Hallo, alle miteinander, and welcome back to Wright Wednesday! This is weekly series where we recap, analyze, and review the cases in the Ace Attorney series. This week we're covering the second investigation segment in the case Recipe for Turnabout. My name is Roy, and for some reason I cannot make bread correctly.
I'm Sam, and for a host of reasons I cannot make much of anything correctly.
So then, the first court session has wrapped up with little real progress on the case. When Phoenix and Maya go to the police department, Gumshoe isn’t there, but the whole place is scrambling to deal with some kind of emergency, including shutting off the computers (much to the chagrin of the chief, who’s talking to his penpal, 1337aZnPrInceSz). So they move on to Tres Bien, where Gumshoe is eating lunch and listening to the lottery winners on the radio. He’s upset that Phoenix didn’t find more holes in his testimony, and is distraught that Maggey responded so poorly to it.
Poor Gumshoe
When asked what he was listening to, Gumshoe’s chains up with a psyche-lock, despite it having been rather obvious. So they ask him about the victim, Glen Elg. Greg was a master computer genius, and works at a computer shop nearby: Blue Screens Inc. But before visiting the shop, Phoenix and Maya go to the kitchen and see Armstrong talking to that strange, bandaged woman from before. She is quite explicitly threatening him and his shop if he doesn’t give her something.
This is our second time seeing this mystery woman, but we'll be seeing a lot more of her very soon.
After she leaves, Armstrong insists to Phoenix that this restaurant is his life, and he won’t let anyone take it from him.We eventually convince him to tell us about the woman, and how she relates to his debt. She’s an agent from Tender Lender, where he took out his loan. Not only has she been threatening him, but Armstrong is apparently obligated to do whatever her boss, the loan shark The Tiger, wants him to do. What’s more, this Tiger has spikey hair like Phoenix.
Clearly, this mysterious information is not enough to understand just yet.
What a mystery!!
Next, a quick detour to check out Blue Screens Inc., the interior of which looks straight out of a sci-fi movie. They’re greeted by a fancy, high-tech woman in a suit, who’s wearing the same eyepiece Greg had. She’s Lisa Basil, director of the company. Blue Screens Inc. analyzes their clients’ needs and provides software and operating systems to fit them. Needless to say, both Phoenix and Maya are completely lost in the techno-babble.
As someone who vaguely understands some technology stuff, most of what they talk about in relation to what they do is pure nonsense for sure.
Lisa Basil doesn’t have any helpful information, but gives them permission to look through Greg’s desk. There’s a calendar there, with the date of the murder circled and a note: “Meet with the tiger.” Which means the next step is Tender Lender, a far more traditional looking office aside from the solid gold desk, exotic-looking rug, and punching bag hanging from the ceiling.
The Tiger seems to be out at the moment, but the creepy girl is there instead. But she leaves them alone to wait for The Tiger, giving them an opportunity to snoop around. First, they find a matchbook from Tres Bien, then after a not-so-subtle implication that creepy girl might poison them, they see that the disc inside the boom box on the desk has “MC Bomber” written on it in sharpie. There’s also a suit just like Phoenix’s hanging on the wall, complete with an attorney’s badge made of cardboard and paint.
It clearly took a lot of time to make. Maybe 5 minutes.
Then, with a mighty roar, the Tiger appears! He is indeed the same man Phoenix encountered in Vitamin Square before, and he’s angry. He thinks Phoenix and Maya spilled the ashtray all over his fancy rug, but when the creepy girl apologetically says it was her doing, he completely changes his tune, along with his demeanor, telling her to forget it. And calling her by a nickname: Violetta.
This is not a subtle guy.
The Tiger basically admits that he was the Phony Phoenix, and says he won’t let Phoenix ruin his plans. Then he just leaves Phoenix and Maya alone with Violetta. She says she was here at the office with the boss, Furio Tigre, on the day of the murder. She says they’re lovers, and he saved her life. When asked for details, she says she died four months ago; the doctors said to give up hope, but Don Tigre saved her (though she’s vague on exactly how). She has dedicated herself to serving him in return.
