Everything I draw ends up wearing a bow-tie

okay so someone dear to me remembered I’d promised to do an excessive readmore post about what I stg I THOUGHT the ending of aa5 was going to be and honestly this cold is murdering me so I might as well

you’ve been warned this will get TL:DR as shit and is jam-packed with AA:DD spoilers not that you’d understand half of it without having played through the ending buT ANYWAY

lots of text and SPOILERS AHOY (but jsyk it doesn’t impact on the alt ending comic I’m working on because that uses a different line of thought, so… no spoilers for that-?)

OKAY SO IN A NUTSHELL

I THOUGHT THE REAL PHANTOM WAS GOING TO BE KRISTOPH GAVIN which I know was probably one of the several red herrings they wanted us to plump for

BUT JUST

HEAR ME OUT OKAY

the moment we heard about someone getting stabbed in the back of the hand seven years ago anyone who had played Apollo Justice would be thinking the same thing because hey ho who else do we know with a scar on the back of that exact same hand hm yeah THAT GUY

the reintroduction of the black psyche locks also made me hope that they were finally going to explain Kristoph’s locks somehow because man that shit was never fully explained come on

also Klavier showing up in the highschool case seemed kind of a throw-away appearance in the overall scheme of the game? I’m all for a nice cameo, but I was expecting them to tie it in by reintroducing his brother and giving them more relevance to the plot, although I did begin to think it was a bit elitist that they hadn’t mentioned Kristoph when it got to the final case when the game had been pretty great at spoon-feeding people who were new to the series so far (probably the first time I suspected I was completely wrong which let’s face it is not uncommon)

while I was happy the game had a lot of focus on Athena, what with it being her debut game, the friendship between Apollo and Athena was clearly something the game was trying to explore and test to the extremes- as it was, out of all three attorneys Apollo felt the most left out, despite the fact that it was his best friend who was the murder victim in the last case (which actually made it feel like a cheap shot instead of the emotional anchor-point it could have been but hey maybe that’s the cynic in me)

if Kristoph had been brought back into the picture it would have helped to involve Apollo in the climax of the game as a character with experience and knowledge, rather than a tragicomical extra who was the victim of a predictable plot twist- not to mention having both Athena and Apollo be united against a deeply personal antagonist (who already had an established history and personality) would have made the bonds between them that more solid, and would have made the ‘reforging’ of their friendship after the swaying of doubt far more intense

'but Kristoph is still in prison!’ I hear you cry- but that was precisely what I was hoping for the most; Kristoph running the show from within prison and using Bobby as a puppet to exact his means

the games that have come before have all been pretty excellent commentaries on various issues with the legal system, and wouldn’t it have been a perfect opportunity to discuss how people with a lot of influence can still affect and manipulate the world even from inside prison? especially if they are at all involved in politics, which would have played into the distinctly suspicious behaviour of the government’s standing in and reaction to the HAT-1 and 2 cases

(I’m just saying it would probably have been a much more poignant message than HEY EVEN CUTE DETECTIVES CAN BE DECEPTIVE EVIL SOULLESS MONSTERS WHO IT IS OKAY TO PRESSURE INTO A MENTAL BREAKDOWN IN ORDER TO HAVE THEM REVEAL THEIR REAL FACE AND THEREFORE BE SHOT BY AN ANONYMOUS ASSASSIN THAT YOU ARE 99% CERTAIN IS PRESENT BECAUSE CLEARLY HAVING NO OR LIMITED ACCESS TO EMOTIONS MEANS YOU AREN’T A REAL HUMAN BEING SO WE DON’T HAVE TO FEEL BAD ABOUT THE POTENTIAL FOR A VERY LITERAL AND IMMEDIATE DEATH SENTENCE BEING CARRIED OUT DUE TO OUR OWN NEGLECT AND SELECTIVE MORALITY but hey don’t forget that trusting people is good and you’re inhuman for not being able to to do that too! 8D

'a win for analytical psychology’ my ass

… sorry got a bit carried away but let’s be honest here the message of this game fell off a cliff)

anyway

another reason I was dearly hoping for Kristoph being behind the larger scheme of things was that it would have completely tied all of the cases we’d seen together in a nice shiny conceptual topic parcel; we had two major themes throughout this game, that of masks - aka not seeing people as they are/people being hidden or disguised, and friendship being tested - which really is an extension of the first theme in the sense of not submitting to false impressions and believing in your friends, which is also strongly reinforced throughout the game with Phoenix’s own creed of believing in the client to the bitter end against all odds

