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type_wildI've been playing the Ace Attorney games, and it turns out that it wasn't just my imagination: I just love the hell out of the entire fourth game in ways I don't love the first three. I love the first three games too, but there is something about Apollo Justice and Trucy Ema Wocky Klavier his friends and foes that just hooked me a lot harder.
It was a downer that AA5 starred Phoenix in the lead, so the important question was always WELL FINE BUT WILL THE GAME AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT APOLLO EXISTED.
It turns out that it does, and how.
I won't lie, I was expecting Apollo's presence in the game to be a mention that he's off studying overseas. This because Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney both continues and breaks with this frankly kind of strange trend in the Ace Attorney games.
Q: What do we know about Phoenix Wright from before Mia Fey is killed?
A: Who his best friends in third grade were and that his college girlfriend wasn't who he thought she was.
Phoenix is a fun guy, but compared to a lot of the secondary characters, he hasn't got much of a story. What is the story of Phoenix Wright? He became a defence attorney - with the goal, we later learn, to get some answers out of the childhood friend who initially inspired this wish. This storyline makes up the (originally) final case in the first game, and while it reveals what little we know about Phoenix' past, it is entirely about burying the nightmares of said childhood friend and inspire him to a different life. All it inspires in Phoenix is some lines of hilarious melodrama in the next game.
What does Phoenix Wright do? He pursues justice by defending the innocently accused and finding the true culprits. Why does he do it? Because he was once falsely accused of stealing someone's lunch money. Phoenix provides a giggle-worthy commentary to what's going on around him, but very little of what he does is actually about himself as a person. His story is his involvement in other people's lives.
That is, until Apollo Justice takes his place in the fourth game.
Q: What do we know about Apollo Justice from before Kristoph Gavin was arrested for murder?
A: That he's an orphan who knows nothing about his family, although we know that his is a family of magicians which has certain quasi-supernatural abilities. We know that he's got a mother he never knew and a sister he never knew off. We know his dead father is left vague enough for there to be plenty of story to be spun from him.
As a person, we know even less about Apollo than we do Phoenix. Phoenix has got his childhood friends, his mentor, his motivation for pursuing that career. Apollo's got a mentor who's in jail, a trail of exasperating associates (annoying prosecutor, annoying employer, cantankerous detective, overly genki sidekick) and no mention about what he's been up to between the moment he was born and the day Phoenix Wright requested him as his defence team.
It is only in Apollo's game that Phoenix gets a story. Like the previous three games, what happens on screen is more about the people surrounding our attorney than about the attorney himself. It's tellingly only in the final case, when it is Phoenix who runs around investigating, that we learn about all the mysteries surrounding Apollo. Logic suggests that the reason is in the gameplay: Be it because we only ever see the face of our attorney in the courtoom or something else, it's easier to tell other people's stories when seeing it through one character's eyes. Those who have experience with other point and click games are free to disagree.
No matter what, I find it striking. Compare Phoenix (in his own games) and Apollo to, say Edgeworth or the Fey lot, or even Franziska and Godot. We know things about these people: we know their motivations, we know their business, we know their pasts and we know their struggles. Phoenix? Until Apollo comes around to observe him and do the exposition, we don't even what his house looks like. In turn, the same applies to Apollo. Unless he really doesn't know it, it is strange to say the leasts that it is an unrelated party who reveals that he's adopted, and that the only relevance it has to the story is because he is the son from the previous marriage of the wife of the man whose business ruined Phoenix' life. Apollo's got a story, alright, but that story is seemingly completely irrelevant to him.
What Apollo carries over from AA4:
- The really kind of pitiful apprentice-type relationship he has to Phoenix. They are no-where near Mia-Phoenix or von Karma-Edgeworth in terms of master-apprentice bonds. In fact, I'm 90% certain that the only reason Phoenix bothers keeping Apollo around is
- Apollo's sister is Phoenix's adopter daughter, and though the two of them don't know they're family, there is how
- Phoenix promised their mother he'd look after them and tell them about her and their relation whenever the time is right
If anything, AA4's ending rather demands a sequel because of the way it handles the topic of Apollo's family. If Apollo's not going to know about his family, why involve him in it at all? It's either an incredibly half-arsed explanation for why he's got "supernatural" powers, or unresolved plot threads intentionally left there for the next game. Knowing that Apollo is going to be in AA5 and is going to play a fairly central part, there is better going to be some kind of resolution to the big issue that the previous game left hanging.
