[M] Endless Nights - Daybreak

[Bad Player]

Spoiler : DWaM :

i could try, but that could very well just make things worse

Spoiler : Ferdie :

Remiel: I am not in the habit of responding to stray assertions.
Remiel: If you wish for a response, try a proper theory.
Remiel: That being said...
Remiel: I would normally take it upon myself to warn you when you stray beyond Knox's rules...
Remiel: And the final arbiter of such a determination is obviously BP.
Remiel: But if you wish to limit yourself of your own accord, be my guest.

[Ferdielance]

Spoiler : Is that how it's going to be? :

All riiiight then....

Gumshoe was killed with a trap. Specifically, a machine in the robotics room was used to stab him. Programming it in advance to do this would be possible if one of the others had gained access to Blue Screens before. We know that someone must have had prior knowledge, because someone had to send the invitations.

Is it clued that anyone has been there besides Lisa Basil? Somewhat. The container of adhesive, as far as I can tell, was unlabeled, so Larry Butz should not have known what it was. He only picked it up for two reasons: to conceal the fact that he had a knife (since the container could explain the alarm) and to create an alibi.

However, this alibi was false. The adhesive remover works as fast as the adhesive. It is possible that Lisa returned with the remover, and went to replace it in the storage room. Larry then stabbed her in the room, and restuck himself to the floor.

Creating the final scene - strangling himself - is trickier. He had to use a robot: Maya Fey. She is not a person who kills, but rather a murder weapon, as she is an android. Here are the clues.

First, she is not described as "dead," but as having no pulse.
Second, it is possible that she set off the metal detector.
Third, she is able to tell that ramen noodles are microscopically round on examination.

So to make the final scene, Larry used Maya to strangle himself after killing Edgeworth. There is no rule that Maya cannot be a robot - we only have in red that she is CALLED Maya Fey.

In that case, the final, fifth person in the building, in red, was the dead Gumshoe. The red truth stating five persons did not say five LIVING persons.

[Bad Player]

Spoiler : Ferdie :

Remiel: Yes, that's more like it...
Remiel: Before I refute your theory, there are two points I would like to address...
Remiel: They are not vital to the theory per se, but I do not want you to be led astray by erroneous interpretations of facts.
Remiel: I want your defeat to be thorough and fair.
Remiel: First, as for how Larry knew about the Super Mega Ultra Adhesive...
Remiel: Ms. Basil mentioned that there were demonstrations set up, yes?
Remiel: Larry could have discovered the Super Mega Ultra Adhesive from one of those.
Remiel: Second, the perfectly round ramen noodles...
Remiel: Maya could have discovered that property from accompanying research notes, or a description of the machine.
Remiel: I do admire your creativity.
Remiel: Now to address your theory proper...
Remiel: Unfortunately, I cannot allow you to skirt around the red truths with something as cowardly as a trap.
Remiel: For each murder, the culprit was in the same room as the victim at the moment of the victim's death.
Remiel: Try again.

[Ferdielance]

Now we're cooking.

Spoiler : Minor fix :

Same theory as above, but Larry snuck back into Robotics, killed Gumshoe, and returned to Composites. That's why he was absent for so much of that conversation in Composites.

[Bad Player]

Spoiler : Ferdie :

Remiel: Ah, how quickly we forget...
Remiel: "I was the last person to leave Robotics."
Remiel: With this "fix" of yours, the last person to have left Robotics at the time this red truth was issued would be Larry, no?

[DWaM]

Spoiler : :

The culprit...

...Is I.

Not me. Not Phoenix Wright.

The culprit is literally someone named "I".

"I" was the last person to leave Robotics. They walked in after everyone else left, killed Gumshoe, and left.
When "I" entered the storage room, there was indeed nobody else in there. Because they'd hidden and waited for Lisa Basil to show up, where they killed her and simply left.
"I" never saw anyone leave the storage room hallway, because the only one to ever leave it was them.
"I" killed everyone.
"I" will lose this battle.

"I" can exist and circumvent the red about the number of people. With Gumshoe dead, the number of people alive with Maya being a robot is 4. With the extra person, it becomes 5. No contradiction with the red.

