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hypothesis: asobaro is about falling in love (and it being a bad idea for all parties involved); asoryuu is about being in love (and it being a bad idea for all parties involved).
hello! this isn’t art, but I just wanted to share the timeline for tgaa I put together. some info could be inaccurate, so please lmk if there’s any errors.
[ID: Header showing an image from the game The Great Ace Attorney: Resolve — specifically Ryuunosuke’s daruma doll next to a picture of Kazuma, Ryuunosuke, Susato, Herlock, and Iris taken at the docks. Below the image is the title, “The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles Timeline. (Spoilers ahead. See end for notes).” End ID]
do you guys ever wonder if for the first couple day after yujin returned from Britain and got referred to as professor mikotoba he flinched at the title? do you think it took years for him to feel fully comfortable with it? do you think there were nights when he got back where he just looked at his daughter and started sobbing? do you think he sometimes felt guilty for wondering how Iris was doing, feeling as if he was betraying his own daughter for caring for another motherless child in any capacity? do you think sometimes he wished hed never left britain at all and other times he wished he never went to britain in the first place?
one thing that annoys me so much about the dgs localization is that susato calls asougi "kazuma-sama" but uses -san or no honorific for everyone else. when in fact the reason "kazuma-sama" hits so hard is that in the original japanese, susato calls everyone -sama (yes, including ryuu!). she constantly uses the most polite language possible, which generally means everyone older than her is [last name]-sama (ryuu, sherlock, gregson) and everyone her age or below is [first name]-sama (haori, iris, gina)
so one mystery that should linger in the back of the player's mind even in dgs 1 is: why does she call asougi by his first name?
thinking about susahao again. the thing about them is that it seems like a surface level ship at first, oh yeah they're childhood best friends and haori thinks susato crossdressing looks handsome, of course it's a popular background ship, but then it's like
like think about it from haori's perspective. you've always looked up to your best friend, who is so intelligent and reserved and kind, and she's going off to england for who knows how long but it's okay because she's your best friend and of course she'll write. just a little over a month before she leaves your mentor is murdered (and the killer gets off scot free, you have to see her face at your internship every day, always smiling and smiling and god how much you hate her), and you get transferred to work under your best friend's father in the same department, which - if there's one good thing to come out of all of this you suppose you can at least feel closer to your friend this way
except she doesn't write. and she doesn't write. and she doesn't write. and you can tell from her father's face that he knows why but he won't tell you, no one will tell you anything, but it's fine, you're nobody important anyway, you can wait. and then she comes back, and you run to the pier to meet her, but she's different somehow, holds herself even tighter than before like a single glance will break her, and you know there's something wrong even if she won't (can't) tell you anything. and you try to talk to her but she withdraws and withdraws and maybe you never meant anything to her in the first place, if this was all your friendship dissolved into
and then you are accused of murder. and you know it's not the time for such things but you've always been weak for a pretty face and your lawyer is so dashing and gallant! and wait, you mean-? is that you, su? and after that you can't think of her as ryuutarou anymore, you've never been any good at keeping secrets - you blurt out her real name at least twice in court - but you've also always worn your heart on your sleeve and you really can't help going red every time you look at your best friend, who looks so handsome, who you thought didn't even care anymore, but she got up at four in the morning to pretend to be an attorney and risk her entire career of being a judicial assistant for you -
and, oh. you're in love. maybe you always have been.
#THIS IS WHY IM SO INSANE OVER SUSAHAO AND HAORI IN GENERAL!!
#susato doesnt write. SHE DOESNT WRITE !!! AND YET HAORI STILL THINKS OF HER SO FONDLY
#shes so smitten because even after months of not hearing from her at all her first instinct is joy at realizing shes back and shes here
#shes here to defend *her*
#and susato is so polite to her even after the trial that haori straight up tells her to ask her to go to a milk bar together
#a lot of ppl think its haori fawning over ryutaro which it is !! but i think its also her missing susato so so much
(tags via @fernguard)
[points] you. you get it. im sorry it's taken me like a month to respond to this but you fucking get it
one of the bits that gets me the hardest from 2-1 is in fact this exchange:
Susato: Oh no! I can't take all the credit. It took courage to tell the truth in there. You did wonderfully, Rei. So I would have to say that the congratulations belong to you.