Anyway, my guesses for his part in AA5:
1. He's still an defence attorney, but off doing other things
a) He's a victim of the blown up courtroom, and will appear as a witness in the first trial and contribute with some meaningful exposition about what's been going on since AA4. Will probably be popping up from time to time throughout the game because he's still working for the Wright Anything Agency, but it'll be in a Hero Of A Different Story kind of thing, possibly some variety of
b) He's running some completely different kind of law-related subplot, and will appear with much significance in the first trial, vanish mysteriously from the game, and then show up for the grand finale and reveal something that's probably about the new sidekick.
[The most obvious and least controversial way to keep him in the continuity short of, well, making a mention about him going to study overseas]
2. He's the prosecutor
For whatever reason he crossed over to the dark side. He and whatever he's been up to since AA4 will be driving a central part of the plot because now that he's working against Phoenix, Phoenix will have to try to bring him back and/or understand why he'd switch sides. It's possible of course that he did it because his mission is to uncover the truth and the prosecutor's office pays better (making him more of the Klavier Gavin type), but I find this unlikely. There's too much potential shock value in making the previous protagonist be the new antagonist for them to whittle it away at something boring. If Apollo's the prosecutor, he'll probably have some sort of grudge against Phoenix.
[This could make a lot of sense, particularly carrying over from AA4 and his unfortunate record with other defense attorneys. Seriously, the epilogue of his first trial could well have been the prologue to Apollo Justice: Ace Prosecutor - the tale of a young man whose dreams of bringing justice to the innocent were shattered by the two defense attorneys he admired the most when his greatest idol tricked him into using forged evidence to make his legal mentor confess to a petty, senseless murder. He's got a completely different approach to his clients than Phoenix does, too - and given how his firsts trial turns out, can you blame him]
3. He's the detective
He'll be present during most investigations and testify in most trials, and his career change can be handwaved away without much explanation.
[Unlikely, but it could explain the jacket which looks like a uniform of some sort and the Sudden Badass. It would be an easy way to shove him into the story without wasting too much attention on him, but then there's no reason the game wouldn't be wasting attention on him due to the questions left unanswered from the previous game. I also have problems seeing how someone with his background could be employed as an investigator, but Lana Skye did it before him. Apollo would make an ace detective]
4. He's a defendant
He's accused of something terrible, Phoenix proves his innocence or in an unexpected twist, his guilt.
[Extremely unlikely. I hope. This is AA4 in a nutshell, and they pretty much did this with Edgeworth and Godot in the first trilogy. Twice with Maya. The only way this would be a novel development is if Apollo's turned into an evil mastermind and I somehow don't see that happening]
5. Capcom has been lying to us all along, and Apollo will in fact be the playable attorney in at least one case
[See #1.]
It was a downer that AA5 starred Phoenix in the lead, so the important question was always WELL FINE BUT WILL THE GAME AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT APOLLO EXISTED.
It turns out that it does, and how.
I won't lie, I was expecting Apollo's presence in the game to be a mention that he's off studying overseas. This because Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney both continues and breaks with this frankly kind of strange trend in the Ace Attorney games.
Q: What do we know about Phoenix Wright from before Mia Fey is killed?
A: Who his best friends in third grade were and that his college girlfriend wasn't who he thought she was.
Phoenix is a fun guy, but compared to a lot of the secondary characters, he hasn't got much of a story. What is the story of Phoenix Wright? He became a defence attorney - with the goal, we later learn, to get some answers out of the childhood friend who initially inspired this wish. This storyline makes up the (originally) final case in the first game, and while it reveals what little we know about Phoenix' past, it is entirely about burying the nightmares of said childhood friend and inspire him to a different life. All it inspires in Phoenix is some lines of hilarious melodrama in the next game.
What does Phoenix Wright do? He pursues justice by defending the innocently accused and finding the true culprits. Why does he do it? Because he was once falsely accused of stealing someone's lunch money. Phoenix provides a giggle-worthy commentary to what's going on around him, but very little of what he does is actually about himself as a person. His story is his involvement in other people's lives.
That is, until Apollo Justice takes his place in the fourth game.
Q: What do we know about Apollo Justice from before Kristoph Gavin was arrested for murder?
A: That he's an orphan who knows nothing about his family, although we know that his is a family of magicians which has certain quasi-supernatural abilities. We know that he's got a mother he never knew and a sister he never knew off. We know his dead father is left vague enough for there to be plenty of story to be spun from him.
As a person, we know even less about Apollo than we do Phoenix. Phoenix has got his childhood friends, his mentor, his motivation for pursuing that career. Apollo's got a mentor who's in jail, a trail of exasperating associates (annoying prosecutor, annoying employer, cantankerous detective, overly genki sidekick) and no mention about what he's been up to between the moment he was born and the day Phoenix Wright requested him as his defence team.
