#gk2 spoilers

[rockturbot]

(von) karmic retribution

[fuckyeahsimonkeyes]

by 黑若 on pixiv

[mxi-88]

horace knightley is the funniest ace attorney character

[brodorokihousuke]

Important stuff!

!! Spoilers are tagged as "(game abbreviation) spoilers", in as many ways I can think. So a spoiler for Apollo Justice Ace Attorney will be tagged as "#ajaa spoilers" as well as "#aa4 spoilers". Other important tags are "#brodoroki personal" for my personal musings and "#brodoroki art" for my personal art.

!! Also, if you're reblogging something from me try not to tag it as a ship! I don't really subscribe to any ships and all (I don't hate them that's just not the intention lmao)

Anyways, hello! You can call me Brodoroki or Brody, though I will honestly respond to Apollo as well. I'm a 22 year old asexual/nonbinary/panromantic (he/they fine) who has been riding an Ace Attorney hyperfixation for... around 10 years now. I love anything Apollo related, though DGS/TGAA is pretty up there too.

I LOVE discussing/talking about Ace Attorney in general so feel free to send dms or asks about things!! I have played all of the games (though have not finished PWvPL and GK2) so I have opinions on all of them..

When I'm not actively playing an AA game my post schedule may be lacking or nonexistent. I'm probably not dead, just out of ideas!

Now to finish off with some facts about myself.

I am closest in age to Ema Skye!

I'm a certified open water scuba diver!

I was originally going to college for forensic science, but am now going for geoscience/paleontology!

I run an oc discord rp server!

My partner and I are working on a webcomic called The Old Hunt!

[lmttn]

Gabriel Knight 3: Day 1 Complete

After my initial post about Gabriel Knight 3 (which was itself just me restating a few Tweets I made about the game), I figured I'd keep writing about it until I'm finished with it. I guess this will be like a really abridged camcorder let's play, but maybe less focused on the game itself (For example, I don't think I want to reveal too many huge plot spoilers.) and more on my own thoughts on the game and maybe also the graphic adventure genre as a whole.

Before I start, maybe I should first talk about my own history with the point and click adventure genre. It's not very long. When I was a kid I played a little bit of Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor (2004) with my mom, and I thought it was really difficult and none of the puzzles made any sense and then I went back to playing Battlefield 1942 (2002). Not long later, after getting GameTap (points to anyone else who had it), I tried a few of the many old adventure games on the service, such as the first couple King's Quest games and some of the Myst games. You could probably guess how well those went for me.

It wasn't until last year, at a point in time in which I really felt like I had played everything I thought I wanted to play, that I decided I'd give the genre another shot. It was a good opportunity to explore what I had realized was a huge blind spot; I love old PC games, and this was once a marquee genre for the platform. The first game I played in this excursion was LucasArts's Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993). I just thought it was okay. I really liked Sam and Max as characters, but I wasn't that invested in the world they inhabited or the mystery the game saw them solving. In addition, I really couldn't recall a single puzzle in the whole game. That might be a good thing, since that means none of them must have been particularly infuriating. Next, I tried Full Throttle (1995), also by LucasArts. I didn't finish it because basically nothing about its story, world, characters, or gameplay grabbed me. It's allegedly extremely short, so for all I know I might have seen the majority of the game before quitting.

Up next was Sierra's The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (1995), which I'm just going to refer to as Gabriel Knight 2 or GK2. I was interested in it because it seemed like the polar opposite of the other two games I played. For one, it was by the other major graphic adventure publisher. But it obviously ran way deeper than that. GK2 was very different in terms of tone and presentation as well, being a dark paranormal mystery in a contemporary setting, played by live actors.

I ended up finding GK2 to be immensely charming. Gabriel Knight and Grace Nakimura, the game's dual protagonists, quickly became two of my favorite characters in the medium. The writing and acting were campy, but nothing felt forced or insincere. A couple of its puzzles were pretty frustrating, but they were worth powering through to see the next part of the story. Also, it had to be among the most homoerotic games to be released by a major publisher in the 1990s. Metal Gear Solid wishes. If you're reading this and you haven't played it, I highly recommend it.

Which finally brings me to Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned (1999). I first tried it right after finishing 2, but was scared off by its interface, which may have been designed by aliens. I'm not going to retread what I talked about in my initial post about the game, but trust me: it's fucking weird.

One of the most confusing things about GK3 is how it starts. The game's opening cutscene gives absolutely no context as to why Gabriel is getting his ass on a train in France. That's because the actual intro is in a prologue comic, which was included in the game's box, but bizarrely isn't included as a digital extra in the Steam/GOG re-releases of the game. Thankfully, it has been uploaded elsewhere.

Heartbreakingly, Dean Erickson did not return to reprise his role as Gabriel. Instead, Tim Curry—who voiced him in the first game—was brought back to play the protagonist. Erickson knocked it out of the park in GK2. He had a more convincing Louisiana accent than Tim Curry ever will, and he was significantly more capable of portraying Gabriel at his most serious. Curry's portrayal, on the other hand, is really over-the-top. Unfortunately, Joanne Takahashi, who did a fantastic job as Grace in 2, didn't return either. I can't comment on her replacement (Charity James) just yet, as Grace has had very little presence so far in my playthrough.