The bandage on her head, she says, is from a fatal injury, presumably from whatever had supposedly killed her before. But when asked for details, she clams up, and four Psyche-Locks appear.
Heading back to Vitamin Square, Phoenix and Maya find Victor Kudo is back to feeding the birds. He’s annoyed at what happened at court, how everyone will call him a pervert now. But he maintains that, while he didn’t see the waitress’s face, he did see her put the powder in the coffee, and he sticks with his claim that the victim had his earphone in an ear he couldn’t hear out of. From there, he just starts rambling about how crappy his life is.
Maya actually relates when he talks about being born into a profession, in Kudo’s case embroidery, that no one cares about anymore. But if you let him ramble on and on about getting in people’s way, and being asked to do errands, he says something relevant: on the day of the crime, he was asked to report the crime to the police, and he was so dazed it took him 5 minutes to do it. When Phoenix points out that, y’know, he should have said this during court, Kudo points out that he tried, but everyone was so tired of him, they kicked him out. But this is important: for five minutes at least after the murder, the crime scene just had Maggey unconscious, a dead victim, and Armstrong.
That certainly is important, despite still being based on his famously unreliable testimony.
Heading back to see Gumshoe, you can easily break his Psyche-Lock. And by easily, I mean it takes one piece of evidence. He was obviously listening to the same lottery show that the victim was, the one that got him the winning ticket. We also get a flyer for the show from him, letting us know that it plays every day at 1:30pm. This is Ace Attorney, so any exact time stamp like that is going to be useful later on.
I will admit, the first case of the series set me up to expect simple contradictions where the witness says the wrong time, and it's never been that simple since.
Gumshoe has to head back to the precinct, since they have a big meeting coming up, but before he goes he has a favor for Phoenix. Apparently, he noticed that Maggey doesn't seem to be eating well, and made her a lunchbox, asking Phoenix to deliver it for him when he can. There are a lot of weenies in the lunchbox.
Which gives us this delightful line.
I mean, we did already make clear we both support BiGumshoe.
Yep, BiGumshoe confirmed!
Anyway, heading to the Detention Center finally let's us talk to Maggey again, who up to this point had been in questioning. They're all so confused about what happened in the trial. Between Armstrong, Maggey, and Victor Kudo, the accounts just plain don't match up, and the witness's explicitly contradict reality. Phoenix brings up that, now that they know that Armstrong was alone in there at one point, he's pretty suspicious, but Maggey doesn't want to think badly about him. After all, he's the one who gave her a job after she was fired from the police, she doesn't want to think he would do something like that to her.
That makes sense. As a general rule, Armstrong doesn't seem like a bad person, just one in a rough situation.
Presenting Victor Kudo’s testimony or his profile to Maggey has her bring up something in particular she’s been finding odd for a while now: while there was a customer she remembers being at the restaurant while she served the victim, it wasn’t an old man. No, it was a creepy woman with a distinctive laugh. Another clue, but it’s still confusing to consider. Less confusing is why Maggey turns down the lunchbox if you offer it. Oh, she sounds keen at first, but the second they reveal who made it, she stops wanting it. Instead, Phoenix and Maya eat it, and it’s apparently quite delicious.
Poor Gumshoe.
While Criminal Affairs was busy the first time Phoenix came by, now they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They’re planning a press conference, and to the Chief of Detective’s distress they pull the power on all their computers. Gumshoe is there to explain: someone has let loose a computer virus on the police department, one that’s infected their entire system and risks destroying all of their data. Gumshoe’s having a hard time remembering what the name of the virus is, but we have several pieces of evidence that help: the sports paper and the cd. The virus is called MC Bomber, and it’s worth millions of dollars.
This twist might be a little obvious, honestly, but it's still really good. Shifts the focus of the whole case without actually changing all that much on a practical level.
There’s one other important thing to do with Gumshoe, namely asking him about Violetta. See, it turns out she isn’t someone to mess with. Not because she herself is particularly dangerous, but because she’s actually Viola Cadaverini, the granddaughter of Bruto Cadaverini. That man heads one of the largest crime families around, and it’s well known that they protect members of the family with the threat of retaliatory violence.
