So I'm guessing GS6 is still going to be using Anime Cutscenes for some of the scenes (although we know certain ones might be real-time). I like the cutscenes because it makes for a more interesting and dynamic opening to a case. I also think there's a lot of potential for really big events to happen in cutscenes which didn't work as well in the original DS games (I would have loved to see some of the more action oriented parts like: 1-4 when Maya steals the evidence from Von Karma, 2-4 with all the courtroom entrances, 3-5 when Phoenix crosses the bridge and falls, etc. done in a cutscene rather than just on the static main gameplay screen).

However, I also have a lot of problems with how they were implemented in DD. My first problem, which is that I felt the voice acting and dialogue to be really campy to the point of cringeyness, isn't something they can really solve considering the style of humor and over-the-topness that the series has. So I'm letting that one slide. (Although I still can't stomach the part where Fulbright says "But even a convicted murderer has got a job to do and duties to perform!". You don't see his mouth moving in this scene; he's narrating. Is there no other way to have phrased this? Him being in jail would indicate to the rational person that he doesn't have a job to do so just throwing that out there bothers me.)

My bigger problem with the anime scenes is that often they seem to happen at bizarre times - sometimes rather than have a huge plot twist be an anime cutscene, we'll have Jinxie turning into Tenma Tarro when in reality it's just some witness telling Apollo that someone may have seen that.

The cutscenes are also usually very short. I understand that, considering it takes a lot of time and money to make them, but I'd rather have less cutscenes but have them a little longer and a little more important to the story.

The scene in Wright Anything Agency at the end of 5-1 is especially irksome because I feel like I want a 2 minute version of that where Phoenix and Apollo actually have a conversation which builds to the moment we see. As it is right now we just cut from the end of the case to this climax of a scene we didn't see.

I'd love it if maybe the cutscenes were used extremely sparringly but when they were they were around a minute long. Or they remain the same length but they cover only events that warrant one, then used the saved time to occasionally do a longer cutscene along the lines of 5-1's intro.

So in conclusion, what are your thoughts about how the anime scenes in GS6 should be handled? Or what do you think about the ones from DD? Tell me your thoughts!

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I agree. Remember the scenes in Turnabout Reclaimed which had Phoenix, Athena and Norma DePlume in what looked like a pirate show (which just happened to be DePlume and Athena singing the songs)? Before the English version hit, I didn't even know they were just singing. I mean, seriously. Who uses an entire cutscene with instruments when all you have is a vocal track?!

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I agree with your points. I really feel that the Anime Cutscenes in DD were an after thought, they were sort of added in inconsistently, and missed good opportunities or were randomly inserted. Also the dubbing was god-awful. Like, the most cringeworthy stuff I've heard in a game.

From the looks of things, AA6 is using motion capture and in-game cutscenes, not anime scenes, so I'm guessing that's their angle this time. That scene of Phoenix busting into the courthouse looked pretty dynamic and even though I love the 2D animations, these in-engine styled cutscenes can be added and changed to fit the game's timing, and so they'll be well implemented.

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I would like breakdowns to be voiced and used in cut scenes.

Seeing them voiced in PWvsPL gave them such a momentous weight to them. I'd love to see some of that drama and impact in AA6.

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Man i'd love some of that to be put in the main games.

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Agreed. Heck, even a somewhat niche game like Virtue's Last Reward had full quality voice acting in both JP and NA version even though it would've been just as good without voice acting (The EU version had only the Japanese voices so I didn't focus on that aspect all that much) Ace Attorney on the other hand would greatly benefit from having voice acting during breakdowns and other important moments.

With DD my opinion was that all anime scenes were superfluous. You skip the first one and you still get a still image showing what happened, a full introduction for Athena, Apollo and Phoenix and so on. You skip the intro cutscene to the second case, you don't get the culprit spoiled and you still get the full exposition on what the case is about. Skip the cutscene where Apollo checks on the defendant and you'll eventually get to know what happened anyway. Skip the cutscene of Edgeworth and Nick spouting empty platitudes at each other in 5-5 and you get less empty platitudes.

Then there's some rather offensive cutscenes too like the culprit-reveal I already mentioned but there's also several red herrings that are over-detailed and misleading to the point of being cheap. They're sort of replacements for the still images you get when characters say they saw something and you get a visual representation of their version but at some point you just wonder "why bother making this fully animated?". The value of anime scenes IMHO is emotion and drama. You get to see an extra dimension of a character by giving them a voice and a more flexible expression and you get to see expressions on their face that says it all as opposed to the 6-or-so fixed presets they can have in the gameplay. By relegating anime scenes to impact and shock-value or just showing characters doing whatever, it just feels like anime scenes exist for their own sake. They don't compliment the game they're a part of at all.

