So, I was thinking about the LP I wanted to do since I put my last one on hiatus, and I was genuinely torn between a few options. Some of them are probably a bit short for an independent thread, at least, and some others got more of an "eh" response when I suggested them on Discord, and some others I was a little worried about Engagement, though maybe I'll do them another time. So I was looking for a game that probably would get a decent amount of engagement, but there is some stuff to dig into in terms of both gameplay and story, characters, etc. And so I ended up coming up with this.
So, first of all, what exactly is Phoenix Wright? It's a series of visual novel-cum puzzle games that stars, well, Phoenix Wright, a newbie lawyer who takes on his first case defending a good friend who has been accused of murder. He then continues to take cases as a professional attorney, and develops confidence in his abilities, a good deal of new friends, and learns a lot about himself along the way. It is in some ways a series of character-centric murder mysteries, in some ways a cold and blistering look at the Japanese legal system, and in some ways a sometimes powerful and heartwarming VN about things like friendship, trust, and what things like being a "defense attorney" really mean.
In Japan it was originally released on the GBA, and then was brought to the US as a DS game, and finally several years later got the PC port that we will be playing for this LP.
The series at the moment has 6 games, split functionally between two arcs with two different protagonists, the first solely on the DS and the second spanning from the DS to the 3DS. It also has a spinoff series that had two games to its name. At the moment only the first three games have a modern release, though Capcom does intend to release the second arc on PC at some point next year, so I probably will come back to this when those come out. The spinoff series has never had much success in the US, the second game was never even officially released in English, allegedly due to the first game having poor sales, and only a fan translation was made for it. There is also no announced plan to rerelease these games, to my understanding, so we likely won't be touching them; which is a shame, because they are genuinely also quite good.
I will say up front that like Persona 5, this game series means a lot to me. I think it is actually one of the first VNs I played- the original game came out on the DS in 2005, and Babby BB (or CB now I suppose) really enjoyed it; she was a major fan of murder mysteries at the time (to a degree I definitely still am, though I don't read them as much anymore) and the whole concept of a game centered around a series of them was something that really appealed to her. She basically played it non-stop until she beat it, and ended up buying the sequels right as they came out. Though for a while, that was essentially all there was to it, and she let them go.
After I joined SV I ended up leaving for several years, it's a dumb story don't worry about it, and I ended up spending my time on a site called Ace Attorney Online, where fans of the series would make fangames of the series. The games would vary greatly in terms of the liberties taken in characterization, the tone (which could range from a standard mystery to something with much more of a thriller bent). It's essentially glorified fanfics with gameplay, really. I really enjoyed playing a lot of them, especially the ones clearly having Umineko inspiration because that was another game series that lived in my head rent free, and eventually joined the community. Because my ability to commit to things and executive functioning was a mess, I never really made a game of my own, though I did help with spelling and punctuation or as a beta on a couple. It is actually still online and may play a couple of my favorites as a little sidebar, but in many ways the games haven't aged well- not necessarily in content, though to a degree that may be true, but music hosting problems mean that a lot of them likely no longer have music anymore, if they're even still up- it's been several years now, keep in mind,
What's really important is that in the community I made a good deal of really good friends, which ended up being a very queer heavy space I was attracted to For Some Reason. We would participate in text RPs, comment and debate the quality of the games as a whole, and at times whine about choices made by Staff we didn't like. I made a lot of good friends there and though we've largely drifted apart, the fact is that I do think in some ways I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't been able to make the friends that I did as a result of the series, and I think it honestly helped me become significantly more social and willing to engage with communities. So in some ways this is a little bit of a tribute to them and the community that did help me grow quite a bit, even as it turned out that I had quite a bit of growing to do.
Hopefully people will join me as I revisit the series, whether you be somebody who has played the games, or somebody who has literally no idea what they are. Either way I think it should be a fun time.
I would also like to note that the game is currently on sale on Steam for roughly $10 for the next roughly 5 days or so, which given the amount of content in the games is genuinely an absolute steal. (For the record, I played the game at most twice to try and get all the achievements, since I was a big achievement collector for a while, and I ended up racking up 60 hours of gameplay.) If you read through the first, maybe the first couple, parts of this and the game seems like something that interests you, I genuinely would recommend picking it up, and even playing along if you would like.
