On Ace Attorney

2009-12-09

The Ace Attorney series says a lot about video games. For all its insipid mechanics and plot twists, it comments coherently on the medium, and on life.

At their most satisfying, Ace Attorney's mechanics rely on syllogisms. The player is invited to recognize conflicting pieces of information, invent a scenario which reconciles them, and then support their whole cloth with evidence. Unfortunately, these sequences only involve interactivity insofar as they punish the player for pressing the wrong button; they provide no environment for play in a legal setting. As satisfying as it is to present the right evidence at the apposite time, the player is never allowed to formulate their own arguments, or assemble their own cases, discouraging lateral thinking and inviting guesswork. Furthermore, the series necessarily disregards international law to lubricate plot development and provide a stage for complex character plays.

Here, Ace Attorney lets itself down. It could comment on international criminal proceedings, or simulate the trials of real criminals yet to be tried, but it elects to lose itself in teen dramas and heteronormative puns. Why not indict Bush, or condemn conventional jurisprudence? I expect the game to invite me to try contemporary war criminals, or revise the role of the state in reacting to crime. This series has the opportunity to make radical claims about the role of courts, what constitutes a crime, and who the true criminals are in settled cases, even if only allegorically, but the legal setting is merely a backdrop. The series conforms more closely to the traditions of the Japanese teen character drama; in place of empirical data and legal frameworks, the player interacts mostly with spirit mediums and colossal breasts.

Even as a character drama, Ace Attorney is disappointing. Many of the series' characters are disturbing stereotypes. Manfred von Karma is a Social Darwinist; his daughter, Franziska, is tiresomely reminiscent of a thousand 'ball-busting feminist' stereotypes from other media. Dahlia Hawthorne even appears to be a straightforwardly evil human being. I can only interpret Jean Armstrong's presence in the third game as an attempt to encapsulate and condemn male homosexuality. The inclusion of such characters suggests an insulting flippancy on the part of the writers.

Yet there are other forces at work here. Some of the generalizations subvert social norms, and criticize parties in almost culturally relevant ways. Spark Bruschel is an insincere self-publicist constantly spouting catchy headlines, and a pertinent criticism of tabloid journalism. At times, the incompetence of the Los Angeles police force stops being slapstick and becomes inherent failure based on confused values and institutionalized corruption. Patriarchy and traditional family structures become frameworks of manipulation and scandal.

The series refines its mantra over time. Romantically, the first game declares that all parties work together in a court of law only to uncover the truth. The second eventually denounces the circumstantially Good in favour of the morally Right, with the protagonist deciding to argue the truth, even if it endangers his career, and a character's life. The third, somewhat hamfistedly, insists that defence attorneys believe in their clients on faith. In its understated finale, the fourth reconciles all of these messages.

It is not until Apollo Justice's denouement that the series plays its hand. The player spends the better half of the game building a case against a mastermind, only to arrive at an impasse without decisive evidence. In the previous three games, this situation would be resolved by re-examining some previously overlooked data, but in Apollo Justice, with every avenue explored, the player must make their case without concrete proof. For the first time, in a new, experimental system, the verdict is left to a jury. Outraged, the accused - an attorney himself - demands a showdown with the law. The player becomes a juror and makes a free, subjective decision, in order to demonstrate the game's message that such choices should come down to interpretation.

Phoenix Wright's ignorance of the law, first a gag, becomes intrinsic to his message. In Apollo Justice, Wright, stripped of his attorney's badge, is depicted as a vagabond. But it's not true. After all, he was never practicing law to begin with. Not really. The law, admits the series, is incidental. Wright, and by extension, the player, was in the courtroom to believe in the defendant.

Ultimately, it is Wright's conviction in the virtues of most people that makes the series interesting. Beneath the tired, decades-old Japanese caricatures, the frustratingly Onanistic logic, and the occasional disregard for the game world's own rules, the series has the stones to make a simple, political point: people are worth believing in. N