Oh, and Gumshoe also wants to know if Maggey liked her weenies. Before they can even tell him that she refused to eat them out of spite, he gives them a second lunchbox, also for her, because he really is the sweetest man in the entire world.
Seriously, Gumshoe is the absolute best.
From there, it’s time to head back to Blue Screens, Inc, and talk to Lisa Basil once more. After all, she had Psyche-Locks when asked about the victim, and now we have enough to prove what he was hiding. There was a bunch of evidence at his desk, all of which, combined with the lottery ticket, shows he was a gambling addict. So much so that he was deep in debt, but not to just anyone: he owed money to Tender Lender. As the calendar showed, he was meeting with Furio Tigre on the day of the murder, but Lisa tries to argue that it didn’t matter. After all, he won the lottery and got enough money to pay off his debt. But Phoenix points out that Glen Elg couldn’t have known that. His plan for paying the debt was simple: create a virus. And that virus was MC Bomber.
Which, far as I know, we don't actually know the purpose of yet. Just that it's ravaging the police department and apparently deleting data.
I don't think we ever learn? But judging by the explanation Phoenix has to give Maya and Gumshoe about the topic, it seems like the game assumed the audience didn't know anything about viruses.
Fair. But it does seem relevant to at least know why Tigre wanted it and what he's using it for? Guess we'll see if that gets resolved.
I am guessing he isn't the one using it, he's probably already sold it to someone, who is now using it on the police.
Ah, that's fair. I feel like it could have interesting implications in the story, but maybe so.
There are more Psyche-Locks to break, and for those, we need to head back to Tender Lender. Using the Magatama on Viola to talk about her injury requires a few leeps in what we know, but it’s pretty navigable. Basically, we need to connect the injury to her head to a repair bill found in the office. That’s for a car, implying she was hurt in a car accident. We know it’s her because the bill mentions the Cadaverini’s, and that’s her last name. Viola tells Phoenix that she was in a car accident 4 months before, where she was driving the car and had to swerve to miss someone one something like a motorcycle. In the process, she suffered a near-fatal head injury.
Phoenix is able to figure out who was the person the caused the accident, thanks to the beat-up scooter we’ve seen a few times. That was what she saw, and the one who owns it is Furio Tigre. Because of what he did, he had to pay the outrageous prices of the repair bill on the car and the cost of the surgery. Viola wants to believe it’s because he loves her, but Phoenix points out the truth they both know, what Viola has tried to hide from. Furio Tigre doesn’t care about her at all, he’s only done what he has to avoid the wrath of Bruto Cadaverini. That finishes the locks, and Viola tearfully tells everything. Tigre was forced to pay a million dollars to avoid death, as compensation for his deed. In truth, Viola finds what Tigre did to get the money he needed evil, and hates the role she played in the murder. She gives Phoenix important evidence, the medical bills that prove how deeply in debt the loan shark was.
I do love this reveal, because short of some kind of evidence otherwise, it sure makes Tigre into an absolute garbage person. It turns him from goofy weird guy to complete trash real quick in my mind.
Oh, we will definitely be discussing his trash-ness later on.
Well, we’ve got the important evidence, that’s good, right? Well, there is one tiny snag. You have to pass through Tres Bien to get anywhere, and when you do there’s a cutscene. Armstrong has been waiting for Phoenix, and not alone. No, Tigre is there too, and he knows what Phoenix has. He laughs at how stupid Viola is, making clear how little he really thinks of her. Not only that, but Armstrong is prepared to fight on Tigre’s side, punching Phoenix several times to try and get him to give up what he has. Things look dire, but Gumshoe arrives at the nick of time, holding them off while Phoenix gets away.
1) Gumshoe is still best character.
2) Glad they figured out how to have a villain threaten Phoenix and take his evidence without Phoenix himself initiating the confrontation. Guess he's learned something.