The first game is separated into 5 cases, and given how short Case 1 is (it's basically a glorified tutorial), I will likely cover all of it in the next post, which will hopefully be today.
Just a minor note, the link to Ace Attorney Online seems to have a bracket that fell into the URL past the BBCode. That aside, looking forward to this!
Just for the record I do plan to get to this, the last couple days have just been gneuinely horrid overall, first a dysphoria attack and a really good morning was ruined by some family drama, so I can't get motivated to do a write-up of the quality I want. I'll try and buckle down and get Case 1 done tomorrow- it's really short so it's not like a huge commitment, I just... am not in the headspace to do write-ups at the moment.
Just a minor note, the link to Ace Attorney Online seems to have a bracket that fell into the URL past the BBCode. That aside, looking forward to this!
DOes it work now? I actually linked to a different site lol, there was a meme about how Attorney Online kept getting confused for Ace ATtorney Online and now I'm the one confusing them. How the turns table.
DOes it work now? I actually linked to a different site lol, there was a meme about how Attorney Online kept getting confused for Ace ATtorney Online and now I'm the one confusing them. How the turns table.
At least as I'm looking at it right now, it still fails if you just click the in-text hyperlink due to trying to load "]http://www.aaonline.fr/". However, as soon as I manually delete the "]" from that address and reload the page it works just fine.
To be clear, the first part was done and I posted it, but I really don't like how I clipped some of the screencaps so I'm going to redo some of them. Should take around 30 minutes or so, so expect the actual post tonight.
Okay, after two tries I think I got this to work. We are SO back. Anyway, finally going to get this going.
When you open the game you get the choice whether you want to play Game 1, Ace Attorney, Game 2 Justice for All, or Game 3, Trials and Tribulations. We will, of course, be picking Game 1.
So, Phoenix Wright tends to have a particular structure for its cases. We'll probably get into this more as we go through the first game, but the first case is pretty much always an introduction to people new to the franchise- some sense of the main characters, how the mechanics work, and so on. This one is pretty easy- this is our protagonist Phoenix's first trial and he has no idea what's going on, and is lead on the nose by his mentor, essentially. The first one in the second game relies on, essentially, contrivance, and the third game... is interesting. We'll get there when we get there.
Normally I would give like, my overall opinion of the episode at the end for rather obvious reasons, but there really isn't that much to say about this one to begin with in terms of a general overview. I'll try and dig into it a bit, because that's why I'm here, but it's really straightforward except for one development at the end, which if you don't meta-game may require a bit of thought. The characterization is relatively thin for pretty much everyone that isn't one of the protagonists, and it's just kinda... there, essentially, and there's some spots of writing that are kind of... weird. It's not awful by any means, it's fine for what it does, but what it does is so straightforward that it's hard for me to have that strong an opinion on it.
I will say for the record, that I will be very careful to not like, openly spoil anything in case anybody here is going in blind, but I'm not going to pretend to be completely ignorant either. I have a lot to say about these games, and it'd be hard to do so while pretending this is a new experience for me.
Okay, now that your expectations are appropriately lowered, we can dive in.
Pretty much just a straightforward collection of images here. We have a woman lying on the... floor? Ground? Something. Presumably she's the victim. There's a guy looking nefarious, probably our killer. There's some dude with a HILARIOUS expression, to be honest, in the middle there, exactly who he is isn't really clear, though by process of elimination he's probably who we're defending as a defense attorney. (God for some reason I find his expression the funniest thing to be honest.) The name is pretty straightforward too; it's the first case, for both our protagonist and the player, so it's the First Turnabout.
Every episode/case in the game's name has "Turnabout" in the title. Exactly why that is will become more evident as the game goes on. Typically the title is related to some key element of either the mystery or the episodes, though sometimes they can be substantially more ambiguous.
Oh god I just realized that I'm going to have to be fast if I want to screenshot the cinematics. It's the Persona 5 opening all over again.
Every episode begins with a short opening, typically around a scene long, that kind of sets the stage a bit. Sometimes they're as straightforward as this one is, though they often are substantially more ambiguous, and sometimes the creators do get rather cute with them.
