Hallo, alle miteinander, and welcome back to Wright Wednesday, the weekly blog series where we recap, analyze, and review the cases in the Ace Attorney series. I'm Roy, Ace Critic, and with me as always is...
Sam, Ace... Game Analyzer?
Ace Analyst? Ace Professor?
Oh wow, Ace Professor is way better.
Now, being the Lawful Neutral type, I try to follow patterns, and if you didn't notice one of those patterns is how Sam and I alternate our recap order every week. Well, I screwed up my message to him about who was covering what, so we're doing me first again this week. If this causes you mental anguish, you and I have that in common. When something smells, it seems to be me.
Direct all angry emails to phroynixwright@objection.com.
Anyway, the investigation begins directly following the first day of trial, after the reveal that the Steel Samurai's director and producer were both at the studio on the day of the murder. Going to the detention center leads to the revelation that Powers already knew that, but didn't tell Phoenix because he too had been told not to.
Must have been some pretty strong pressure for him to keep that secret even when his conviction for murder was on the line.
Eh, I think Will Powers is just that nice of a guy.
Actually yeah, I could see that too.
Heading to the studio entrance shows that Oldbag isn't present, what with her being interrogated by the police on account of Phoenix pointing the blame towards her. In the Employee Area, Penny Nichols has just finished covering the grate that the fanboy mentioned in the trial used to get in to the studio.
Very poorly, I might add. What was that, cardboard and duct tape?
I think she used some stray wood from a backdrop, actually.
Well, that's a little better at least.
She's been asked to provide security while Oldbag is away, but the second she leaves Maya wants to rip off the improvised cover so the kids can get back into the studio, which you must allow her to do.
As always, if you can do something in Ace Attorney, it's almost always necessary to do it.
Except showing people your badge, that's just a fun bonus.
It does amuse me that I can't recall a single time you actually had to show anyone your badge; it's always just an option to see how little people care.
There are a few times when it is required, several of which are in this very game. Going to Will Powers dressing room gives the player their first meeting with Sal Manella, director and creator of the Steel Samurai. Sam, how would you describe this man?
Among the first to end up tagged in the Ace Attorney universe's equivalent of the #MeToo movement. Seriously, this guy is a creep.
More descriptively, he's an overweight man in his thirties who speaks in leet speak and displays the creepy sexism that many ascribe to stereotypical "basement dwelling nerds".
He's a bad stereotype, really, though I'd be lying if I said he didn't seem a little more believable now than he did before certain elements of nerd culture became more aggressive.
Anyway, he quickly begins leering at Maya, which activates his "CR34T1V3 P0W3RZ", causing him to spontaneously devise a spin-off to his hit series called The Pink Princess. He says that he was with some studio bigwigs and the producer in a meeting at Studio 2 after the rehearsal, until well after the murder, giving him and everyone else there an alibi.
There's a great bit here where Maya calls out the fact that his description of this new show with a female hero seems to conspicuously give her a little less power and coolness than the Steel Samurai. Like I said, stereotypes aside, some elements of this character ring true.
From there, Phoenix and Maya head to Studio Two, which hasn't been used for filming in years. There's a van, a table with empty plates where some folks clearly ate lunch, and a trailer with a small garden. Said trailer is locked, but when the duo go to get the key from the guard station, they find it no longer unoccupied: the Oldbag has returned!!
To make things worse, you can't get into the guardhouse to get the key as long as she's there, so you just kind of have to wander elsewhere in the meantime.
In said aimless wandering, Phoenix finds the fanboy kid, Cody Hackins, in the Employee Area, but he escapes before they can really talk to him much. In his escape, he knocks over a bottle of sleeping pills that was sitting on the table where Powers and Hammers ate lunch together. Now, Oldbag is busy chasing the kid, which allows for the nabbing of the Trailer Key, and the introduction of the last new character of the case.
Having finally gotten the trailer key, Phoenix and Maya head back to the trailer and open the door. Inside they find the producer, Dee Vasquez, a woman of few words who's always smoking a long pipe (cigar?). They try to ask her some questions, but she keeps saying she’s looking for the script of a specific Steel Samurai episode, and shows no interest in anything else. Ultimately they just leave, but she stops them first to give them a paper to deliver it to Sal.