WHICH LEADS ME TO MY SECOND PROBLEM- the player being punished for believing in Bobby Fulbright

we’re given every reason to love and trust Bobby Fulbright- which can be supposed to have made us feel even more betrayed and angry when he was revealed to be the Phantom, and therefore feel more gratified when we took the Phantom down… but I didn’t feel anything but guilt, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who actually just felt like they almost drove to insanity/killed the one person who clearly exhibited a genuine need for psychological analysis and therapy

for me, the ending of the game was not cathartic or victorious at all, but felt like a bad case of emotional whiplash with a slew of unresolved plot-holes along the way, which all amounted to a sense of numb disappointment; it also left me feeling confused as to whether the message they were trying to get across was about trust and justice being fickle and subjective, or if they even had one in mind at all (no wait please stay I loved the game really I did)

we’re also given more than enough reason to trust in Bobby to the end; too much, in fact, for the convention of a double agenda- he goes above and beyond the need to play out the part of a 'nice guy’; he helps out both sides of every case in order to get the right verdict, and see that true justice is served, even when it requires him to 'slip up’, which we have to remember carries the risk of demotion and possibly being taken off Simon’s guard watch (which would completely destroy his personal mission to retrieve the psyche profile)

in the DLC he goes out of his way to make sure a girl with a heart condition gets her medicine whilst completely maintaining her confidentiality, and even in the cases of the bombings he gives prior warning to the space centre on both occasions, which is completely unnecessary and only made his job more difficult from a purely logical standpoint- we are never fully told how Ted Tonate knew that the bomb was about to blow up in the courthouse either, being contained inside the stuffed toy; it is not inconceivable that the Phantom let Ted see him (or, at least, someone’s hand) press the button on the remote- whatever the case, the Phantom exhibited a distinct reluctance to kill outside of strict necessity on several occasions, and we were encouraged to believe that Bobby was a compassionate and altruistic person on all levels

there is no set up for what is to come aside from a few superficial, almost forth-wall jokes, such as Fulbright being accused of being a 'ghost’ in the second case, so when the truth comes out it is not a satisfying revelation that makes sense of a hundred hidden suggestions (which would have been great, and part of me still loves the idea of Bobby being a highly efficient spy the whole time), but a momentary shock; one that is never completely explained or foreshadowed, and thus leaves us feeling dazed and betrayed- having a lovable character turn out to be the villain is not the problem, it is the way that this trope was structured and played out that is the problem

there is also the brain-bending idea that the psyche profile could ever be considered viable in a court of law, or ever pose a threat to the Phantom’s identity; the voice sample is confessed to have been of poor quality, and even the principle of it being an unusual psychological make-up falls flat on its face when you consider that it cannot ever be proven that there are no two people with the same psyche profile, and while I’m aware that ace attorney is a jokey series and this device was clearly just meant to be a MacGuffin of sorts it is LITERALLY THE MOST RIDICULOUSLY UNCONVINCING PIECE OF TRIPEsorry, sorry I’ll go and lie down for a second

okay, returning to the idea that Kristoph could have been the Big Bad-

when the game presented the idea that Bobby was not a spy, but an undercover agent, I was delighted; what a brilliant idea for a Phoenix Wright game to have Phoenix Wright be… wrong! unfortunately this spark of brilliance was doused all but immediately, but the potential of it was enormous

we had only the very barest evidence that Bobby was the guilty party at that point, save for having lowered the ladder and manipulated the finger print data (and I was already plugging for him to have been framed or manipulated by Kristoph), to have used the idea that we had fallen for another trap and accused the wrong person would have been like having the game stopping the player from becoming that which we have always sought to avoid; a snowballing force of vengeful, baseless supposition that just wants to find someone to take the blame

and what a beautiful way to give players a second to sit back and remember why we love Phoenix Wright; the quirky, courageous lawyer, who is humble and wise enough to admit his mistakes and turn his way of thinking around, all in the pursuit of absolute justice and truth

it would have been simply glorious, too, to have Bobby defy his 'puppet-master’, in spite of the threat of whatever forces Kristoph was using to manipulate him and the higher echelons of the police- recall that, when Bobby’s psyche locks appeared, he was wondering why the police had covered up the bombings, and 'who’s justice was most just’; if we can believe anything in these scenarios it is that the psyche locks cannot be made up or have the reason for their existence altered, so he must have been genuinely wondering why the cover up had happened at all

