[M] The Presidential Turnabout

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letterman
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[M] The Presidential Turnabout

Post by letterman »

Are you bored of being forced to stay at home by the coronavirus lockdown? Being driven mad by the total lack of fun stuff to do? Well now you can entertain yourself by learning who REALLY killed JFK!! …………..............Yes, really. :| :|

Hi, I’m Letterman, and this is my debut case. I was inspired to create this story after seeing how frustratingly little progress has been made on resolving what was arguably the crime of the century, the infamous slaying of the president in Dallas in 1963. Regardless of your opinion on it, I’m sure you can all agree that we are still a long way from having ALL the answers. I also found it astonishing just how much of the truth we could have learned by simply clearing our heads a little, approaching this case with a fresh pair of eyes, and applying the same kind of inductive logic that Ace Attorney trains us to use. Full disclaimer: this case does not read like a “crank conspiracy theory”, and it does not claim to answer all of the unknowns and mysteries of the Kennedy assassination (though you’ll be surprised at what you DO learn). Another disclaimer: this is an “alternate universe” case, in which the characters we are all familiar with exist within the Kennedy zeitgeist.

……………………………..

You play as Apollo, with Trucy as your ever-loyal sidekick. As with most people, the JFK case has always lurked at the back of your mind since childhood, but you’ve never taken a real interest in resolving it until now. But when an innocent trip to a space museum takes a dangerous turn and spirals into a nightmarish adventure of time travel and lawbreaking, you are forced to journey back to the fateful day of John Kennedy’s murder, and find yourself defending the most notorious assassin (or fall guy!) in history, Lee Harvey Oswald. As you hunt around the now world-famous crime scene, desperately looking for some clue or scrap of evidence that everyone else might have overlooked, you slowly become more and more unnerved at the steady trickle of evidence that…….just doesn’t make sense. Your client is clearly not telling you everything he knows, but is he the only one with a skeleton in his closet? Just how many of your own preconceived notions on this case will you have to take another look at? Will you be able to uncover the truth in time, and save your client from his historical date with destiny? Or will you be forced to watch powerlessly, as the inevitable sequence of known events unfolds before your eyes?


Without further ado, here are the links:
Investigation Former: http://www.aaonline.fr/player.php?trial_id=111420&debug
Investigation Latter: http://www.aaonline.fr/player.php?trial_id=111651&debug
Trial: http://www.aaonline.fr/player.php?trial_id=111771&debug

Credits:
Spoiler : :
Thank you to everyone who offered to beta-test my case, but I am grateful in particular to Enthalpy and ScorpioKS, who stuck with me throughout the entire beta-testing phase and gave me many helpful suggestions. I feel I should also credit Bad Player, who developed a character for one of his cases from whom one of my own characters (with the same sprite) drew much inspiration and imitation. He’ll know which character I’m talking about! :wink:
"There is no sin except stupidity" - Oscar Wilde
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Hey
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Re: [M] The Presidential Turnabout

Post by Hey »

I feel very iffy playing a case about a real life murder. Makes me feel a bit unsure whether or not to try this.
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letterman
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Re: [M] The Presidential Turnabout

Post by letterman »

That's fair enough. If you don't think the real life setting will be your cup of tea then that's your call to make. But if you're willing to give the true-story aspect a go, you'll find that the evidence and the way it is discussed and presented reflect the historical events very closely, with surprisingly little "dramatisation".
"There is no sin except stupidity" - Oscar Wilde
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Ferdielance
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Re: [M] The Presidential Turnabout

Post by Ferdielance »

I played this. I needed to get some help to get through some of the most frustrating sequences, but I played it! A review containing relatively minor spoilers:

I don't not intend to argue about whether this case is in good taste or bad taste. You defend Lee Harvey Oswald on the charge of killing JFK. Real photographs and documents are used to lend the proceedings some authenticity, which is pretty quickly undercut by the Ace Attorney sprites. The case has a sense of humor, with some genuinely good jokes, but is dead earnest about the assassination itself and Oswald's subsequent murder - as it should be. This case is not a troll.

But if you play to the end, Apollo WILL be accusing a real person, who actually existed and was never charged with any crime here, of killing JFK. If you find this offensive, you probably should not play.