She's a very no-nonsense, stoic character, a first for the series. Also, I think it's a fancy cigarette
That's a long cigarette! I know nothing about smoking.
The note just asks Sal for the script, but he doesn’t remember where he put it, so we have to search for it. We find it in the director’s chair at the scene of the crime and bring it to Dee. Satisfied, she finally says more than a couple words, explaining that everyone who was at the meeting could not have gone to Studio 1 because the tree and broken mascot that have been cleared from the path broke on that day, at 2:15, and wasn’t cleared until 4. The murder took place at 2:30, so none of them could have done it.
Specifically, the mascot is Mr. Monkey, and he looks absolutely horrifying.
With no solid leads, Phoenix and Maya return to the law offices to regroup, where deus ex Mia shows up, again channeling through Maya, to tell Phoenix that they need to pursue the lead of the boy, since it seems he saw something. Kind of a weak excuse to bring Mia in, honestly, but alright.
There's a larger narrative reason for it, but here it is meant to show how bad their situation is now. They have literally no other suspects except their client.
We run into Oldbag at the gate; she’s still been chasing the boy. But he dropped a Steel Samurai trading card, and she’s taken it hostage. She trades it to Phoenix in exchange for the cardkey to Studio 1, so she can see where Hammer died. So we go back to the employee area, and come across the kid, Cody. Apparently Mia is better with kids than either Phoenix or Maya, because he answers to her just fine.
Clearly, it's due to her boo-I mean, her kind nature. Yeah, that's it.
Phoenix tries making a deal: information in exchange for giving Cody his card back. But Cody already has another one of this card, and he refuses to give you any information unless you give him a premium ultra rare card. If you wander around the studio for a while, you come across Penny in the producer’s trailer (for some reason), and she offers to trade your card for one of her premium ultra rare.
I really love the reveal that she's a huge geek.
I vote for her to take over the show when Sal inevitably gets ousted for being a creep.
Surprisingly enough, I think there's a lot to analyze with this segment. Let's start with the new characters, Sal Manella and Dee Vasquez.
Well I'm not sure how much we can say about Sal beyond what an enormous creep he is; we don't even really get a sense for whether he's any good at his job, just that he's a socially inept twerp who makes quite a show of not respecting women in the slightest. We could certainly talk about how he's informed by a lot of negative nerd/otaku stereotypes, and there's some legitimacy in that, but frankly in an era where so much sexual harassment in media production is coming to light and women in creative industries have been harassed and threatened by misogynistic assholes, I no longer find it easy to pass off the character entirely. I hate him, and however exaggerated his portrayal may be (welcome to Ace Attorney), I wish he seemed more absurd to me than he does.
I definitely agree, and his character design seems to purposefully invoke disgust in the player, which kind of feels like a rude statement toward plus-sized men.
On the other hand, Dee is immediately an interesting character, with her unique design and stoic demeanor. Her prominence and power as a producer is interesting when counterplayed by her subordinate's sexism.
For sure. After the gaudy showiness of Redd White, Dee comes across as a far more intimidating authority figure. She's not interested in impressing Phoenix, or even in the investigation as a whole, she seems to just want to continue her work without disturbance, and she's confident enough in what she's doing that she doesn't feel a need to justify it to some lawyer.
Speaking of lawyers, that moment where Phoenix and Mia were both like "Well, better hide the existence of this witness" is one of many moments I shall call back to later on when Wright gets hypocritical. That's a topic more for the second game in the series, but Phoenix occasionally dips into the same tactics he shames prosecutors for without any self-awareness of how that comes across.
That moment surprised me, actually; it's definitely a dirty tactic that doesn't really fit Phoenix's ideals.
I would argue it does. Phoenix occasionally professes a larger belief in truth and stuff, but his actions more often than not show his main goal is getting his client declared not guilty. Again, that's more a topic for another game. So, how about all that Moving around the map, Samuel.
Okay, here's the part where I admit that this investigation sequence is the first time in this game I have genuinely not enjoyed playing Phoenix Wright. Seriously, I hated this segment, and Moving all around the map is a big part of why (but believe it or not, not the biggest).