The acting is not very good and like with Fire Emblem it's basically a bunch of actors being told to read lines without any context or getting into character and it shows. They don't own their roles, they just act over-the-top into a microphone and it's not exactly making you more immersed in the story.

The point is that all you lose by skipping anime scenes is some visual composition to the story but most of the time you lose absolutely nothing worthy of value to the storytelling.

I've heard AA6 has a toggle on/off for anime scenes. I'm using it, first chance I get.

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I expect the anime cutscenes will be implemented in much more meaningful ways this time than with DD. So far of what I've seen of Maya, they not only build up suspense, but they progress the plot just a bit as well, as how cutscenes are meant to do.

And well, the prologue thing is pretty much an optional addition thanks to the Twitter campaign, but it wouldn't hurt to include it either.

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I was more getting a case-opener vibe from the Maya scenes. The one where she's under the waterfall is like the cutscene that introduced Blackquill. A few shots that introduce her look and probably some voice-over going "Maya Fey" etc. and the cutscene where she's assaulted is probably like the cutscene establishing a case, like 5-2. You just see what you think is the cime happening, cut to black and then you see Phoenix getting involved with what happened. I'm thinking that murderer who attacks her is just part of some complex Ace Attorney crime, Bokuto yelling "Maya!" and her cellphone dropping is just a ploy for mystery -- the usual. I don't see anything thus far that makes it seem like the cutscenes are incorporated better and they don't exactly look better produced than those in DD either.

I'm probably going to turn them off or maybe wait a day or two to see what other users are saying about the implementation and then decide if they're necessary or not. If they aren't necessary or if Maya gets a crineworthy actress (loved her in PLvPWAA btw) then there's no way I'm toggling cutscenes on.

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Honestly, I think the "toggle" is an option for the SUBTITLES, not the cutscenes themselves.

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I actually am not too keen on voiced parts in the actual game, for a couple of reasons. This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, as I did not particularly like them in VS and yet I think most people did. Firstly, I find them kind of jarring because most of the game is text and then suddenly we get a few lines of voiced dialogue. It took me out of the game a little, because I read very fast and then suddenly there's voice acting which tends to go quite a bit slower. Secondly, while the voice acting in VS wasn't bad, the voice acting in DD was really cringey a lot of the time, so much so that when my roommate is home and I'm playing DD without headphones, I put on headphones when the cutscenes come on because I don't want to be broadcasting really awkward dialogue about "Athena saving Junie" or whatever it was (I haven't gotten to case 3 yet on my playthrough). Since the voice acting for GS6 will no doubt be the same level of quality as DD, I'd much prefer not having to have those characters suddenly voiced in the middle of the game, as most of the time I don't think the voices suit the game. Lastly, a lot of the dialogue in AA is "bad" - as in over the top, corny, campy, whatever you want to call it. I think that works well in text form but I think it loses a lot when it's voiced. The DD trailer made this clear to me - when Apollo Justice said "I'm fine! Apollo Justice is here! And my "chords of steel excercises are nothing to laugh at!". On it's own it's definitely not the best line ever written, but if I read it in text it wouldn't be that out of the ordinary. But when it's voiced it sounds like a really bizarre dub and it sounds completely ridiculous (as in "bad" ridiculous, not "Ace Attorney" ridiculous). So in my opinion any more voice acting than what's absolutely necessary is something I'm not to into, but I understand why people want it.



I agree with this completely. I was really really excited about having cutscenes because I've always felt that the games needed a little more to the opening of the cases (at least the original trilogy - AJ did some great things with intros as in 4-4, which is still my favorite intro of all time). But most of the cutscenes are little moments that mean nothing or things that should be just still images. I'm all for misleading the viewer in the case intro, as long as it doesn't show somebody else than the murderer literally killing the victim or something, but things like in 5-2 where Jinxie turns into Temna Taro was completely unnecessary because we know from the beginning that the murder was A) committed by L'Belle (so firstly we know that he was the one who did it and therefore why would we trust his information) and B) the murder has nothing to do with actual Yokai. So we as the audience don't have any reason to see that because we know that it is false on two levels. Same thing with the Shipshape Aquarium songs. The one in the case intro is completely fine, as it sets up the song for use in the case and it shows all the characters interactions with each other. But the latter two where the writer and Athena are each singing the song and imaging the visuals is also unnecessary because again it isn't real.

For me, the cutscenes are there to show what the normal game can't - murders, security footage related to the case or things that bring emotional resonance to it like the former trainer and the orca together - and are also great at introducing the case as well as being the "cliffhanger" for the next part of the episode - also the ending of the game; I know the finale to DD might be a little sappy or overly emotional but I think it's good for the games to go out on a cutscene. I just don't want 10 or 15 second anime clips that don't contribute anything to the actual plot of the game. So far all the scenes for GS6 look like they're fitting into what I'd like for the scenes, although obviously they're not going to show some random unrelated cutscene in the marketing.