All of this should be sufficient to tell you whether or not you're likely to find this case in good taste.

The Presidential Turnabout is clearly a passion project. Great effort was made to cram in as much historical detail as possible, to bring up every oddity that could possibly be relevant to the assassination - and quite a few of dubious relevance as well. I suspect that people who are deeply into theorizing about the events in Dallas will be much more into this than the average player, though, because in spite of the effort and enthusiasm put into the presentation, several shortcomings make this case a frustrating, tedious experience to actually play, and most come from a single problem:

The author has muddled the role of a game designer with the role of a documentarian.

First, investigation sections pretty much require the player to use the 'mouseover and watch the frame indicator' trick to find evidence, because they all rely on picking up small details in grainy, black-and-white photos. Are the photos great for atmosphere and realism? Yes! But it would almost certainly have been better to either have drawn the player's attention specifically to these details, or just let them be found automatically.

Second, the flow of the investigation and trial bog down as every witness, no matter how incidental to the final account we get, must be included. No selection seems to be made for relevance or brevity here, and after you finish investigating, the case throws an entire dossier of pages of FBI documents at you. And this is doubly problematic because whether you need to present these documents or the profiles of the people involved to respond to any given question is pretty much a coin flip.

Third, the case seems to be fighting against the AA interface itself, which does not include - at least by default - any good feature for making contrasting witness timelines, showing maps that change over time across multiple floors, and so on. These things are possible, and would be required to make a case this messy work at all - but they are difficult enough to do well that editing, cutting, and including a supplementary post that describes which cuts were made and which details were skipped would have been better than trying to cram all of these movements and timelines in textual form.

Finally, because the thesis of the case is that the police investigation was a total mess, it is necessary to present the prosecution as incompetent. But this means that there's no clear case to argue against, and the trial meanders wildly, pretty much losing all tension. At times, the player needs to sometimes point out, in a very general way, that the Prosecution has no case - but when and how this must be done is inconsistent. In a case where everything is a contradiction, requiring the player to present ONE particular contradiction (or worse, FIVE specific contradictions) in a very specific way amounts to a demand for mind-reading.

If everything's equally fishy, just let the player present the entire Court Record and call it a day.

A good mystery game raises points, tests the player's understanding, and pulls off the tricky job of turning chaos into a kind of story. A good documentary does this, too, but can leave more messiness. In trying to address many hypotheses about the assassination, The Presidential Turnabout fails to make any particular hypothesis clear. I would only recommend this to people who already know the events so thoroughly that the exposition here is a review of things they already know - and even then, only with a walkthrough at hand.

AA mysteries start out messy and become clear, and part of the joy of playing is to bring that clarity. The only thing that comes across clearly here is that the events in Dealey Plaza were a total mess. That is accurate, but not a good AA game.

This is an audacious case with an incredible amount of effort put into it. Unfortunately, it needed a huge amount of revision and playtesting.
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Re: [M] The Presidential Turnabout

Post by Esrom »

I went into this with a great deal of curiosity. How does one do an Ace Attorney case revolving around one of the biggest unsolved mysteries of them all? How does one handle a case based on real events that we may never really know the full story behind?

Of course, the reason why one would do such a thing is obvious: To contrast with how Ace Attorney games usually turn out. The Ace Attorney series, from the start, has been about finding the truth. Finding out who the real guilty parties are, and how and why they did it. Whether you're playing as a defense attorney or a prosecutor, eventually you find out everything you need to know at the end and walk away satisfied that the loose ends are tied up.

The Kennedy assassination, on the other hand, left tons of unanswered questions. Was Oswald a lone gunman, part of a conspiracy, or just a fall guy? Who else might have been involved? What was the ultimate motive behind it? We've generally accepted that since it's been over 50 years since it happened, we'll never really know the answers to these questions. As this case itself points out, Oswald never got his day in court and if he had anything else to tell us that could have shed any light on the mysteries, those secrets died with him.

I'm with Ferdielance here. I give the case credit for taking the subject matter seriously, while still allowing for some of the usual humorous banter with our protagonists. Still, it can be difficult when you're dealing with a whole bunch of people who are real people and not fictitious characters, to deduce how said real people would react when subjected to Ace Attorney-style investigations and testimonies.