It is only in Apollo's game that Phoenix gets a story. Like the previous three games, what happens on screen is more about the people surrounding our attorney than about the attorney himself. It's tellingly only in the final case, when it is Phoenix who runs around investigating, that we learn about all the mysteries surrounding Apollo. Logic suggests that the reason is in the gameplay: Be it because we only ever see the face of our attorney in the courtoom or something else, it's easier to tell other people's stories when seeing it through one character's eyes. Those who have experience with other point and click games are free to disagree.
No matter what, I find it striking. Compare Phoenix (in his own games) and Apollo to, say Edgeworth or the Fey lot, or even Franziska and Godot. We know things about these people: we know their motivations, we know their business, we know their pasts and we know their struggles. Phoenix? Until Apollo comes around to observe him and do the exposition, we don't even what his house looks like. In turn, the same applies to Apollo. Unless he really doesn't know it, it is strange to say the leasts that it is an unrelated party who reveals that he's adopted, and that the only relevance it has to the story is because he is the son from the previous marriage of the wife of the man whose business ruined Phoenix' life. Apollo's got a story, alright, but that story is seemingly completely irrelevant to him.
What Apollo carries over from AA4:
- The really kind of pitiful apprentice-type relationship he has to Phoenix. They are no-where near Mia-Phoenix or von Karma-Edgeworth in terms of master-apprentice bonds. In fact, I'm 90% certain that the only reason Phoenix bothers keeping Apollo around is
- Apollo's sister is Phoenix's adopter daughter, and though the two of them don't know they're family, there is how
- Phoenix promised their mother he'd look after them and tell them about her and their relation whenever the time is right
If anything, AA4's ending rather demands a sequel because of the way it handles the topic of Apollo's family. If Apollo's not going to know about his family, why involve him in it at all? It's either an incredibly half-arsed explanation for why he's got "supernatural" powers, or unresolved plot threads intentionally left there for the next game. Knowing that Apollo is going to be in AA5 and is going to play a fairly central part, there is better going to be some kind of resolution to the big issue that the previous game left hanging.
Anyway, my guesses for his part in AA5:
1. He's still an defence attorney, but off doing other things
a) He's a victim of the blown up courtroom, and will appear as a witness in the first trial and contribute with some meaningful exposition about what's been going on since AA4. Will probably be popping up from time to time throughout the game because he's still working for the Wright Anything Agency, but it'll be in a Hero Of A Different Story kind of thing, possibly some variety of
b) He's running some completely different kind of law-related subplot, and will appear with much significance in the first trial, vanish mysteriously from the game, and then show up for the grand finale and reveal something that's probably about the new sidekick.
[The most obvious and least controversial way to keep him in the continuity short of, well, making a mention about him going to study overseas]
2. He's the prosecutor
For whatever reason he crossed over to the dark side. He and whatever he's been up to since AA4 will be driving a central part of the plot because now that he's working against Phoenix, Phoenix will have to try to bring him back and/or understand why he'd switch sides. It's possible of course that he did it because his mission is to uncover the truth and the prosecutor's office pays better (making him more of the Klavier Gavin type), but I find this unlikely. There's too much potential shock value in making the previous protagonist be the new antagonist for them to whittle it away at something boring. If Apollo's the prosecutor, he'll probably have some sort of grudge against Phoenix.
[This could make a lot of sense, particularly carrying over from AA4 and his unfortunate record with other defense attorneys. Seriously, the epilogue of his first trial could well have been the prologue to Apollo Justice: Ace Prosecutor - the tale of a young man whose dreams of bringing justice to the innocent were shattered by the two defense attorneys he admired the most when his greatest idol tricked him into using forged evidence to make his legal mentor confess to a petty, senseless murder. He's got a completely different approach to his clients than Phoenix does, too - and given how his firsts trial turns out, can you blame him]
3. He's the detective
He'll be present during most investigations and testify in most trials, and his career change can be handwaved away without much explanation.
[Unlikely, but it could explain the jacket which looks like a uniform of some sort and the Sudden Badass. It would be an easy way to shove him into the story without wasting too much attention on him, but then there's no reason the game wouldn't be wasting attention on him due to the questions left unanswered from the previous game. I also have problems seeing how someone with his background could be employed as an investigator, but Lana Skye did it before him. Apollo would make an ace detective]
4. He's a defendant
He's accused of something terrible, Phoenix proves his innocence or in an unexpected twist, his guilt.
[Extremely unlikely. I hope. This is AA4 in a nutshell, and they pretty much did this with Edgeworth and Godot in the first trilogy. Twice with Maya. The only way this would be a novel development is if Apollo's turned into an evil mastermind and I somehow don't see that happening]
5. Capcom has been lying to us all along, and Apollo will in fact be the playable attorney in at least one case
[See #1.]
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