So, in this one we open to a pretty cool cinematic of blood slowly dripping from the head of a statue, the murder weapon, as the murderer gasps, probably in exertion or shock. It's pretty nice and atmospheric, and it's helped along by the music, which does a good job at setting the mood.
We also get the first look at our criminal, who is indeed the person looking nefarious in the title card, I'm sure everyone is very surprised. He's kind of just bemoaning his fate- the implication is that he was doing something that ended up escalating to the murder- he says "I can't be caught" which is pretty straightforward, but also adds "like this", which has slightly different implications.
He talks about how he needs to find some patsy to pin the crime on, and then we get a quick shot of him seeing the guy in the middle of the intro standing by the victim's apartment, and that this he seems like the perfect person to take the fall. How he determined this from, what we can tell, looking at the guy, will always be a bit unclear. Just has one of those faces I guess (never mind it's a shot from behind), and I mean in fairness... who else is going to frame? (Also there's a pretty looking shot of the dude by the door that I wasn't able to screenshot, sadly)
For the record, if anybody has any idea how to get the cutscenes to play a little more slowly, I'd appreciate it, because in their current state it is immensely hard to get screencaps without trying several times, and frankly I don't want to have the Persona 5 experience of going through for 45 minutes to an hour trying to get caps for a scene that lasts roughly like, 30 seconds.
We now begin the game proper, with a little timestamp showing us the time. This is how the game will generally handle transitions, whether it be from the intro to the actual episode, or scene to scene. It generally does a good job- it shows how much time has passed in a particular scene or when we're on a different day, and makes it clear where exactly the characters are. It's smooth, efficient, and manages to tell you a decent amount in relatively low effort.
Very nice, clean, and effective. I dig it.
We'll use this one as an example. So we know it's early morning, we're at the courthouse, and in the lobby. So we can probably already surmise that we've transitioned to our protagonist, the defense attorney having taken the case. This will, of course, be confirmed in the dialogue in just... 5 seconds, but it's good scene setting, Brent.
I didn't really touch on this in Persona 5, but the music in AA is genuinely really good, and it does make it easier that they tend to rely on a few tracks to do a lot of the heavy lifting. There'll be a couple I single out as we go along because listening to them 100% does massively improve the experience in a way I honestly don't feel like is true with most games. Also, Ace Attorney is a visual novel at heart, and those do tend to live or die by their music.
For the record, the music playing here is Courtroom Lounge ~ Opening Prelude, and you generally know something is going down if this isn't playing while the characters are here. It's pretty unremarkable, but has a good beat I suppose.
We are introduced to our protagonist, Phoenix Wright, who does not seem to be having a good time, however his panic is interrupted by the arrival of his boss, Mia Fey, being grateful she arrived on time.
Yeah, Mia's clothing and general character design is... a lot. The relationship Ace Attorney can have with fanservice is generally like, okay-ish, but there are one or two points where it gets awkward, at one point super awkward, and honestly they pretty much all revolve around Mia's character design. Generally the characters aren't like, super sexy or wear particularly revealing clothing. Like, spoilers, but here's what the main prosecutor for Game 2 looks like.
Generally pretty practical clothing, I'd say? Outlandish for a courtroom, but that's just Phoenix Wright. I wouldn't say it's a sexual outfit at all or even really overly accentuates anything. Now, you could argue this is because she's a few years younger, but I could give other examples of female characters whose outfits are not remotely as bad, this is just a kind of like-for-like comparison.
And yeah, she isn't going to be the defense attorney in this trial, but she will be our assistant, and it just feels like a bit more professionalism is in order here.
I honestly have no idea why they went this route with Mia's design, I honestly find it kinda strange. Also this is actually a shot from a bit later because I screwed up the one I got at the time, but the weird sultry look she kinda has at certain points with her sprite, is also... very odd.
As I try to make the smoothest segue in existence, you may have noticed that the names are a little odd. Pretty much all the names in Ace Attorney are puns or references to something, and the English translation honestly does a really good job at capturing that spirit and putting their own spin on it, more or less. For instance, in Japanese, Phoenix's name is Ryuuichi Naruhodou; if you're a weeb you've probably heard the phrase Naruhodou before, because it essentially means "I see." A reference to Phoenix's observation and deduction skills, I suppose. Ryuuichi is just a name that the creator liked, though one of the kanji will actually come up in a later game.