Seriously! If this was written for the first game, though, you know you'd have to talk to Tigre and Present the medical report to him first. We've already kind of started, so let's formally end our recap and get into our analysis. I don't think I just speak for myself when I say we have a lot more to talk about this week than we did last time, right Sam?
For sure. The most interesting thing to me, in light of the general theme of masks we've been talking about for this game, is that we now see Tigre's mask is two-fold. Not only was he pretending to be Phoenix, but he's also been pretending to give a crap about a girl so he could save his own skin, and has been using her to further his own goals in the process. Once again, masks are being used to manipulate others, though this time in a more personal and invasive way. It's perhaps more analogous to Dahlia's manipulative presentation to Phoenix than anything in the previous case.
Absolutely. Like you said before, we really get to see Tigre for who he is. The man loves to intimidate, to boss other people around, to hold power over them. But when he's the one who has something on the line, he gets flustered so easily. Look how he acts around Viola, where he fawns and pretends to like her, clearly nervous he'll die if he says the wrong thing, compared to how he talks about her behind her back. I love Furio Tigre for similar reasons to, say, Redd White: a silly villain at first, but with genuine menace behind him. Just as Redd White abused his power to beat up Phoenix while making it clear he could never be prosecuted for it, Tigre takes hold of Armstrong and forces him to act as muscle to do his dirty work.
That's true. He's really reflective of what makes Phoenix Wright work in general; a bright, goofy presentation with something far more interesting and complex underlying it.
Speaking of Tigre though, we have to talk about Viola
We absolutely do. Anything in particular you have to say?
There are a lot of neat things about this case. Viola might be the best thing about it though, in my opinion. (Aside from the opening cutscene, which I still contend is absolute dynamite.) I absolutely adore how, at first, Viola is played entirely as "creepy black-haired girl who might murder you". Phoenix and Maya are scared of her, as is almost everyone she meets.
But in her Psyche-Lock scene, we see that isn't really who she is. She's a victim here, as much as Glen Elg. She might be the granddaughter of a mafia boss, but she's also a sheltered girl who is just trying to make the person she loves happy, while secretly knowing he doesn't love her back at all. It is so tragic, and I adore the bit where she cries. In retrospect, I'd say it's clear that while Viola can be quite creepy, and she sometimes leans on that to intimidate people, on the whole it comes from her being a shy girl who just sounds off-putting. She's not an actively malicious person, and that complexity is something I really like.
I agree, the way they switched our perception of her a bit works really well, especially since it turns her from a perceived suspect into a victim. It's hard not to feel for her when we realize she's being manipulated and used.
Any new feelings about Armstrong?
Well regarding Armstrong's character, I'm neutral at this point. Being extorted to keep your restaurant alive is one thing, participating in assault is another entirely. Extortion or no. But considering Armstrong refers to himself as a woman multiple times, and Phoenix keeps insisting that he's a man even while Maya (who worked for him for a day) uses feminine pronouns, I'm...uncomfy.
Yeah...it is still tackled strangely, and I wish that in the newer release they'd done something to make it more consistent.
I'm just not sure how to appropriately refer to the character, and the way it's scripted right now it feels like Phoenix is actively refusing to acknowledge Armstrong's gender/pronouns. So that kinda sucks.
But you know who doesn't suck? Ace Attorney resident cinnamon roll, Detective Dick Gumshoe. He's just the best.
He is! This is, what, the second time he's literally saved Phoenix's life? The third? I can't keep track anymore. And those lunchboxes he made Maggey? Gumshoe is a treat and it's sad this is basically the last mainline game in the series with him, though he'll still be around for both Investigation games.
I look forward to playing those, because yes I miss Gumshoe.
This segment is heavy on good Gumshoe content, but its Gumshoe/Maggey content is basically limited to the usual second-act misunderstanding stuff. I look forward to seeing more substantial content with them.
I think all that needs to be said about Victor Kudo is that he is still here and I am suffering for it.
I mean. Pretty much. He doesn't matter too much at least.
