For the past four months, I’ve been playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney on my iPhone, ever since Russell convinced me to check out its conversation and interrogation system. I haven’t finished (or really even started) the fifth “bonus” case, but I’ve played enough to babble about it for a bit.
If it looks like a game and acts like a game…. Let me be clear up front: I’m not entirely sure that Phoenix Wright is a game. As I played it, I discovered that it was part of a genre of visual novels, which I had previously been unaware of. Through the course of play, it’s pretty clear that it’s hard to deviate from the pre-existing storyline, and most of the choices aren’t really choices aren’t really choices at all.
And yet.
In the courtroom scenes, you have the chance to make five mistakes before the case is thrown out of court. At a basic level, this means that your choices do have consequences, and it is possible to fail (even if the odds are, in all honestly, pretty damned low). Outside of the courtroom, you’re really just pushing things in the right order to get enough evidence to get to the next courtroom scene, but once you’re in the courtroom, you have to be careful how you proceed. So it’s half a game, and the half that is a game is pretty easy.
But this opens up some interesting questions: if a game is, say, half cutscenes (I’m looking at you, Final Fantasy XIII) and half gameplay, isn’t that the same question? Why is Ace Attorney a visual novel and Final Fantasy XIII a game? Is it the percentage of time that you can interact – if so, Attorney has more actual interactivity, I think. Is it how much your decisions matter – in that case, FFXIII certainly has a lot more smaller decisions, but Attorney is less forgiving of errors when you have a decision that matters. I could probably spend an entire post just deconstructing both games and sorting out how much “game” is in each, but the more immediate take-away that I have is that Ace Attorney feels like a game, even if it’s not clear whether its a game or not.
Rewards are awesome, even if they’re just flavor. Like many Japanese games, Ace Attorney is over the top. Without going into too many spoilers, the game is a courtroom drama that shamelessly mixes in supernatural elements and wildly campy characters. Everything is incredibly melodramatic, right down to the overblown “OBJECTION!” that Phoenix shouts out for even the most minor presentation of evidence.
And yet, every time I know I have the right piece of evidence against the right piece of testimony, I feel a little thrill when I hear “OBJECTION!” It’s a little “ha!” of victory to me, and just when I think I’m getting tired of hearing it, the game trots it out at just the right moment. The wildly exaggerated looks of shock and defeat on the witnesses’ faces also makes me smile, and keep me playing. Both elements reward my play. They aren’t +1 swords or more cash to put into my virtual pocket, but in some ways I treasure these rewards more. I feel like the game is telling me “hey, you figured this thing out, so here’s something awesome just for you.”
Then again, I like mysteries, and really Ace Attorney is just an elaborate murder mystery, so it could be that I’m wired to like these rewards more.
Stereotypes can have depth. Once you accept the strange logic of Ace Attorney (like the fact that every case ever has to be resolved in three days), many of the characters are actually quite stereotypical: the aloof prosecuting attorney, the spunky kid sister, the dim homicide detective. But as you spend time with each of these characters, they start to grow on you, even if they don’t get any less stereotypical. They express their concerns, hopes, and interests, and at some point you look past the fact that the detective’s name is “Gumshoe” and start caring a little about who he is. The writing is surprisingly good, even if it’s not a collection of wild turns and ground-breaking characterization. The story isn’t innovative or amazing, and the dialogue often comes across as a bit stilted and forced. But Ace Attorney isn’t trying to be any of those things – it’s just putting out a really solid story, and it works.
Who can learn from this? This game is almost entirely conversation and story, so it’s a great way to study those elements (even if the writing is much, much longer than is typical for most games). It’s also great for people looking at how to pace a purely narrative reward structure. You can pick it up for iOS, Nintendo DS, or the Wii.
Very cool! I’ve actually been poking around Visual Novels for a while. I want to write something with Ren’Py, which is free software for writing visual novels. There’s a number of free games built with it ( http://games.renpy.org/ ), though quality varies, obviously. Open-source stuff can be like that.
You may have heard of Katawa Shoujo…it’s actually a pretty well-written demo so far, with the full game to follow. I will add that, like most visual novels, it’s a romance novel.
I really want to see VNs break that mold, actually. There’s way too much of a “visual novel = dating sim” stereotype, but it’s not helping that so many visual novels are.
I’ve looked at Ren’Py, but not in any great detail. But you’re right that most visual novels are romances which aren’t usually my genre, but the Phoenix Wright series certainly takes some good steps in a new direction.
I’ve played the first two games now and I can safely say that if you like your actions having consequences, you’ll probably like the second one more. Instead of a steady 5 strikes system, it actually has something more like a life bar that goes down varying amounts depending on how important the question you botch is. There are a number of times where you hit an all-or-nothing moment. This game also lets you interrogate people outside of court through a questioning system (which also lowers the health meter).
I really like the idea of the games, but I do sometimes get frustrated by the way they force you to think exactly their way and punish you with wrong answers if you present something equally valid too early. It resulted in me saving and restarting more often than I’d like.
As for visual novels blurring the line with games, well, I really liked Xenosaga and that was practically a 20 hour movie with a complicated DVD menu that takes another 30 hours to navigate over the course of the three games.
That does sound good. I’ve been vaguely looking around at stores for deals on the rest of the series on DS (since it doesn’t look like they’ll be doing more iOS ports anytime soon).
As for thinking like the creators, I’ve always been a long-time fan of adventure games, so that’s something I’ve kind of come to terms with. But it absolutely can be frustrating, especially when you feel like you’ve done and talked to and explored everything and you still can’t go anywhere.
Xenosaga is another good example of “wait, do I get to do anything here?”