The gameplay is a problem at times. I ran into a number of roadblocks both in the investigation and the trial, where it's not clear what I'm supposed to do to advance the story. Sometimes, the dreaded 'hunt the pixel' rears its ugly head, especially during the Tippet murder crime scene. I missed that tiny bush a dozen or more times before going back and finding it.

As for the trial, there were a number of times where the contradiction didn't leap out at me. And some cases where I couldn't even be sure just what I was looking for. Right now, I'm still stuck on WIlliams' testimony, and came here looking for a walkthru. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be one, so I'm stuck with the 'save and restore till you've presented everything in the Court Record on every statement no matter how long it takes' strategy. It's just not clear what I'm looking for.

All in all, it's clear a lot of historical research went into this, though gameplay wise it could use some polishing.
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Re: [M] The Presidential Turnabout

Post by letterman »

Hi Esrom! Thanks for your comments! If you want a walkthrough for the trial for William's testimony it's shown below:
Spoiler : :
present the west elevator at the statement where he says "we went over to the west end of the floor and then went down the stairs" or something along those lines (forgotten exactly what he said!)
If you want a walkthrough for everything after that...
Spoiler : :
press all of Dougherty's statements, then present the FBI witness statements at statements 1 and 2, then at the (new) statment 5 you present 3 pieces of evidence separately: Oswald's profile, Roy Truly's profile and EITHER Williams, Jarman or Norman's profile. After that, select "No" then "the first floor", then present the east elevator followed by the west elevator, then present the hole in the ceiling. I'll leave you to work out the final profile to present :wink:
I will present a full walkthrough for the entire case at some point in the near future. XD
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Esrom
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Re: [M] The Presidential Turnabout

Post by Esrom »

letterman wrote:Hi Esrom! Thanks for your comments! If you want a walkthrough for the trial for William's testimony it's shown below:

Spoiler : :
present the west elevator at the statement where he says "we went over to the west end of the floor and then went down the stairs" or something along those lines (forgotten exactly what he said!)
Ah, that would be
Spoiler : :
the second to last statement.
letterman wrote:If you want a walkthrough for everything after that...
Spoiler : :
press all of Dougherty's statements, then present the FBI witness statements at statements 1 and 2, then at the (new) statment 5 you present 3 pieces of evidence separately: Oswald's profile, Roy Truly's profile and EITHER Williams, Jarman or Norman's profile. After that, select "No" then "the first floor", then present the east elevator followed by the west elevator, then present the hole in the ceiling. I'll leave you to work out the final profile to present :wink:
I will present a full walkthrough for the entire case at some point in the near future. XD
I managed to get through Williams' testimony, then spent much of the following day figuring out the 5 contradictions in the next testimony.
Spoiler : :
It took a while before I figured out that there were three seperate contradictions in the last statement, but once I figured out that it was about everything the witness SHOULD have heard if he really was at that location at the time he claimed, I knew which profiles to present.
The rest was fairly intuitive, but still, overall there are a number of times during the case where it's hard to tell just what route we should be trying to pursue. And let's hope AAO never gets rid of the 'mouseover and watch the frame indicator' trick because parts of the investigation will be pretty much impossible to get through on your own.

As for the ending, it's kind of to be expected. After all, this is based off a real life case which we will most likely never have all the answers to. Sadly, real life mysteries seldom end as neatly as an Ace Attorney case.

All in all, I'm with Ferdielance in saying that this will probably most appeal to those who study the events in Dallas on that fateful November, 1963. But even they will need a walkthrough to get through it, as there's a lot of difficulty (some of it seemingly unnecessary) in both the investigations and the trial portions. A lot of effort went into this, but it could have used some more playtesting and polishing.
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Re: [M] The Presidential Turnabout

Post by letterman »

Ferdielance wrote:I played this. I needed to get some help to get through some of the most frustrating sequences, but I played it! A review containing relatively minor spoilers:

I don't not intend to argue about whether this case is in good taste or bad taste. You defend Lee Harvey Oswald on the charge of killing JFK. Real photographs and documents are used to lend the proceedings some authenticity, which is pretty quickly undercut by the Ace Attorney sprites. The case has a sense of humor, with some genuinely good jokes, but is dead earnest about the assassination itself and Oswald's subsequent murder - as it should be. This case is not a troll.

