All You Need to Know About Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

GameSpy: What's the biggest change you've made going from the Apollo Justice/Phoenix Wright games to Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth?

Motohide Eshiro, Producer: Well, the biggest difference is that we're no longer in court. Everything takes place in the crime scenes. Now you can investigate the crime scenes yourself.

The next biggest change from the Phoenix Wright series is that those games were mostly first-person. You were looking at other characters, but you are Phoenix/Apollo Justice. Now, the game is in third-person, and you have the tiny character sprites, and you can walk around as Miles Edgeworth, and it's much more interactive.

GameSpy: I liked the ease of movement by scrolling across the room with the stylus, but still used the d-pad as well. Do you feel that making the game more interactive with touch controls will make these adventures more fulfilling?

Motohide Eshiro: One of the reasons we put touch in is because, well, this is on the DS, so one of the big points IS to put touch in there. That's the point of the second screen. But we felt that giving the player the choice between the touch screen and the directional button gives them more choice, makes things a little more fun, so they can play it the way they want to.

GameSpy: The Miles Edgeworth character is such a contrast to Phoenix Wright. Phoenix is hotheaded, always screwing up, and so on, while Miles is almost cold-blooded in how logical he is. Do you find him to be as interesting a character to work with?

Motohide Eshiro: Writing for Edgeworth is an interesting experience in its own right. Because Edgeworth is so logical, and so cold, as you said, it's interesting when he gets to interact with the characters around him who are insane, or just kind of weird. So you get the humor from those interactions.

Also, Edgeworth seems cold on the outside, but he has a lot of interesting points about him where you can see the softer side of him, or look inside his head and discover something new. For instance, he's a closet Steel Samurai fan, so it's one of those things where we can show off the hidden things about him, and make him more personable than just a cold-blooded prosecutor.

GameSpy: My wife is a lawyer, and she'd quickly get disbarred and possibly arrested if she were to investigate a crime on her own. In Ace Attorney Investigations you have a prosecutor going to crime scenes and doing detective work. Can you tell me a little about that, and how that works in Japan?

Motohide Eshiro: Actually, we interviewed a prosecutor while making the game. I was doubtful myself, thinking "Do prosecutors really go to crime scenes?" But when we asked the prosecutor, it turns out that in Japan, the Japanese legal system allows prosecutors to investigate crime scenes. They actually hold some authority in that respect. In large cases, like murders, they are allowed to investigate, secure evidence, present that evidence, and so on.

In the Ace Attorney Investigations videogame we've faithfully recreated that part of the Japanese legal system, I guess!

GameSpy: Previous Phoenix Wright games could have been compared to popular legal dramas. Now Ace Attorney seems to be going in the same direction as "CSI." Do you feel that the incredible popularity of "CSI" will help make this game more popular than the previous ones?

Motohide Eshiro: I'm not terribly familiar with American television, so I can't say for sure. I can see how shows like "CSI" would generate interest in playing a game like Ace Attorney Investigations. We did, actually, take a look at the CSI game, to see what it was like. Of course, the Ace Attorney games are more over-the-top, more fun, while the CSI game was on the serious side. It was very dark. Certainly, if people like "CSI," we hope that they can find our game to be interesting too.

GameSpy: What will fans of the previous games like most about Ace Attorney Investigations?

Motohide Eshiro: For fans of the games, even though we don't have a court scene this time, there are still a lot of intense battles, intense confrontations with suspects and other people you come across. We think that should be something for fans to look forward to and we think that's something that they'll enjoy very much.

We also think fans will enjoy the new third-person perspective; being able to investigate the crime scene itself. That gives the series a different flavor, even though it's still very Ace Attorney in feeling.