if Kristoph/someone else had had influence over someone high up in the police department, or even a governmental official, it would have explained Bobby’s confusion about the actions of the police, and the questioning of who’s justice was the most just - were the police being just? or should he abandon them, and give the lawyers the benefit of the doubt; to trust them to deliver true justice and save both Simon and Athena, even at the expense of his own good name (there is also a point where if you click the profile of Bobby it says he 'makes you wonder about what justice is really all about’, and damnit, wouldn’t that have been lovely if it had been followed through)

the game had poured so much effort into making us love Bobby that redemption would have been the most wonderful and bounteous reward for the player; we had already had the great shock tactic of revealing him to be the one to have lowered the escape ladder, and therefore a possible candidate for being The Phantom; that wouldn’t have been lost, but as it was everything after that twist was less impressive

to have that idea turned on its head, and be rewarded for trusting in Bobby (or, maybe even better still, feel guilt for having ever doubted him) we would have felt as if we had earned something- that we had remembered what being a defense attorney really means, and what a fair and impartial trial should be

our belief in a character that had demonstrated nothing but good traits throughout the story could have been rewarded and used to cement the core principle of the game series, but instead we had it thrown in our face, which would have been fine in a scenario where the game openly led us to question everyone and concluded that trusting people too easily means being hurt, but the message throughout the whole game had been saying we need to trust in each other, and even tried to round off the final act with the same message- it was too jarring, and, as a leading narrative for the player, completely unsatisfying and unfair

it would also have been a golden opportunity to have Simon demonstrate the character traits that drove him to protect Athena for seven years at the risk of his own life; Simon clearly has an enormous capacity for protection and trust, and having him truly side with the detective who had been loyal to him and tried to redeem him when everyone else was afraid, would have been a greatly moving scene- to have a trusted character turn out to be a spy is a good plot twist, but to have the prosecution defend? to have the cynical and dismissive Prosecutor Blackquill stand up for his colleague against the claims of the famous Phoenix Wright? against the player? now that would have been a great plot twist

as it was, we had Simon 'pretend’ to believe in Bobby in order to trick him, which did nothing but cheapen his integrity and, frankly, brought into question the validity of any loyalty demonstrated throughout the game- again, see the excessive paragraph about leading narrative

on a side note, when you consider the last two cases, the fact that the Phantom did anything at all to link the HAT-1 case to the HAT-2 case made absolutely no sense; it only suggested that it was the same person who committed both crimes, and who, therefore, could not possibly have committed them? the person who had been wrongly convicted of the first- Simon Blackquill

if the Phantom had not acted in the way he had, and made it look as if the two HAT cases were not committed by the same person, Simon would have been executed, and none of the old case details would have been discussed; the only advantage to linking the two cases was proving Blackquill had been innocent the whole time- on the other hand, if Bobby had been acting on the part of Kristoph, he would have had very good reason to link the two crimes in a desperate attempt to save his friend from being wrongly executed for a crime he had needlessly taken the blame for; it would have been an act of subterfuge against the person who was manipulating him, and, without explicitly drawing attention to what he was doing, would have given Phoenix the clues he needed to solve the case

similarly there was a distinct sense of laziness to having the Phantom simply be 'evil’ because he was emotionless (“I am nothing but an endless abyss” I mean come on what is this a study in Nietzsche), as it effectively removed all potential for the Phantom having any personality and motive, and while you can say the motive was for him to survive- what would be his motive to survive? without a personality, there would be no real appeal to living or even to monetary gain- and with the identity crisis at the climax it didn’t feel so much that we were succeeding in breaking down someone who deserved it, like with other ace attorney 'bad guys’, but felt as if we were witnessing and provoking the mental break down of someone who could have been saved- and not just someone we hated, but someone that we had loved and trusted throughout the entire game

we started with Bobby being one of the most prominent and lovable personalities, only for him to become utterly inconsistent, which impacted not just on him but on all of the characters, who seemed to be entirely bent on having him reveal his identity while full well knowing he was at risk of being assassinated for it; we became nothing more than an angry mob, and worse than that, the characters we loved who had always been above that- Phoenix, Edgeworth, Apollo, Athena, Simon, even the Judge- not a single one of them stepped in to be the voice of reason. Dual destinies had some shining moments, but it is the only ace attorney game that I feel I could not win, simply because I wasn’t given the option to.

but hey that’s just my opinion and please feel free to completely ignore it I just felt like the game deserved better and I am still cheesed about it because I loved the game?????

yeah idk either sorry I TOLD YOU IT WAS GOING TO BE LONG