apollojustices:

alright i’ve been thinking more and more about my issues with dual destinies, so i just want to get them all down while they’re still in my mind

most of this just has to do with how the writing team handled old and new characters and what was supposed to be the successive game to apollo justice.

let’s think about the first three ace attorney games. i haven’t replayed them in a while (saying this just in case i fuck something up, sorry) but all three primarily focused on the character development of a few established characters. obviously, phoenix wright and maya fey are two of them. i’ll also say that the games really focused on developing mia fey and miles edgeworth. their development occurs over the course of all three games.

besides for characters specific to individual cases, really, the only major characters that are introduced are new prosecutors — franziska von karma and godot. both of these prosecutors are important, relate to the main established characters in an important way, and get a good amount of development throughout the games.

all other major characters and big baddies tie deeply into the storylines not only of the individual games, but to the main characters’ pasts and character development. think about the importance dahlia had on phoenix’s and mia’s development and manfred’s importance to edgeworth’s. 

by the end of the first three games, we get a lot of closure for our main characters. we know what they’ve been through and where they are. 

apollo justice was a brand new arc that set up a new cast of characters to establish. presumably, we’re meant to watch apollo grow and learn about his past, as well as trucy’s, with the help of phoenix. if we follow the trend of the previous three games, we can also expect klavier gavin’s backstory and relationship with apollo to flourish. we can expect ema skye to return and grow close to apollo and trucy as well, much like how gumshoe had previously. we expect to see more of thalassa and learn more about kristoph’s motives and importance in apollo and klavier’s lives. we expect phoenix to get his badge back and play a mentor role without too much more character development, as his story is mostly over. 

instead, that arc is entirely dropped by aa5. 

this isn’t just my personal headcanons being crushed. of course, we can’t expect succeeding games to follow the exact pattern the first three games had — but those games had excellent writing and storytelling. everything is brought together neatly and with great detail and explanation. characters are introduced and given personal backstories and importance to the plot as a whole. each character relates to each other in a significant manner. 

athena and simon, as much as i truly, truly love them, really only relate to each other. athena’s relation to phoenix is literally that he found and recruited her while abroad — which would be fine, but then, her entire story is its own thing. apollo is given a tragic past, but the game still feels athena-centric, if anything. trucy is left behind throughout aa5. klavier has a cameo. nothing about the previous game is mentioned at all.

and that’s because it doesn’t fit in with athena’s story. instead of focusing on the cast of characters takumi intentionally set up to be developed, the aa5 team made athena and focused on her instead.

we know that takumi wanted apollo’s arc to be developed just by examining aj’s plot and the loose ends left:

- apollo and trucy as siblings

- thalassa

- kristoph’s black psyche-locks 

- klavier and apollo’s shared relation to kristoph

to me, these are things that were purposefully placed into the story with the intention of being further developed in following games.

in fact, in an interview, shu takumi said, “I was really surprised to see that after we focused on the new character of Apollo in the fourth game, the Dual Destinies team decided to bring Phoenix back.”

i know he doesn’t mention athena, but the idea is still there — the game focuses on athena and phoenix and puts apollo on the backburner. he’s busy angsting in the background while phoenix returns and athena grows. 

aa5 completely failed as a successor to apollo justice in that it was literally it’s own game with its own new characters. 

my biggest fear after years of no news of a new ace attorney game was that apollo’s arc would be left incomplete — and, unfortunately, it’s still left incomplete.