Meanwhile, in English, the puns are decently straightforward. Wright is just "Right" with a W attached, that one took effort I'm sure, and Phoenixes are known to rise from the ashes after death, and managing to turn seemingly lost cases into a victory will prove to be Nick's raison d'etre.
I'm not going to talk about what Mia's name means yet. It becomes clear in the next episode.
Anyway, she then says something that completely confuses me.
Like, purely out of context, this makes sense, right? Murder is a serious crime and it may seem a little weird to just jump into it. The thing is, that while we do hear about attorneys taking other cases, Phoenix will only ever take murder cases with one exception, to the point that it seems to be what the law office specializes in? So her singling out that it's a murder case just seems a little weird to me.
She comments that it reflects on him, which makes sense- it gives the impression that he's confident and prepared and wanting to defend people. But that it also reflects on the client as well, which... I'm not totally sure why? It's a bit less confusing, because having to rely on somebody who is on their first case could indicate that most people found the case not worth pursuing, but it still feels like a weirdly indirect way to say that, which I'm not sure necessarily fits Mia's character down the line that well to begin with. A lot of it comes down to, I think, probably not having that clear a sense of what shape Shu Takumi wanted the games to take yet, honestly. It is the very beginning of the franchise, after all.
Anyhow, Phoenix now gives us a little exposition. Phoenix apparently owes the defendant, or guy with a hilarious expression, a favor, which is part of what motivated him to take the case, since it's related to why he became an attorney in the first place.
Which like, is a little weird? The way the games treat the guy is kind of arbitrary and awkward at points, but Phoenix kind of implying that if he didn't owe him a favor he wouldn't have taken the case feels entirely out of character for him in general, and in this relationship in particular. But it's possible he's just tossing her a really quick bite-sized explanation because they don't have time to get into it, I suppose. A little surprised this is something that hadn't come up before between the two of them, but if this is Phoenix's first case he's probably new to the office, and as we'll get into, this is the definition of short notice, so it isn't that strange.
Meanwhile we cut to said defendant, who does not... appear to be taking things well.
Maybe somebody should go to the vending machine and get him a Snickers.I hear those help.
And that is our first proper introduction to Phoenix's friend and our third main character introduced in this episode, Larry Butz, one of Phoenix's best friends.
Why does he have stars in his eyes as he's crying about his life being over? Are those supposed to be tears?
As you might have guessed, "Larry Butz" is a play on "Hairy Butz", which is something that will actually come into play later in the episode. I swear the game's humor isn't always this juvenile, but it does have that kind of streak to it at times. In the Japanese, his name was Masashi Yahari, which I'm told essentially plays into the same sort of joke, but directly translates into "I knew it" or "Of course" and "With Certainty", which does kind of describe his behavior to be overconfident and really tend to not look into things before he leaps.
Phoenix explains that Larry is kind of a trouble magnet, though it typically isn't his fault so much as he simply has horrible luck.
Basically, Larry is grieving over the loss of the victim, who was evidently his girlfriend. We then get a bit of exposition- as I noted this fellow is named Phoenix Wright, and it's his first case. We then get the lowdown on what exactly is going on- Larry's girlfriend was murdered in her apartment, and he was unlucky enough to be around at the scene at the time. Phoenix emphasizes his resolve to protect his friend, especially since owes him one to begin with. And to the beginning of the trial we go!
The trial starts at 10:00 AM on the dot- typically when Phoenix's trials start for some reason. And we meet our good friend Udgey (typically known as The Judge or Your Honor, I don't think we ever get his actual name). He is the judge in almost all the cases in the first three games, and he primarily exists as a sort of Watson to the protagonist, essentially forcing the protagonist to explain the contradictions they spot or the reason for their conclusions. He honestly very rarely does anything, and when he does, it's pretty much always to make the Defense's job harder. He doesn't really get characterized much until much later on, honestly.
It's a dry comment on something that'll become a recurring theme in the work- that trials are in many ways simply utterly window dressing, and that the judges are essentially pawns for the prosecution at the best of times, essentially being constantly lead around by the nose. He also gets a rather interesting sense of depersonalization in that he's one of the only characters whose name we never actually learn, though I suppose you could argue it makes sense, since we never really see him outside his job.