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That would definitely make more sense too. I just heard otherwise from a random youtube commenter so that's not much of a source lol.

But anyway, I watched the snippet Rubia translated and I do agree now that I have seen it, that it was an example of a bit more dialogue and just showing characters talking... but that's about as far as it goes. It was still fairly generic, "Oh we need to introduce Maya. Let's make Athena say "Hey, what about Maya?" and then pan over to Maya".

I don't know exactly what I'm looking for, and I mean, it's one of the better cutscenes I've seen out of this and DD but overall I don't think the anime scenes have added much to these games (and for DD it was quite the contrary).

But like I said, if they end the game on a scene where Maya and Nick sit in that sakura-leaves tree, kissing, then I'll shut up because that's all my inner fanboy wants to see ever since I played the trilogy xD

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I just want them to have actual captions/subtitles this time around. There were way too many times when I'd be playing somewhere loud or somewhere I had to have the noise off, and then I'd have no idea what was being said in them. Yeah, I know there generally wasn't anything particularly important said in the cutscenes, but it was still annoying.

For all the Layton series' flaws, the one thing I thought they did well was the anime cutscenes. Namely, the stuff that doesn't really translate well to the typical visual novel format. Also, loved the dynamic breakdowns in PLvsPW. I'd love to see those as anime cutscenes, although I'll settle for the dramatic camera angles.

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DD's implementation of the cutscenes was poor, PLvAA's was perfect. As long as they stick with that version, it'll be fine.

I just hope the dub is good. I don't know why, but in my head, I hear Matthew Mercer's Shigure voice as Nayuta.

Also, I don't want any lines that don't make any sense.

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Which lines didn't make any sense?

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What lines didnt make any sense?

Phoenix saying that Edgeworth's target "finally decided to make a move". It doesn't specify who the "target" is (although an obvious deduction would be the phantom), so at first, it didn't make sense to me the first time I heard it.

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Yes, you weren't supposed to understand it the first time.

You're pointing out one of the only things I liked in the anime scenes xD


Yeah... it's not an on-off switch though. Different teams, directors, writers, production budget etc.

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I honestly had things I liked and things I didn't like about both games' cutscenes, but I don't really think either are perfect. I do think the Layton ones definitely win out in regards to actually showing what's worth showing and not just throwing in random ones for no reason (like DD) but I think part of that also has to do with the differences between a Layton game and an AA game.

While AA is very story-heavy (unless you deliberatley fool around during investigations, there is nothing in an AA game that is unrelated to the main plot, and because of this the plot is always moving forward. During the GBA/DS era, the series figured out how to tell its narrative within the constrains of the sprite system.

Layton, on the other hand, is a little more similar to classic point-and-click games which feature certain parts where the plot moves along but most of the game is solving puzzles that are really removed from the plot itself once you think about it. This is especially true of the original Layton trilogy, in which the majority of the time you were walking around town solving puzzles. Yes, many of these interactions furthered the plot along, but unlike AA every line isn't pushing the story forward. This is still true of VS, even though the plot is more heavily interwoven into the game.

For the Layton style of telling a narrative, cutscenes are great because they tell the story in a way the normal gameplay can't. It's dynamic, it's exciting, and it moves quickly so the game can return to puzzle solving.

With AA, cutscenes are much less of a necessity. As I mentioned above, they released 6 games without voiced animated cutscenes and the story carried across fine (some could argue better than DD's cutscenes) because the creators and the audience are used to how the AA narrative plays out through the gameplay. So in AA the cutscenes are jarring and feel out-of-place, and no matter how cool they are it feels like whatever they are doing the "normal" way of telling the story (sprites and text boxes) can probably do it more simply and effectively. Also, while Layton games always save the climactic events for the cutscenes, the creators and the audience seem to prefer the exciting parts of AA (witness breakdowns, "suspense theme" moments, etc.) to be told through the traditional route, because that's how the AA narrative always works. As a result, there's nothing really that the game can only show through cutscenes, and thus they become inessential.

So I think it's hard to make a comparison between the two games, as I think even if the exact same team worked on both games' cutscenes, Layton would still come out on top simply because the narrative and game design of VS is much more suited to cutscenes than AA is. I hope the SOJ team uses cutscenes more wisely and for more important things like false testimonies about people turning into Yokai, but I also don't really think they'll ever be able really make them feel essential to the story telling process. So I think no matter what I'm indifferent on the cutscenes as a whole and that probably won't change, although I haven't watched the SOJ prologue they released a while back yet so that might be really good.

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