Rei: ......... Susato! Don't be so standoffish!
Susato: Sorry?
Rei: We're friends! Equals! And the trial's over. So no more of this formal, super humility nonsense! It's time to celebrate with swagger! To throw caution to the wind!
also here's the equivalent in the fan translation (image description right below it in body text)
[ID: Screenshot from a Great Ace Attorney playthrough. Haori smiles with her eyes creasing as she says, "We don't have to talk like stuffy old men. We can just talk how we want around each other!" End ID]
and it's just . aaaaaaaaaaaagh can you IMAGINE. your BEST FRIEND who just literally saved your life is still being so unbearably polite to you and it's kind of heartbreaking but also kind of adorable and you remind her that it's okay! the two of you have been friends since you were children! you can talk how you want around me, no more of this super humility nonsense! (you can tell me anything. what's wrong, su? what did they do to you? how come you look at me like im a stranger but got up at 4 a.m. to save me, i'm so happy you're okay, i'm so worried about you, i missed you so so so so much)
and all you can do is beam at her helplessly and say, come on, su, let's celebrate with swagger! i'm the great defense lawyer ryuutarou naruhodou, and i'm taking you out to a milk bar tomorrow!
one of the things im only now noticing about 2-3 is just how well it sets up for 2-4.
because. okay. 2-4 has a lot of big, dramatic moments. and these are powerful reveals, but they won't hit as hard if you're not invested: if you don't care about gregson and barok, then you're not going to care when bad things happen to them.
so 2-3 does its absolute best to make you care.
going into 2-4, the characters that are immediately going to have the biggest problems are, again, gregson and barok: you need to care that gregson dies, and you need to care that barok is arrested for it.
so, when you're investigating the exhibition stage, 2-3 reintroduces gina, and reintroduces her as gregson's apprentice. their relationship is antagonistic, but lighthearted: gregson clearly cares for her, at least enough to try and protect her, and to bring her to paris with him. and gina, for her part, looks markedly happier when you meet her again in 2-3- she has a dog and a brand new badge and she's having fun, because for once in her life, someone else is looking after her. gregson is looking after her.
and that way, when gregson dies, it matters- because even if you don't care, gina does.
gregson's death hurts, in part, because of gina's reaction. it's her grief that lets the player know what's been lost. and that grief gets its basis in 2-3, because 2-3 shows us that they care about each other- in establishing this relationship, 2-3 gives gina, and the player, something to lose when gregson dies.
and, speaking of giving people a relationship with another character to get you to care about them- then we have barok.
the first investigation phase of 2-3 begins by humanizing barok as hard as it possibly can. ryunosuke is allowed into his office for the first time, and- and least for me- whenever we examined something in there, the vibe of the subsequent interaction felt like nothing so much as "grumpy man dragged unwillingly into friendship." we're touching everything in his office, and he's clearly exasperated with us, but not enough to stop us from touching everything in his office. this is also, i think, the first example of ryunosuke and barok having any kind of relationship outside of the courtroom. we see ryunosuke's concern when he first finds out barok's been attacked, and if you examine the chessboard in his office, you can get a line about ryunosuke wanting to challenge him to a contest of shogi problems. so 2-3 starts by introducing us to a barok that is somebody outside of the prosecutor across the courtroom, that is something more than the terror of the reaper, and that'll matter later.
but most importantly, 2-3 gives barok a friend.
specifically, a friend that is silly. ridiculous, even. his character design and personality contrast starkly with barok's, and yet he's the one who tells us repeatedly that barok's really nice, actually- that barok was kind when albert knew him, and he doesn't know what happened to change him ten years ago but he still considers barok a friend.
and what's more, albert believes in him. when he's speaking to barok in the prison, you get this exchange:
Harebrayne: ......... Since I returned to England, I've heard lots of stories. Barok, are you really...?
Van Zieks: What?