Phoenix indicates to the Judge that he's nervous, who helpfully reminds him that his friend's life is on the line so he'd better get his act together. (It may seem a bit weird that murdering your girlfriend would warrant the death penalty, but pretty much any murder ends up resulting in the death penalty in this universe. With a couple exceptions we'll get into.)
We then get a little pop quiz to make sure you've been paying attention. The first question is who the defendant is. If you've been remotely paying attention you obviously know the answer, but sometimes when you get choices like this, you can get pretty funny answers, and in this case you aren't penalized, so we can go nuts with it. There's nothing too great in here, but as a couple of asides.
Mia's characterization is a little limited in this episode, probably partially because they didn't have it down yet, and probably partially because it is short, but she gets little moments of snark like this that are complimented by some good sprite work that're always entertaining.
Anyway, nothing too notable otherwise, so we can answer this question correctly, that Larry is the defendent and move on. The Judge asks the rather straightforward question of what the victim's name is... only Phoenix has completely forgotten. RIP. Fortunately, we can remind him with the court record, which basically collects all the evidence and gives us a description of it.
This takes two forms. First we have the section of all the physical evidence, like so.
And then we have the section that includes all the profiles that are relevant to the case.
Kind of hyping her up a bit given that we aren't going to see her defend anybody all game, aren't we, game?
Also, yes, your attorney's badge is considered evidence. There's plenty of cases where you can present it and it leads to funny little alternate conversations, though I honestly don't remember where most of them are at this point so I probably won't be experimenting too much with it. It'll come up for sure though.
I'll probably show when evidence is added to the Court Record, though I probably won't mess much with the profiles unless you need to present one or I think they're funny or otherwise important for context. Anyway, after looking at the profile, we now know the victim's name, Cindy Stone, so we put that in. We also learn that she's a model which... isn't really that important, but we know it now!
In terms of name origins, Cindy Stone is probably a pun on cinder block (which appropriately was one of the name options!), while the Japanese name Mika Takabi is a play on "takabishi", which basically means being on one's high horse. Which I suppose is a play on the kind of idol stereotype of being arrogant and feeling better than everyone else? Not too sure on that one.
We then get our final question- how did our Ms. Stone die? Well, we already know from the opening cinematic, but if you have amnesia and forgot, you can check the Court Record to find out that it was head trauma. But let's see if there's anything interesting in the wrong options first.
Okay, I'm sorry Your Honor, but what the fuck. I honestly suspect that it's supposed to be a play on "hanging oneself by their own words" but I don't feel like... it quite landed here, at least in translation. Anyway Mia is as savage as ever.
So we'll put in the correct answer now, that she was beaten with a blunt object.
After answering all of the Judge's questions and getting them wrong several times we get to proceed to the actual game.
Here we get the typical courtroom music- appropriately named Trial. It's pretty good, solidly neutral in tone while conveying that there is Important Stuff Happening, while having really solid Law and Order vibes. It isn't really what people think of when they think of good Phoenix Wright music, but it's good enough. I'm more noting it because it's probably worth having in your head the sort of music that plays in a good deal of these segments.
The Prosecutor, Winston Payne, then starts their opening statement. The murder weapon was a statue of The Thinker, as we helpfully saw earlier. It's then added into evidence, everything is pretty straight forward so far.
Quick sidebar, as it were, as you can probably guess Winston Payne is a play on "Winced in Pain", which basically echoes the Japanese pun. His name there is Takefumi Auchi, which is a Japanese romanization for the word "ouch". Also he was apparently named after one of the developer's dentists, which... I think I'd have mixed feelings about.
Winston Payne is essentially a glorified tutorial boss, especially in the first two games. (In the third he's SLIGHTLY more competent.) He doesn't really make any kind of robust case, though to be fair the cases are generally straightforward enough that you could argue he doesn't have to, I suppose, and he gets easily rattled and rarely has anything if you catch him off-guard. He's not a particularly fun opponent, frankly, and is generally rather forgettable in my opinion.
The prosecution then calls its first witness, which is... well, Larry himself. This is actually a little weird because in a later game you at least get the choice whether or not the defendant should take the stand or not, like in an actual courtroom, but this way keeps the plot going smoothly so I suppose it's fine.