Switching gears a little into some of the smaller, more optional things that can crop up if you dig deeper, if you Present Maggey's profile to Maya, she comments about her being their friend. This makes Phoenix internally realize he's actually never considered Maggey that, but also feels like sure, she pretty much is anyway. Just kinda another thing to add to the stack of, "Wow, is Phoenix a bad friend" moments.
He definitely doesn't seem very attentive on that front.
Presenting Godot's profile to Gumshoe leads to the detective revealing that Godot didn't prosecute the first trial because he knew right away it wasn't the real Phoenix, and left it for Payne to take. He didn't tell anyone else it wasn't really Phoenix though.
That...actually sounds very much like something he would do. Not just because he doesn't care, but because that fake trial legitimately did hurt Phoenix's reputation, and Godot would have no reason to stop that from happening.
If you Present Maya's profile to Armstrong, he talks about her being a perfect waitress, and she says something about maybe coming back if her current career doesn't work out. Phoenix thinks about how she must be talking about being a spirit medium. There's something sad to that. Hope they do something with it!
That is kind of sad, yeah. And I don't know if the series ever brings her back, so...yeah, I hope they do something with it too!
...I...I feel like I can't answer that without shattering your hopes.
So anyway! Speaking of Maya there is a part on this segment where it is specifically mentioned that she gets a stipend. They don't say who from, but we can assume it's her family. We talked about her financials at some point previously, so this kind of clears it up.
Ah, that makes sense. I'd also hope Phoenix is paying her, but yeah, that checks out.
After learning about Viola's backstory, Phoenix says he can't ever forgive poisoning or betrayal. Just a bit on the nose.
I can't blame him on that one.
Though that does bring up something we talked about with the last case. There, the defendant mirrored Phoenix's situation in the Tutorial Case pretty directly, but here the parallels are a bit different. Obviously there's the poison angle, since we know that Dahlia was trying to poison Phoenix and was accused of poisoning someone else. There's also the fact that Viola is in kind of a Phoenix situation, being manipulated by someone she loves. The difference there is that Viola is aware of it, even as she's in denial of it.
It's certainly a different reaction to the masks we've been discussing, which I'm not sure is an angle we've come at it from so far. The different ways people respond to being used and lied to.
Okay, you know what is one thing I largely have to give this case over both past Filler Cases? It feels like the Investigation segments are smoother. I have yet to run around trying to find some random flag I needed to trigger.
That's very true, I agree. I think I might have wandered around a little once, but considering the other two Filler Cases are notorious for doing that constantly, it's a significant and welcome improvement.
Seems like it's about time to move on to the Examinables! Only one problem: Wright and Co's are the same as they were at the start of the case! I am shocked and appalled!
*gasp* Scandal!!
*double gasp* Scandal Savage?! Where?!
Anyway, there are some Examinables to talk about with the Criminal Affairs Department. Starting with that detective always working on some project, the first time you come by he's making a slogan for an anti-theft campaign, about how even pickpockets can be pickpocketed.
I forget the exact phrasing, but it was very confusingly worded. Not a good slogan.
"Even pickpockets can have their pockets picked."
Okay well never mind, either the HD version changed it or I am not remembering it correctly. That's not bad. But it's also specifically marketing to pick pockets, which is...a choice, I guess.
Well they do change what they say later on, when Gumshoe shoes up. Then, the detective says, ”Your batteries won’t last remember. Remember that when you’re having fun...in bed.” It’s for smoke alarms. I...I do not have the words.
Neither does he, clearly.
Moving over to the Chief of Detectives, he is sad his computer was turned off, is going to write a physical letter to his e-pen pal, 1337aZnPrInceSz
Oh hey, advancing to physical letters now! Sure, I ship it.
Later, with his computer turned off, he goes to read a paper, but somehow gets the evidence with the victim’s writing on it, almost wadding it up and throwing it away before he’s stopped.
Okay well now it's threatening his job performance, calm down dude.
Did you have anything else for this week?
Nope, I think that about covers it!
Well then, join us next week when we finish this case and give our final thoughts. Auf wiedersehen!
Until next time!!
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