could happen too, like 2 rows of talk options, for 8 talk options! (Seriously, though, I hope they don't do that. 4 is enough.)