Payne starts out as subtlety as you would expect, asking if the victim hadn't recently dumped him.
I mean, we're one for two... Also I did want to single that out because it is genuinely a pretty cute joke.
So this is where the case does get a little weird. Payne states that she had moved on and was seeing other men and had returned with one of them overseas in Paris the day before the murder. But the approach here is kind of strange- if Cindy two-times people, which is the implication here, why not start with that, say that Larry knew she was doing this while they were in a relationship, and that's his motive? If anything, noting that he was dumped weakens the argument, because you have less motivation to care about her two-timing other people!
It just feels like that'd be a much stronger motive, in my opinion. Then again, Payne is hardly known for his competence, I suppose.
Anyway, this was really all an excuse to set up this timeline as well as put the Victim's passport in the Court Record, which'll be important later. So we'll just cap it and move on.
I will say I do like the way they do this, given how pivotal this will end up being, it is introduced pretty naturally and smoothly, even if it does end up making Payne look pretty incompetent in the process, but to be fair, that's part of Payne's brand.
He then follows this up by saying that she basically is in it for the moolah, as it were- she doesn't make much money as a model, and uses boyfriends to get cash. While this is certainly like, a real thing people do, and part of the point is that Larry has horrible taste/luck with women, it still feels weird to make the first victim of the game kind of superficial and unsympathetic, and to a degree seems to rely on a stereotype of models as being kind of opportunistic and money-hungry. Especially since at its core, Phoenix Wright is definitely a deeply sympathetic series, I'd say.
I do think that part of this is kind of a flaw with PW's style, and they kind of walk this back a bit at the end, so maybe I'll discuss it a bit more then.
Holy shit my guy, she's dead. I mean victim-blaming can be on point for attorneys, but this isn't even a rape or sexual assault case!
And I do think it's worth contextualizing that the person who is definitely harshest to her, outside Larry who at least has an excuse, is the least sympathetic character introduced so far who also is hardly competent. So there is probably a bit of nuance to be found here, at the core, if only in the sense that given that she was murdered she does deserve a bit of respect.
Now, Payne pressures Larry on what he thinks of the victim now. You might notice that Payne has kinda been trying to have his cake and eat it too here- he's trying to argue that Larry is upset about being dumped, while ALSO being upset about being cheated on. While this isn't like, impossible, it's a rather awkward juxtaposition in my opinion. Either it feels like he wouldn't mind being dumped if she was cheating on him. This is especially disengenuous because he's using a reaction he's having in the MOMENT, as in something he wouldn't have at the time, as a basis for a motive for a thing he did days ago. (Yes, days. We'll get to that.)
So when Payne questions Larry on the topic, you have a choice to object or not to object. It really doesn't matter, Larry kind of freaks out regardless, but given how clownshoes this entire line of questioning has been, objecting is pretty obviously the correct course of action here. Phoenix points out that even by the way Payne has framed the questioning, Larry had no idea of this at the time, so this entire point is kind of irrelevant.
And this is the expression of a man that just got owned. Like I said, no guy has no game. No repartee. Pretty lame tbh.
Anyway, Larry then freaks out, insults the dead woman (Which I mean, again, this is new info to him and he's pretty pissed, so I'll cut him a bit of slack), and still seems convinced he's going to be found guilty and get executed, since he now wants to ask her what was going on IN THE AFTERLIFE.
I like imagining Larry actually dying and going to Heaven, and his first thought, of all the things he could do, being "better go have my ex explain wtf was going on there!".
Payne then says that as a result Larry's motive should be clear to everyone, but it... kind of isn't? You've been arguing two separate lanes and haven't committed to either one, and if you want to commit to the "she was cheating on him" angle, you would need to provide SOME proof that he knew this at the time. Of course, the prosecution's case being clownshoes and the Judge just kind of nodding along is just kinda par for the course with this franchise.
Payne then asks if Larry went to the victim's house that day, and well... here's his response.
Really could have just simplified things by saying "Yes" to be honest.
Anyway, given that the judge is already convinced about the accused's motive, having it confirmed that he had opportunity would most probably not be great. So we get our next option- whether we should have him admit that he went, or try and cover it up.