Harebrayne: ......... Never mind. I know that you have my best interests at heart.
he's well aware that barok is known for essentially killing the people who prosecutes. and he almost asks about it! but he doesn't- he chooses to trust barok, instead.
ryunosuke is not even there for this interaction in the prison. the game makes a point of showing it to the player anyway. and i think it's because we need to know that at least one person is capable of trusting barok, that at least one person thinks barok is someone worth believing in.
because one case later, we're going to see barok in a prison cell, and he's going to tell us, "i'm not the reaper and i didn't do it." and we're going to have to believe him.
2-3 does a number of other things to lay the groundwork for 2-4: establishing the professor case, bringing kazuma back, all of that. but i highlight gregson and barok as examples because i think they focus on setting up emotional investment, as opposed to setting up plot elements. and maybe because of that, they stand on their own. gregson's relationship with gina and barok's relationship with albert have emotional weight, even without the context of anything that happens after. but those relationships also make what happens after matter more, because they give us a reason to care.
2-3 is not really a self-contained story, by any means, but it manages to be its own thing, with its own satisfying conclusion, while also serving the overarching plot. it's not perfect- by the end of the case, the professor mystery had so wholly overtaken the actual crime that i almost forgot harebrayne was the defendant. but i think 2-3 does a pretty good job, and i think that might be part of the reason why i like it.
(or it might just be the goths. this case has some really good witnesses, and i freely admit i may be biased.)
#ABSOLUTELY #not to mention it's the case where barok interrupts the reaper's potential plans and gets albert to safety himself #it's a good bit of insight we get into how barok views the reaper and him being branded as such #like okay before albert's trial he tells ryuu that he's fine to assume the title of the reaper if it keeps crime down #but 2-3 shows that maybe he doesn't actually think like that #after all barok gets albert to germany as soon as possible#he has to turn away his (basically) only friend and deal with the fact that he might not see him again #THEN later in the game he reveals just how much of a burden it has been #2-3 does a good job of setting up that facade more and subsequently tearing it down
yes! and it's another one of those moments where it builds the foundation for 2-4 and 2-5, because that's part of what barok goes through in those cases: he never wanted to be the reaper, and he doesn't like it, but he lets other people give him the moniker. knowing that means that when 2-4 and 2-5 start unraveling a lot of things related to the reaper, we're already aware that, hm, there might be some complicated emotions here. and since, later on, we're going to be playing with reputations and what they can disguise (hi klint), establishing in 2-3 that barok might not be as okay with his own reputation as one might assume gives you a lens for all the subsequent revelations
it's been very on my mind recently, so i wanna talk about the ways in which DGS (DGS1-3 specifically) is a direct hate letter to subversion of mainline AA and its tropes!! who knows how long i’ll ramble on for so. strap in, theoretical reader.
huge, HUGE warning for just absolutely bonkers amounts of spoilers; some for the original AA trilogy, and LOADS for DGS1-3 and preceding events in the DGS duology. if you have not played the games (specifically DGS1 up to case 1-3; no DGS2 spoilers here, don't worry) and think you might be even SLIGHTLY interested in playing them, this is my plea for you to play them instead of reading this. they’re good. they’re SO GOOD. i love the ace attorney games so much that i spent around 3500 words dissecting how one plot twist made my brain esplode into chunks, and how my experience with all the other AA games i’d played made it an even more effective twist. ace attorney is VERY GOOD, and if you have not played it and like visual novels/video games in general, you absolutely should.
to talk abt the ways in which DGS1-3 subverts mainline AA, you very much do have to talk about mainline. so, i guess i’ll crack on with that!!
