Learn All About The Great Ace Attorney’s Collaborative Deduction System

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series of novels, the titular protagonist is known for many things: an eye for detail, an astute sense of logical reasoning, being a master of disguise, et cetera. Unfortunately, while The Great Ace Attorney’s Sherlock Holmes still possesses remarkable observation skills, he’s not so great at deducing the truth.

Perhaps as a result of his uncanny ability to notice details that the average person would not, Holmes tends to quickly jump to the wrong conclusions—and you’ll have to “Wright” the wrongs by pointing out the contradictions in them during Collaborative Deduction gameplay segments.

At the Tokyo Game Show today, Capcom showed off an example of Collaborative Deduction to attendees via a closed theatre video presentation from series creator Shu Takumi and producer Shintaro Kojima. In the scenario, which appears to be taken directly from an early point in Great Ace Attorney, Sherlock Holmes attempts to deduce the identity of a stranger.

The Collaborative Deduction segment begins with a quick cut-scene that has Holmes slowly twirl around and slide from the right side of the screen all the way to the left, ending with him striking a pose with his index finger pointing to the sky. The text “The game is afoot” and “Turn 1” appears to the right of Holmes.

The detective then lists the points of interests he’s observed from the stranger. He possesses a striking beard, is holding a pair of scissors in his right hand, has in the left pocket on his jacket a newspaper cut-out bearing a picture of the Russian revolutionist Demitri Demiglass, who he appears to resemble. And so, Holmes arrives at his conclusion.

“This man must be the Russian revolutionist, Demitri Demiglass!”

Holmes’s deduction does not sit well with Ryuunosuke Naruhoudo, who must then present his argument in the next phase of Collaborative Deduction. Like with Holmes, a cut-scene comes on that shows Naruhodo gradually spinning—this time from the left side of the screen to the right—until eventually he strikes a pose similar to the one Holmes previously did. As you might expect, the words “The game is afoot” and “Turn 2” appear next to Naruhodo.

Naruhodo’s counter-arguments start with him making the point that the beard looks different somehow. He follows that up by making an argument that the pair of scissors the stranger is holding was not meant simply for cutting out the newspaper clipping, but also for a different purpose entirely.

This part of the closed theatre presentation went by incredibly fast, so we did not get to see the finer details of gameplay here. But eventually, the player is asked to point out what the stranger could possibly be using a pair of scissors for, and at this point, you go into a 3D model viewer where you get to spin the mysterious stranger’s character model around to try and find clues—not unlike the 3D evidence investigation modes in past Ace Attorney games.

Takumi and Kojima spin the character model around, and point to a lock of gold hair that appears hidden underneath the stranger’s brown hair—which appears to be a wig. The lock of gold hair subsequently appears in the court records as a piece of evidence, which you must then present when prompted for the pair of scissors’ purpose. Conclusion: he was planning on snipping off his gold hair to perfect the disguise.

This is apparently enough at this point in the story to identify who the mysterious stranger is. Due to the example being an actual scenario in the game, the name of the character was redacted and the demonstration ended there.

Assuming that the example shown is from very early in the game, in the release build of Great Ace Attorney there could very likely be Collaborative Deduction segments that take more than two turns to resolve, resulting in back-and-forth turnabout arguments that resemble the courtroom battle parts of Ace Attorney games.