But if you play to the end, Apollo WILL be accusing a real person, who actually existed and was never charged with any crime here, of killing JFK. If you find this offensive, you probably should not play.

All of this should be sufficient to tell you whether or not you're likely to find this case in good taste.

The Presidential Turnabout is clearly a passion project. Great effort was made to cram in as much historical detail as possible, to bring up every oddity that could possibly be relevant to the assassination - and quite a few of dubious relevance as well. I suspect that people who are deeply into theorizing about the events in Dallas will be much more into this than the average player, though, because in spite of the effort and enthusiasm put into the presentation, several shortcomings make this case a frustrating, tedious experience to actually play, and most come from a single problem:

The author has muddled the role of a game designer with the role of a documentarian.

First, investigation sections pretty much require the player to use the 'mouseover and watch the frame indicator' trick to find evidence, because they all rely on picking up small details in grainy, black-and-white photos. Are the photos great for atmosphere and realism? Yes! But it would almost certainly have been better to either have drawn the player's attention specifically to these details, or just let them be found automatically.

Second, the flow of the investigation and trial bog down as every witness, no matter how incidental to the final account we get, must be included. No selection seems to be made for relevance or brevity here, and after you finish investigating, the case throws an entire dossier of pages of FBI documents at you. And this is doubly problematic because whether you need to present these documents or the profiles of the people involved to respond to any given question is pretty much a coin flip.

Third, the case seems to be fighting against the AA interface itself, which does not include - at least by default - any good feature for making contrasting witness timelines, showing maps that change over time across multiple floors, and so on. These things are possible, and would be required to make a case this messy work at all - but they are difficult enough to do well that editing, cutting, and including a supplementary post that describes which cuts were made and which details were skipped would have been better than trying to cram all of these movements and timelines in textual form.

Finally, because the thesis of the case is that the police investigation was a total mess, it is necessary to present the prosecution as incompetent. But this means that there's no clear case to argue against, and the trial meanders wildly, pretty much losing all tension. At times, the player needs to sometimes point out, in a very general way, that the Prosecution has no case - but when and how this must be done is inconsistent. In a case where everything is a contradiction, requiring the player to present ONE particular contradiction (or worse, FIVE specific contradictions) in a very specific way amounts to a demand for mind-reading.

If everything's equally fishy, just let the player present the entire Court Record and call it a day.

A good mystery game raises points, tests the player's understanding, and pulls off the tricky job of turning chaos into a kind of story. A good documentary does this, too, but can leave more messiness. In trying to address many hypotheses about the assassination, The Presidential Turnabout fails to make any particular hypothesis clear. I would only recommend this to people who already know the events so thoroughly that the exposition here is a review of things they already know - and even then, only with a walkthrough at hand.

AA mysteries start out messy and become clear, and part of the joy of playing is to bring that clarity. The only thing that comes across clearly here is that the events in Dealey Plaza were a total mess. That is accurate, but not a good AA game.

This is an audacious case with an incredible amount of effort put into it. Unfortunately, it needed a huge amount of revision and playtesting.
Hi,

Most of that sounds legit, and I accept it, although I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you say "why not let the player present the whole Court Record if everything is equally dubious". There are many other AAO cases where there are multiple fishy statements leaping out at you but you have to be a bit more specific in presenting the piece of evidence that provides a clear and direct contradiction to one statement in particular. I have not found any examples in the Presidential Turnabout of another piece of evidence being "just as good" as the correct/given evidence in contradicting a statement.

And yeah, it's an unchangeable fact that the JFK case was and remains very messy and unclear, with a myriad of witnesses and odd bits of evidence lying around. Though it may not seem like it, I did actually cut out a lot of these real life witnesses and simplified much of the evidence to make it playable. So comparatively speaking, it is quite abridged and simplified. The general response I got from my beta-testers was that it was still quite enjoyable even though they didn't fully understand everything the first time.
"There is no sin except stupidity" - Oscar Wilde
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letterman
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Re: [M] The Presidential Turnabout

Post by letterman »

As promised, here is a walkthrough for the Investigation Latter part; there will be one for the Trial shortly once I've re-familiarised myself with all the stages and made doubly sure that it's all correct (and I don't think the Investigation Former needs a walkthrough!)