Honestly we're going to go with "lie", what's a little knowing pergery between friends? So Phoenix tries to send a signal for Larry to lie, but it's... just a collection of Phoenix's usual stock movements, so I'm not sure how it was particularly translatable. Regardless, Larry gets the picture, and delivers this absolute banger.
You might be getting the sense that Larry is not... good at this. You would be correct.
Honestly the game doesn't typically have this many interactive segments before you get into the meat of the game, it's generally just the prosecution presenting their case and witnesses being called, with perhaps some poking at the initial evidence. I do wonder if it was because Shu Takumi was still trying to figure out how he wanted the game to be structured, or if it is more intended to ease the player in.
Payne then says that it's fine if he doesn't remember, because he has a witness that can place Larry directly on the scene of the crime! Outright leaving the apartment after the murder was committed, in fact! If this stands, it would give Larry means- given that the Thinker was already in the house and actually was a gift to her from Larry- motive (kinda I guess), and clear opportunity, as well as a direct connection to the scene of the crime at more or less the time of the murder, which basically would be all she wrote. And yes, as the game thus far as kinda implied, there is no jury system in this world. I'll discuss that a bit more later, but basically all the prosecutor has to do is convince the judge, and you're done for. So how will Larry and Phoenix get out of this one????
With that rhetorical question asked, I actually think we're going to have to split this into two parts. Because now we will, you know, play the game, but that'll mean a good deal more commentary and likely screencaps and I don't want this post to be a gorbillion words and images long, and this is a decent break point.
There definitely won't be as long a wait this time, my ideal is to get a backlog going today or tomorrow and be able to post something every 2-3 days, but regardless, definitely will be coming back to this and wrapping up Episode 1 pretty soon.
(Okay if the images don't work this time I'm going to lose my mind.)
Also, those two guards have remarkable discretion considering all the private conversations the various player attorneys wind up having right next to them throughout the series that they just... either politely ignore or never tell anyone they overheard.
Edit: To be clear, I am referring to the two uniformed dudes flanking the visible door in the courtroom lobby, who are rather clearly within earshot of every conversation that happens there if the layout of the background is taken as accurate to where characters are in the 'scene.'
Also, those two guards have remarkable discretion considering all the private conversations the various player attorneys wind up having right next to them throughout the series that they just... either politely ignore or never tell anyone they overheard.
She comments that it reflects on him, which makes sense- it gives the impression that he's confident and prepared and wanting to defend people. But that it also reflects on the client as well, which... I'm not totally sure why? It's a bit less confusing, because having to rely on somebody who is on their first case could indicate that most people found the case not worth pursuing, but it still feels like a weirdly indirect way to say that, which I'm not sure necessarily fits Mia's character down the line that well to begin with. A lot of it comes down to, I think, probably not having that clear a sense of what shape Shu Takumi wanted the games to take yet, honestly. It is the very beginning of the franchise, after all.
I read it as her saying that the client is someone Phoenix already trusts enough to stick his neck out for him this much, taking on a case even with no experience?
I read it as her saying that the client is someone Phoenix already trusts enough to stick his neck out for him this much, taking on a case even with no experience?
Yeah that makes sense, I was reading it as saying from the client's perspective because she already said that it says somthing about him, but that could be what the game means and I'm reading too much into some slightly unprecise wording.
This is absolutely a mod where random characters are selected to be trans and not at all me being making a typo i'm about to fix.
The days when Umineko ruled the site... the glory days of Blackrune, BP, and DWaM... oh to go back to those days again...
(Did you have an actual username on the site, out of curiosity, if you wouldn't mind sharing? I'm just curious if I interacted with you there when I was like, 18 years old and more cringe.)
The days when Umineko ruled the site... the glory days of Blackrune, BP, and DWaM... oh to go back to those days again...
(Did you have an actual username on the site, out of curiosity, if you wouldn't mind sharing? I'm just curious if I interacted with you there when I was like, 18 years old and more cringe.)
No you're safe, I liked ace attorney online but never got into the community. I tried working with the tools it had but never got far. Community wise I was too buried into red alert 3 modding community for it.
But I consume ace attorney content like mad, still trying to refind jellopocalypses great ace attorney playthroughs.