PART 1: your mother’s ace attorney game
1a: trust
in the original trilogy (which will be the main AA games i’ll talk about), there is an assumed level of moral goodness; you are playing as the Good Guy, and you Will Catch The Bad Guy. furthermore, there is an assumption that the game can be trusted to be telling you the truth. when you are asked to defend someone in AA, you do so in the understanding that they are innocent. while this is definitely subverted within mainline itself, it isn’t to a truly extreme degree.
for example, Lana may not be guilty of the murder she’s accused of, but she is an accomplice and is also corrupt; even so, her guilt feels less like a betrayal because Lana herself tells you that she doesn’t want you defending her, and freely admits to being guilty from the start. the game telegraphs very clearly from the beginning that Lana is not all what she seems, and may actually have some level of guilt that you need to be aware of—though, the game offsets this by already having taught you to assume that you are defending an ultimately good person. Lana may not be innocent, but she is trying to protect her sister, and most importantly not a murderer.
as another example, Matt Engarde is one of the COOLEST FUCKING VILLAINS EVER but also is, as in Lana’s case, telegraphed to be not all what he seems, albeit to somewhat of a lesser extent. it’s strange that you are being asked to defend him by someone who kidnapped Maya; it’s strange that he has psyche locks. the twist that he has been pulling the strings is still hard-hitting and effective because he is not innocent in the slightest, but you trust the game to let you know that something is going on.
while these characters are 100% subversions of the ‘always innocent’ narrative, i would argue that the game itself maintains its level of trustworthiness by actively showing you that hey, maybe these people aren’t all sunshine and roses. this trust is maintained throughout the series, because while this game may love to do grand reveals, these are generally confined to the ways in which your defendant is innocent. furthermore, in the case that a defendant isn't innocent (looks directly at Engarde), then they're found guilty. their innocence in itself is rarely questioned. to further emphasise this assumption of trust, one of Phoenix Wright’s key character traits is his unwavering faith in his client. this, again, communicates to the player that this is the view they should take as well. you trust Phoenix’s judgement, and also trust his morals. you trust the character to be right in the end, the game not to fuck with you too much, and the game to also… be the game that it's always been.
1b: turnabout
by golly, does ace attorney love its turnabouts (i say, as though that’s not the fucking point). ace attorney as a game is built on overcoming stacked odds, as this is probably one of the easier ways to build tension in a game series about being a criminal defence lawyer. what else are you meant to do, have a corrupt establishment actively trying to throw obstacles in your path, government secrets and conspicuously guilty clients?? [canned laughter plays through cracked speakers in underground bunker]
but we’ll get to that later. in the mainline ace attorney games, the classic case layout is essentially that it looks like there is No Way that your client could be innocent/be found innocent, but given that you already know that they’re innocent because that’s the fucking game, you push onward and eventually are rewarded by Mr Phoenix Wright (and his assorted pals, in later games) revealing some absolutely bonkers off the wall twist that shows that your client is innocent, and furthermore, someone else is guilty. the turnabout really relies on your pre-existing trust in the client, because otherwise you’d just give up.
given this trend, the game programs you to see insurmountable odds and know, somewhere in the back of your mind, that it’s all going to shake out in your favour, and in the favour of your client. you are used to spotting the weirdo ace attorney villain, looking through your evidence roster religiously, questioning witnesses until they slip up or snap; the turnabout is coming, and you’re the one driving it forward. there isn’t really room for doubt, because this is the way that the game goes.
1c: resolution
the ace attorney games are, at the end of the day, an interactive story. you are driving the events of a narrative, which has a beginning, middle and end. stories may not always have neat endings, but they very often do, especially in the case of ace attorney.
take farewell my turnabout (AA2-4), for example. Matt Engarde is a twist villain who throws Phoenix’s and by extension your sense of morality into question, as you suddenly see the problems that can be thrown up by blindly trusting in your client. Phoenix suddenly has to choose between saving someone important to him, or choosing this ideal of ‘justice’ that he pursues. this is a genuine and hard hitting question, and in its own way absolutely does play on the tropes of the past two games. the resolution, however, is relatively neat. Phoenix chooses justice, and through justice can save the people he cares about anyway; this is thematically appropriate, and also a good resolution to a game. it’s the final case!! you can’t just kill Maya. that would be awful!! you have to resolve the case (and the game) in a satisfying way, or… i dunno, but you have to. that’s the game.
we expect very specific things from certain types of media. ace attorney, being a game aimed at kids and teenagers, can and does have very complex themes, narratives and characters—but it always, ALWAYS resolves in a way that is mostly favourable to the characters that you are rooting for. it’s natural to expect this from these games, because that is, to some degree, the space they occupy in our understanding of the level of narrative in a game of this genre.