Investigation Latter walkthrough:
Spoiler : :
Present the attorney's badge to the policeman in the basement to get to the holding cell.

Make sure you have been through all the talk options in all the places you visit (the police station, the holding cell, Dealey Plaza, the grassy knoll, the TSBD front entrance, Truly's office, the Houston Street Dock, the 2nd floor and the 4th floor). There will be some hidden talk options in some of the locations that are unlocked when you talk to other people, so talking to Dougherty in the Houston Street Dock unlocks another talk option in Truly's office; there is a talk option in Truly's office that unlocks the "Charles Givens" talk option with Jarman on the 2nd floor. The "Charles Givens" talk option evaluates conditions to unlock another talk option with Oswald in the holding cell, if you have been through all the other talk options with both Truly and Jarman. There are a couple of talk options that are unnecessary, like the "Secret Agent" topic with Edgeworth/Bowers at the grassy knoll, but go through them all just in case.

You also need to examine the lunchroom vestibule door on the 2nd floor AFTER you have spoken with Truly.

On the 4th floor, the "The Floors Above" talk option evaluates your conditions again. If you have done all of the above, it will unlock the 5th and 6th floors to go and examine.

On the 5th floor, examine the elevator AND the bit of ceiling just above it. This should add the west and east elevator to the court record, and the "hole in ceiling".

On the 6th floor, examine the box to the bottom right of the picture. This should add "6th floor boxes" to the court record. You can also examine the window, though this is not necessary to proceed.

Once you have examined all three of these places, it will unlock the "East 10th Street" location which can be accessed from Dealey Plaza.

At East 10th Street, examine the bush in the distance to the far left of the picture, roughly halfway down. This should add Tippit shells to the court record. Neither of the talk options here are necessary.

Go back to the holding cell, and present two pieces of evidence to Oswald, the Oswald Photographs obtained from Gumshoe/Lumpkin, and the Tippit shells. Oswald will then give you a legal defence request, which you can then go and present to Gumshoe/Lumpkin.
"There is no sin except stupidity" - Oscar Wilde
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letterman
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Re: [M] The Presidential Turnabout

Post by letterman »

Sorry it took so long, but a walkthrough for part 3 (the Trial) is finally here:
Spoiler : :
Select “no testimony that Oswald shot Kennedy”.
Press statements 5,6 and 7.
Present Roy Truly’s profile at statement 6.
Select “has a problem with the testimony”.
Present the vestibule door.
Present FBI Witness Statements at statements 1 and 7.
Present Winston Payne’s profile.
Present Eddie Piper’s profile.
Present Bonnie Ray Williams’ profile.
Present Danny Arce’s profile.
Press all statements.
Present Victoria Adams’ profile.
Present Sandra Styles’ profile.
Present the Stroud Document.
Select “Truly and Baker were in the lunchroom”.
Present the west elevator at statement 8.
Press statement 2.
Press statement 3.
Select “it’s very important”.

Then, in any order:
(Present FBI Witness Statements at statements 1 and 2.
Present Lee Harvey Oswald’s profile at statement 5.
Present Roy Truly’s profile at statement 5.
Present the profile of EITHER Bonnie Ray Williams, Harold Norman or James Jarman at statement 5.)

Select “no”.
Select “the first floor”.
Present the east elevator.
Present the west elevator.
Present the hole in ceiling.
Present [name redacted]’s profile (sorry, I’ll give you a clue though: it’s one of the witnesses who testified before ;) )
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Re: [M] The Presidential Turnabout

Post by letterman »

I am currently working on a sequel to this trial and am looking for artists to help me with designing some character sprites. The characters are all based on real life historical figures of whom there are plenty of photos available; if you PM me or comment here I will let you know which historical people I need. The development of new sprites will be necessary for the continuation of my series, since I have reached the point where I have run out of stock AA sprites to use. Anyone who comes forward and designs sprites for me will be given full credit, NOT ONLY in the game itself but also, if they so wish, in the related historical/political thesis that I wrote as a companion piece to this game and which is due for publication in the near future.
"There is no sin except stupidity" - Oscar Wilde
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