The game's movement system simply consists of choosing "Move" and picking which area you want to Move to. But you can only move to areas directly next to the area you're in, and after that you have to wait for the next area to load before selecting "Move" again and selecting the next area, and this case has a lot of connected areas. So when someone says, for example, "Please go give this piece of paper to my trash human director," you have to move to: Studio 2; Outside Studio 1; Front Gate; Employee Area; Dressing Room. When said trash director doesn't know where the script is: Move Employee Area; Front Gate; Outside Studio 1; Inside Studio 1. When you find the script: Move Outside Studio 1; Outside Studio 2; Trailer. And remember that each time you move, the game loads up the next area and you have to select to move again. Every time.
And that's only one example; this investigation segment is full of this.
On the one hand, I really like how this precise way of moving from one part of the studio to the other gives the player a really good idea of how the area is laid out, which is kind of important in a case like this. On the other hand, as you've said, it is really annoying moving from one end of the studio to another. The worst is when you accidentally select the wrong location, adding even more time to the process. This is the first time this comes up as a problem, but it remains one basically until the fifth game in the series, when they made it so you can teleport from any location to any other location. I don't know how much I like that change, honestly, but that's a story for a much later date. So, Sam, what was your biggest gripe?
The structure of this investigation segment, in terms of what the player is supposed to do when, and why, is a complete mess half the time, and in a way that greatly exacerbates the frustration of Moving around and backtracking.
The biggest example is the process of getting the trailer key. When you first get to the trailer, you hear some kind of noise inside; the tense music ramps up, no one answers when Phoenix and Maya knock, and they talk about how they need to get a key from the security station so they can get in there! It seems kind of urgent!
What follows, however, is not just a protracted process to get the key; it's a series of random explorations with no stated goal. You can't get it because Penny is there, so you just wander aimlessly and meet Sal in the Dressing Room. Then back to the main gate to see that Oldbag is back. Then back to the Employee Area (which you had just gone through after meeting Sal) to run into Cody. Then only after you go back to the entrance where Oldbag is chasing Cody can you pick up the key.
At best, this is poor pacing to pad out the segment, but that's pretty normal; needing to run here and there to get a key item is a classic video game structure crutch. What makes it so unforgivable for me is that your objective never actually changes; this entire time you just need to get the trailer key (for reasons that seemed urgent), but there's no clear way that doing any of this runaround nonsense will actually make that happen; you're just wandering around and meeting new people with no concept of how you'll get the key or how any of this will help you.
It completely kills the tension and just makes the entire experience a frustrating process of backtracking and going to random places in hopes that anything will trigger, because there's no stated rhyme or reason to any of the events that will move the story forward. I'm gonna' be honest, it completely killed the enjoyment of this investigation day for me.
I'm sad to hear that, but I understand. Maybe I've become inoculated to the annoyance of this sort of thing by this point, but this is a very clear example of how Investigation segments can be done poorly.
My bigger problem here is, once again, how lackluster the mystery is. I noticed near the end of the segment that a new piece of evidence put me to a second page of evidence in the Court Record. This is the second day of investigation, the midpoint of the story...there should be more evidence than this!
Then there is the copious amounts of plot holes. Why are there only two photos? Shouldn't there also be photos of the people on their way to Studio Two, or of everyone going to Studio One when they found the body? Why exactly is this used as solid evidence when someone could just, I don't know, walk around the camera's area? Plot holes don't necessarily make a story worse, but in a murder mystery things like this get really annoying, and quickly.
Yeah, there definitely are a lot of logical errors, and in general it feels like these first two investigation days have been more about figuring out what the mystery even is than actually advancing it in any interesting way. I remembered this being my least favorite case of the game, but I kind of hoped replaying it would make it a little better? But honestly I'm enjoying this one way less than I thought I would.
I don't want us to give the impression that this is the worst case ever, or that we necessarily completely dislike it. We're saving reviews for the end, but I think I'll let this slip now...this isn't my lowest scoring case in this game, and I'll explain why when we get there. Next time we'll be tackling the second day of trial, and with it something that will hopefully turn this case around. Auf wiedersehen.
Until next time!