PART 2: decidedly NOT your mother’s ace attorney game
2a: setup
and now, we come to DGS1-3. as you may know from the case name, this is the third case of the first game in the duology; it is also the middle case of the game. given that 1-1 is the tutorial, and 1-2 is… weird, 1-3 feels both very early in the game, and also serves as a tutorial in its own right; as your first introduction to the jury system and summation examination mechanics. it’s cool!! i like it :>. but anyways, case 1-3 does act as something of a tutorial, and follows the same classic AA tutorial case pattern of thrusting you into an unfamiliar situation and gently (or sometimes not so gently) nudging you through learning the mechanics; therefore, as you’re trying to learn a new system, you might be concentrating more on the new mechanics than the minutiae of the case. furthermore, as this is a tutorial and also literally the third case of a five case first game in a duology, you trust the game to be nice, not fuck you over, and tell you what’s going on.
so, given its position in the chronology of the game, you trust this case to be normal-ish - also, this is case 3. and, as every ace attorney fan knows, case 3 syndrome is real, severe, and inescapable.
2b: case 3 syndrome
case 3 is always shit.
okay, so that may be hyperbole. it is, however, often true. case 3 isn’t always terrible, but it never really tends to be amazing. save for a few exceptions, i don’t often see ace attorney fans name any game’s third case as their favourite. some are openly hated (sorry, recipe and big top…) and some are just... kind of full of busywork? the faults of previous case 3s isn’t really what i’m driving at here, though; i mainly want to highlight the slight assumption that some fans will have that case 3 isn’t gonna be blowing their mind any time soon.
2c: subversion
now, we’re really getting into the MEAT of 1-3 now. i lost track of the actual structure of this incoherent ramble about twenty minutes ago, so i’m just going to run through the way that this case attempts to murder you in cold blood, with the subversion of key components as outlined in part 1.
2ci: betrayal of trust
the game starts fucking with you from pretty much minute one of 1-3. you arrive in britain, talk to the Lord Chief Justice who is also a really weird and suspicious guy, and get told to successfully defend someone you literally haven’t ever heard of in your life. you find out that oh, the weird cases of this game have not stopped; there will be no investigation section for this one. you’re going straight into the trial, with only the briefest interaction with the defendant, who also seems… kind of weird and suspicious. but whatever, he’s the defendant; the game has thrown much more suspicious people at you in the past, and they’ve turned out to be innocent. so you go in, start playing, start learning the new mechanics, and importantly: you get to access some evidence.
your AA evidence bank, in general, is great. it’s got cool stuff to spin around and examine, legitimately useful clues, and it doesn’t lie to you like those shithead witnesses do. in 1-3, however, the eagle-eyed player might notice that something isn’t quite right with one piece of evidence—the omnibus seems to change between trial segments.
personally, when i saw the apparent new evidence in the omnibus, i dismissed it; i assumed that i had missed something, because they wouldn’t have evidence changing mid-trial. that wouldn’t be fair. also, it would have some pretty uncomfortable implications, which an ace attorney would definitely not want to go into. so, i kept on trucking. friends that i’ve talked to thought similar things; although they may not have been quite as trusting as me, they thought that despite how shady the defendant and the evidence looked, it wouldn’t be like, that bad. it would resolve well. it was case 3, after all!! you’ve barely started the game at that point. (again, though it’s halfway through game 1 it does feel pretty early game, especially given that the duology should be experienced together; you aren’t really that far in at all. also, it’s your first case in britain!!)
your trust in this case, however, tends to take a steep nosedive as you approach the end. one of the most brilliant things about DGS1-3 is the pervasive, creeping sense of dread that you start to feel as things begin not adding up.