As I said in my initial post about the game, Gabriel Knight 3 used a completely original engine. It was probably going to be used for more than just this game, but GK3 ended up being Sierra's final adventure game. It's a shame because it's a really fascinating engine that, weird interface aside, opens up a level of fully 3D exploration that other graphic adventure games didn't have. Instead of pre-rendered backgrounds, everything is 3D: characters, environments, and all the little objects that inhabit them. The level of detail is pretty surprising, as some of these areas are quite big. You have a freely controllable camera that moves independently of the player character. In the two images below, you can see the same area through two cameras. The first is the default angle you see when you load into this area. In the second, I pulled the camera back as far as it let me:

Obviously, the ground textures have not aged all that well, and some of the skyboxes depicting distant mountains don't look too great either. The level of detail, however, is pretty impressive. All signs and posters in the world are fully legible, and the texture filtering is good enough that they actually still look very smooth when you zoom in on them. I should've taken some pictures of them to illustrate this.

The interiors look (and run) way better, and they also do a better job of showing off the level of detail this engine is capable of. You can pick up that crumpled piece of paper in front of the trash can. It's so useless that it doesn't even get added to your inventory, but it still has a whole animation and voiceover dedicated to it.

Gabriel Knight 3's game sections are divided very concretely. The game's "chapters" are presented as days, which are split blocks of hours. For example, Day 1 of the game is split into 10AM-12PM, 12PM-2PM, 2PM-4PM, 4PM-6PM, and 6PM-10PM. Thankfully, there is no time limit or real-time clock. Instead, essential story progress is what moves you from one time block to the next. As the title suggests, I just finished Day 1 of the game.

Day 1 has the notorious cat hair mustache puzzle. It is, to put it lightly, fucking stupid. To make matters worse, it is the first major puzzle in the game. I can't even imagine how many people bought this game in 1999 only to never see past this part.

While its tale of vampires, missing babies, secret societies, hidden treasures, and seriously unconvincing Scottish accents has me intrigued so far, GK3 lacks the camp charm of its predecessor. Jane Jensen can obviously still write convincing characters, and her sense of humor still shines through occasionally, but this game is way more stone-faced than 2 so far. But all in all, so far so good. If I can get through a puzzle so bad it has its own Wikipedia article, I should be able to comfortably get through the rest of Gabriel Knight 3.

[wrightfamily]

“what’s ace attorney about?”

[skyesisters]

thinking about klavier and sebastian parallels again this fine thursday morning

[tusspells]

[turnaboutlawyers]

How does a body just “vanish”

[ace-procrastinator]

So @sannam made an AU where Simon Keyes was a prosecutor and Knightly was his detective and I love it. Their design for Simon was so cool I just had to make an edit of it. Original posts here and here. 

Step-by-step below, as usual! I took great pleasure in stealing Blaise’s badge for him. 

[rockturbot]

@requiesticat requested FTM Blaise in a suit. Finally an excuse to draw him in his auction conductor outfit! I went with young!Blaise here because I really don’t draw him often enough.

[fuckyeahsimonkeyes]

by 田圃 on pixiv

[mxi-88]

anyone else think about simon's case 2 dialogue about knightley thats definitely about more than just knightley? just me? ok

[brodorokihousuke]

May 2022 Ace Attorney Events

Utterly terrifying that SoJ "happens" in 6 years. Last I checked that shit was like, 10 years away? jesus

As always, this post will contain SPOILERS. This one contains them for:

Ace Attorney: Justice for All

Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice

Also note that this post concerns only titles with an English release, so GK2 dates will not be present.  All information is taken from the Ace Attorney Wiki’s timeline. I will also assume DGS takes place around 1900 and will use that year as a benchmark.

Heere we go

6-year anniversary of (2016):

May 2: A malpractice incident at the Grey Surgical Clinic somehow manages to kill 14 people. May 24: Ini and Mimi Miney get in a car crash. Ini dies, while her sister is mistaken for her. She uses this for the completely understandable task of assisting with murder.

In 6 years (2028):

May 8: Rheel Neh'mu is killed in self defense by Beh'leeb Inmee, while Datz Are'bal escapes from prison. Those three name puns make that sentence quite… Badd. May 10: Tahrust Inmee commits tactical death. May 11: First leg of Maya’s trial. She just can’t get a break, can she? May 12: Second leg of Maya’s trial, as well as Taifu Toneido’s death at the hands of Geiru Toneido, who proves that anything, yes, even dough, can be a murder weapon! May 13: Trial of Bucky Whet for the murder of Taifu. Honestly though, the most important thing is the fact that Blackquill is there.

-a day-long break from this madness-

May 15: Archie Buff is murdered by Paul Atishon. May 16: Dhurke Sahdmadhi is murdered by Inga Khura'in and is subsequently channeled by Maya. She returns to the US afterwards along with Phoenix. May 17: The “civil trial” occurs. Unsurprisingly, IT WAS ACTUALLY MURDER!!1! May 17-18: Phoenix and co. travel back to the country of Khura'in. May 18: Inga is unceremoniously murdered by Ga'ran. May 19: Dhurke’s long and grueling trial occurs, and Ga'ran is dethroned by a ragtag group of lawyers... somehow. May 20: Phoenix and co. travel back to the states, while Apollo stays behind and opens the Justice Law Offices.

[stolenrocket218]

Bansai Ichiyanagi/Blaise Debeste is absolutely horrible.

This has been a PSA.

[wrightfamily]

how it feels to replay aai2-2