"I" has been mentioned in the story -- it's been established by this point that "Remiel" is merely the way we refer to the prosecutor. Their real name is "I".

good post hit submit

[Bad Player]

Spoiler : DWaM :

[click]

[kwando1313]

:D

[Bad Player]

Suddenly, there was light.

Gone was the endless, swirling, horrifying darkness of the abyss. Had it been minutes, months, or millennia...?

The terror of the void had disappeared so suddenly, it took you a moment to realize what had happened. You looked around and saw other figures, all of whom looked as confused and shaken as you.

All except one.

At the outer edge of the group stood a solitary figure. You couldn't see his expression, for he wore a mask over his face, but his body language conveyed a feeling of calm triumph.

He turned towards the group.

"I will bother you no longer."

And with that, he turned back and began to walk.

The man who had ushered in this long, long night

Strode into the sunrise.

[DWaM]

[kwando1313]

Here comes the Sun

La la la la

[DWaM]

(For the record -- people who've started the game can and should still keep on going with it!)

[Ferdielance]

Spoiler : Well... :

If we speculate that Larry isn't a person, we certainly could get around that. But Maya-is-the-robot is more elegant.

Instead, let me counter your red with another blue:

Remiel: For each murder, the culprit was in the same room as the victim at the moment of the victim's death.

This only eliminates a trap if the victim died instantly. If Gumshoe did not die instantly, then he may have died after the group entered the room - that is, when the culprit was present. This is reasonably consistent with facts - he was facedown, meaning we couldn't see any blinking, etc. The group hemmed and hawed at the door a little before Edgeworth checked the body, and there couldn't have been that long between his stabbing and his body's discovery.

It is entirely possible he was killed by a trap and died after the group re-entered, as far as I can tell.

However, let's assume Remiel is being honest in INTENT when he gives his red, and not just giving literal truth. In other words, when he says traps are cowardly, he isn't going to later be caught out saying, "But I used a cowardly trap anyway." While I reserve the right to invoke traps, it doesn't seem polite to keep pressing on that when other options are available!

Instead, we return to robot hypotheses. Gumshoe was killed by a robot (the murder weapon) at the behest of the true culprit. Maya could have had a little time to do this when the inspection of the materials room was underway, or a little before then, catching up with the others. (We know it took some time to notice Gumshoe's absence.)

It's tempting to posit Robot Larry. Strangulation wouldn't give away his robotic nature. But the red truth that "Larry is dead" would be very misleading if Larry were just a robot - which is neither alive nor dead!

Of course, if Larry were killed before the game and REPLACED with a robot................ that's another, wilder possibility. But I'd need to double check for clues before positing that....

The biggest hole in ANY robot-is-one-of-the-five theory is, "Why does Lisa Basil say there are five people?" Is she playing a game with words, thinking, "I can hide the existence of Maya-bot, who is a corporate secret, by using misleading wording?" This doesn't require her to be the culprit, but is kind of a stretch if we are using wordplay to include Gumshoe's corpse and hide a robot.

On the other hand, it's the kind of psychological stretch that DOES happen in impossible crime stories. People do things that help confuse the reader on relatively flimsy pretexts...

[Blackrune]

Spoiler : :

Yeah I... I'll get back to you on trying to explain that one.

... I won't suspect my friends just yet, but it might not hurt to ask if "Alibis" can be trusted. It was my impression that while we were inside the rooms, we remained mostly together, supervised by Ms. Basil. It would probably be tricky to slip out without one of the others noticing, so would I need clues this happened?

[Merlin1908]

Spoiler : :

You don't think I seriously believed an android did it, I hope? Everything I did using MINERVA was just an attempt to draw more red. With two reds purely related to chronology gained for that, I'd call it quite a success.
Let's continue.

The culprit is Remiel. He threw the knife into Robotics to kill Gumshoe, so he never was in Robotics to begin with, hence he didn't need to exit. (Alternatively, he was there and stabbed Gumshoe, but snuck out after Phoenix declared he was the last who left) He then went to the security room. After the Terry Bell security door was deployed, and Phoenix, Edgeworth and Maya entered Nanotech, Remiel opened the door again and turned off the light in the hallway. He then killed Lisa in Storage, and closed the security door again, turning on the lights again after hiding in Robotics, Composites or Thermodynamics. After Larry was freed, Remiel turned off the lights again and killed Larry, Edgeworth and Maya in the hallway.