2cii: turnabout fake-out
so, things aren’t adding up. your client looks guilty as hell, and weird things are happening with the omnibus. “wait,” you start to think, “what’s going on?”
and then suddenly, it comes to you: this is the turnabout!
see, a really cool new dynamic introduced in DGS is the summation examination; the jury has ruled guilty, but you get to press the individual jurors on their reasoning and pit them against each other when they seem to have conflicting ideas. the end result of this will be certain jurors changing their verdict to innocent, buying you more time to press witnesses and uncover new evidence. this essentially pushes the concept of the turnabout to its absolute extreme: you, as Ryuunosuke, manage to move the situation from one in which you are absolutely fucked, to one where you’ve both saved your client (for the time being) and uncovered some new leads to follow up with in your next cross examinations.
so, the turnabout: your client, Magnus McGilded, looks guilty. the prosecution, who seems to have some specific hatred for him, has openly stated that McGilded is definitely guilty. he has also put forward evidence that McGilded is trying to buy public opinion by donating money to the city to open parks, but is, as a matter of fact, a literal loan shark. things aren’t looking great for our buddy. but when the jury rules guilty, you find out about and trigger a summation examination, because you can’t just let him go to jail.
now, stepping back for a second: beyond the game’s pre-established understanding that the client is innocent, the stakes are a little higher for this case. given that Ryuunosuke isn’t actually meant to be the one practising law in the UK (his boy best friend Kazuma was the assigned lawyer, but died on the way over), he has been given an ultimatum: defend McGilded in court and successfully get him a not guilty verdict, or go back to japan and, implicitly, leave Kazuma’s dream unfulfilled. therefore, within the fiction of the game itself Ryuunosuke absolutely will not let this case end in a guilty verdict; anyways, as previously discussed, it would just be SO mean if the game made you get an innocent verdict for a guilty client as a condition for the narrative to continue.
so, back to the turnabout. the prosecution is easy enough to write off; it’s basically a rule that the prosecution in an AA game is unjustifiably spiteful and hates you specifically, and by extension your client. in this case, while van Zieks hates Ryuunosuke for racism reasons, he hates McGilded in a way that seems entirely separate from any input from you. again, though, he’s an AA prosecutor. these things happen.
furthermore, McGilded’s apparent guilt is the turnabout. the twist in this case is obviously that McGilded can be a shitty person and still be innocent of murder. so you fight your way through two summation examinations, find evidence you hadn’t noticed before, find an entirely new and heretofore entirely unknown witness; she seems to have proof that McGilded is innocent. it’s all going well, until it super duper isn’t.
2ciii: resolution, and the lack thereof
as i mentioned in 2ci, the beauty of this case is the way in which the paranoia sets in. all of this stuff is quietly happening around you; but while you may have been conditioned into a certain way of thinking by the previous games, your ability to think critically hasn’t been completely shut off. you are noticing the irregularities and lies the game keeps openly showing you, and coming to the realisation that you maybe really should be paying attention to them.
as a personal aside, i streamed this game to some friends; towards the back end of this case, i noticeably got a lot quieter. i remember that at that point i was trying desperately to cram all of the pieces that the game was giving me into a properly ace attorney shaped mould. the game wouldn’t do this to me. it wouldn’t give me a guilty client and let them walk free by my own intervention.
at the point that you’ve overcome your internal biases and are somewhat convinced that McGilded is guilty, the game springs its final trap. you and Ryuunosuke try to overturn the innocent verdict that you’ve gotten for the defendant—Ryuunosuke builds up to the final turnabout, and then: nothing.
you’ve managed to throw reasonable doubt onto the assertion that McGilded is guilty, so he will walk free. the game tells you this succinctly and in no uncertain terms, gives him the not guilty verdict, and the fireworks go off. meanwhile you, the player, sit there feeling slightly ill. the game cannot have just done that to you.
you’ve… succeeded? you have also failed. the game is set up to be about bringing justice to murderers, and you probably just helped a murderer go free. you also fulfilled the conditions that will allow Ryuunosuke to actually try to help the wrongly accused. it’s a whole lot to think about!!
now, given that this is an unstructured mess already, let’s do a thought experiment. you want to make a game about lawyers. you’ve already made several games about lawyers, and you need this next one to feel fresh and interesting. given that the game is about lawyers—a nominally uninteresting topic for a video game—you need to have built in systems to artificially raise the stakes, and you have already done this. i think the point that i’m driving at here is that Takumi Shu could not have executed the final section of DGS1-3 so flawlessly without the context of the previous ace attorney games behind him, but he also did so with near pinpoint precision. he didn’t need to artificially raise the stakes anymore; he trusts the player to handle more complex, real-world topics than his last games tackled. so he just lays it all on the table: this game is about government secrets and human greed, but also the force of idealism and how it can be corrupted into something far more sinister with frightening ease. i think it’s fair to say that DGS1-3 is where this narrative hits the player like a large boulder in an indiana jones temple, even if it’s not quite apparent exactly how at this point.
we’re not done with the case!! the game now really wants to rub in your face how fucking guilty McGilded seems—seems, because we haven’t actually gotten any solid proof that he’s guilty yet. he does appear to have been tampering with evidence mid-trial, though; after the verdict, he thanks Ryuunosuke and tells him that he’s about to go and oversee the inspection of the omnibus for tampering. which, thanks game! i know he’s guilty and i really did a fucky wucky on this one!! you say goodbye and finish the case, still feeling vaguely unwell.
you almost finish the case, anyway.
2d: the prestige
there’s a cutscene after DGS1-3. the cutscenes in DGS are really fun!! i like them. usually. you had a fully animated cutscene directly before the start of DGS1-3, so you’re not super surprised to see one at the end as well.
it starts in chaos. the lighting is red and orange, and the camera is focusing on the shadows of policemen cast across the ceiling. you pan down to see that the godforsaken omnibus is on fire. my immediate thought was that that little fucker McGilded had destroyed the evidence of his forgery by burning the entire damn thing, so, fuck me even more i guess. thanks, game.
Gregson comes on, and says that no one should have been allowed in before they started investigating, confirming our suspicions. except then a thud comes from inside the omnibus, because there is someone in there. and we both know who it is. all that’s left of the cutscene are some fun (said through tears and gritted teeth) reaction shots of the judge and van Zieks, who looks very ominous. weird! we file that one away for later, but ignoring that, let’s run through this again.
the game has just burned someone alive in front of the player, someone who you suspect (and is later confirmed) to be McGilded, the defendant. and honestly? my initial reaction was to be relieved, because McGilded was probably guilty. an ace attorney game made me feel relieved that my client died. like, all pretence at analysis aside, sincerely, what the fuck.
i’m not going to go into McGilded’s actual guilt here, or anything beyond 1-3; though The Themes only get built upon from this point. but the point here is that ace attorney, a game about defending your wrongly accused client from going to jail/receiving capital punishment, gives you a guilty client who you allow to walk free, and then kills them ONSCREEN. that’s not the game!! the game can’t fucking do this to you!!! it’s such a BRILLIANT subversion of the entire narrative of ace attorney up to this point, and it’s so fantastic in acting as a tutorial not only for new mechanics, but for the new norm in this game—none of the cases are going to be truly cut-and-dry. 1-1 and 1-2 are similarly uncomfortable in their implications, but i really think that 1-3 is the point where most players sit up and go “ah. fuck.” it is so deeply brilliant at communicating to the player that this isn’t any ace attorney game they’ve ever played before, while also destroying them emotionally. thanks, Mr Takumi!!
CONCLUSION: i will never be the same again
i honestly don’t really know how to conclude this collection of insane and rambling thoughts, and i’m probably going to read through and take another stab at organising this in a way that is even halfway coherent—but. this case is what really made me fall in love with DGS in a way that few other games have really captured me. it wants to talk about real life, real history, real problems; it really trusts you to understand this, and it pays off in a huge way.
i joked at the beginning that DGS is a hate letter to mainline AA, but i think it’s also something of a love letter to those games and all the people who’ve played them, especially those who’ve stuck with the series for years (i am not one of those people, but i congratulate them for their tenacity. i cannot imagine having to wait so long to play the localised version of DGS). it’s truly a moment where the game uses your own love for the series against you, but to further a new and incredible story that you’re just as likely to fall in love with—and honestly, i think that’s just really special.
one of the things im only now noticing about 2-3 is just how well it sets up for 2-4.
because. okay. 2-4 has a lot of big, dramatic moments. and these are powerful reveals, but they won't hit as hard if you're not invested: if you don't care about gregson and barok, then you're not going to care when bad things happen to them.
so 2-3 does its absolute best to make you care.
going into 2-4, the characters that are immediately going to have the biggest problems are, again, gregson and barok: you need to care that gregson dies, and you need to care that barok is arrested for it.
so, when you're investigating the exhibition stage, 2-3 reintroduces gina, and reintroduces her as gregson's apprentice. their relationship is antagonistic, but lighthearted: gregson clearly cares for her, at least enough to try and protect her, and to bring her to paris with him. and gina, for her part, looks markedly happier when you meet her again in 2-3- she has a dog and a brand new badge and she's having fun, because for once in her life, someone else is looking after her. gregson is looking after her.
and that way, when gregson dies, it matters- because even if you don't care, gina does.
gregson's death hurts, in part, because of gina's reaction. it's her grief that lets the player know what's been lost. and that grief gets its basis in 2-3, because 2-3 shows us that they care about each other- in establishing this relationship, 2-3 gives gina, and the player, something to lose when gregson dies.
and, speaking of giving people a relationship with another character to get you to care about them- then we have barok.
the first investigation phase of 2-3 begins by humanizing barok as hard as it possibly can. ryunosuke is allowed into his office for the first time, and- and least for me- whenever we examined something in there, the vibe of the subsequent interaction felt like nothing so much as "grumpy man dragged unwillingly into friendship." we're touching everything in his office, and he's clearly exasperated with us, but not enough to stop us from touching everything in his office. this is also, i think, the first example of ryunosuke and barok having any kind of relationship outside of the courtroom. we see ryunosuke's concern when he first finds out barok's been attacked, and if you examine the chessboard in his office, you can get a line about ryunosuke wanting to challenge him to a contest of shogi problems. so 2-3 starts by introducing us to a barok that is somebody outside of the prosecutor across the courtroom, that is something more than the terror of the reaper, and that'll matter later.
but most importantly, 2-3 gives barok a friend.
specifically, a friend that is silly. ridiculous, even. his character design and personality contrast starkly with barok's, and yet he's the one who tells us repeatedly that barok's really nice, actually- that barok was kind when albert knew him, and he doesn't know what happened to change him ten years ago but he still considers barok a friend.
and what's more, albert believes in him. when he's speaking to barok in the prison, you get this exchange:
Harebrayne: ......... Since I returned to England, I've heard lots of stories. Barok, are you really...?
Van Zieks: What?
Harebrayne: ......... Never mind. I know that you have my best interests at heart.
he's well aware that barok is known for essentially killing the people who prosecutes. and he almost asks about it! but he doesn't- he chooses to trust barok, instead.
ryunosuke is not even there for this interaction in the prison. the game makes a point of showing it to the player anyway. and i think it's because we need to know that at least one person is capable of trusting barok, that at least one person thinks barok is someone worth believing in.
because one case later, we're going to see barok in a prison cell, and he's going to tell us, "i'm not the reaper and i didn't do it." and we're going to have to believe him.
2-3 does a number of other things to lay the groundwork for 2-4: establishing the professor case, bringing kazuma back, all of that. but i highlight gregson and barok as examples because i think they focus on setting up emotional investment, as opposed to setting up plot elements. and maybe because of that, they stand on their own. gregson's relationship with gina and barok's relationship with albert have emotional weight, even without the context of anything that happens after. but those relationships also make what happens after matter more, because they give us a reason to care.
2-3 is not really a self-contained story, by any means, but it manages to be its own thing, with its own satisfying conclusion, while also serving the overarching plot. it's not perfect- by the end of the case, the professor mystery had so wholly overtaken the actual crime that i almost forgot harebrayne was the defendant. but i think 2-3 does a pretty good job, and i think that might be part of the reason why i like it.
(or it might just be the goths. this case has some really good witnesses, and i freely admit i may be biased.)
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