The big final case of this game! And much like how
Case 4 of Phoenix’s first game combined two cases that seemed unrelated at
first, the final case of Apollo’s first game also combines two
seemingly-unrelated cases. Let’s jump into it!
Magicians shooting each other on a stage. A teenage
girl fainting behind a witness stand. An uninviting studio. The poker game from
Case 1. These images flash as we are presented the MASON system, a strange machine
that allows one to view both the present case, and a past case that happened…
you guessed it, seven years prior. I actually like the contrast. The first game ended with two cases, separated by fifteen years, which both had Miles Edgeworth
as a central character. The difference here is that Phoenix Wright is perfectly
able to investigate the case in both eras of his “career”, and amass the
evidence to solve not one, but two mysteries at once.
Oh, and while Apollo still does quite a bit, he’s
relegated to deuteragonist. Second main character… in the final case of the
game that bears his name. Shame. Anyway, the MASON system was put in place to
help people make their mind about this case, so that they can weigh in on whether the defendant of the current case is guilty or not. I’d
better not waste any time.
At Wright Anything Agency, Trucy is watching TV. We’re
announcing a new magic show from Troupe Gramarye! Yep, with Trucy’s real uncle
Valant Gramarye and all. Then Phoenix shows up, to finally explain his secret
mission – and to involve Apollo in it. See, for a while now, Phoenix has been
working behind the scenes on something called the Jurist System. It should be
Juror System, but nobody at the localization team bothered to verify. The plan
is to set up a jury – basically, much like the real-life American system of 12
jurors who will discuss the information revealed in court and come to an
agreement on the punishment for the guilty party. In the American Ace Attorney
games, they speak of reviving the system – in the original Japanese titles as
well, though, it had vanished for a long time. Ah, so that's why prosecutors had such inflated egos in the first game! Looking at you, von
Karma! The system being put in place by Phoenix will have only six jurors, and
they’ll pick a case “at random”, after which it’ll be Apollo’s job to, well, do
his job. Oh, Phoenix says it’s a
simulation, but you won’t catch me in the
simulation-is-not-actually-a-simulation trick twice! I saw Ender’s Game, you
know!
"......? Okay, starting now, I'm calling you Six-Dots. You father was either very creative, or uncreative. Okay Six-Dots, tell me your version of the story." |
Drew Misham was giving his first interview when he
died, with a weird reporter named Spark Brushel. I say weird, that might be understatement. Spraying poison
detector all around the room, we find traces of it in a tiny tiny picture frame
on a desk. We also learn to use an X-ray machine that lets us view through
envelopes without having to open them. The letter inside
an envelope in the studio reads that someone deposited 100,000$ in Misham’s
account, with the second page asking to send back the envelope with an
accompanying postal stamp.
Yup, and then Valant waited seven years after Zak disappeared, to snatch the rights to the trick. Is it me or that's a particularly dickish thing to do? |
Zak, Trucy’s dad, inherited the rights to the trick,
but since Zak disappeared, and it takes seven years to officially declare dead
a person gone missing, and since Zak is considered dead now, Valant was the one
to inherit Magnifi’s tricks. Oh, and Valant did see Brushel, but the reporter kept asking about the Misham case. Guess we'll see him at the Detention Center,
One of the better pictures I could take of the weirdo. Eh, he's weird, but he's effective. |
Back with Ema at Drew Studio, she explains that
Misham made money with forgeries, AKA, making fakes. His talent was
used to copy famous paintings, and sell them as the real ones, as some
artists do. Yep, crime. Say whatever you want about victims in this game, aside
from LeTouse, they all had some pretty major secrets and crimes to their names Heck, there was a stolen painting in here, and Drew was copying it!
The sketches under the paintings in the studio? Men playing poker, a dead man pulling a stand, and a guitarist on fire on
top of a raised platform… Holy shit! Somehow, Drew Misham knew about the three
previous cases covered by Apollo!
Even the guy's shock expression is weird beyond words. It's actually kinda creepy. |
Why, thanks game, I really wanted to have to inspect this guy's armpits. |
Proof that the stamp was poisoned? The tiny frame on
the desk, which the poison detector spray reacted to! And of course, the stamp
came in with the letter about the 100.000$ sent in Misham’s bank account. The
letter that demands that Misham uses the stamp sent with it! And how
to prove that it was sent with the original letter? Ema shows up, because of
course she does, to guide us into using the poison detector, because of course
we needed her for that, and residue of poison appears on the letter, because of
course it does.
But it still doesn’t make sense, why would Drew Misham
lick the stamp after seven years, since he knew its secret? From there, Apollo
deducts that Drew wasn’t the forger at all… His
daughter Vera was the forger! Brought to the stand, Vera confirms the theory,
but is unusually stressed when seeing Klavier Gavin. After a break where Vera
finally confesses to Apollo, we’re back in court, and she testifies. If at
least she could stop doing her nails… with all the stress she suffers, and all the
times she relieves said stress by biting them, I’m surprised she still has
nails at all!
It looks pretty nice. Could you make a better drawing of it? This one is kinda blurry. |
Apollo asks Vera who the client was, but she’s back to
biting her nails. And before she can reply, she falls backwards and faints. Like
in the flashes at the beginning. The doctors say Atroquinine poisoning is what
happened. Just under the deadly limit, so she’s okay for now… but at risk of
death in the long run. And thus we’re brought back to the trial that happened,
seven years ago, when Phoenix and Klavier faced in court.
Aw, Trucy, it's so cute, you're about to ruin a man's entire career. and almost, life! But you do it in such an adorable pink magician uniform. |
I should mention now that they made a rather dumb mistake
in the original DS version of this game. The characters from the original trilogy still have their sprites from
those games, causing quite a contrast with the DS-quality sprites of Klavier or Shadi. The Judge is the most obvious,
though Phoenix in these trial sequences also bears this noticeable
style clash. And so does Dick Gumshoe. They corrected it in later versions,
thankfully.
Shadi Enigmar, the defendant, says that the court won't be able to declare him guilty. He is put on trial for
the death of Magnifi Gramarye, his mentor. First we talk with Gumshoe, and we
learn that the victim had chronic diabetes and cancer. Magnifi ordered his own death, through a letter addressed to his disciples Zak and Valant Gramarye, asking for a
bullet in the forehead. In the picture, we see a clown doll also shot in the
forehead. The pistol was a prop in the magic show, and shot real bullets. Or rather, it can contain only one bullet, so Shadi Enigmar couldn’t
have shot it twice – had he shot the doll, he couldn’t have used the gun on his
master.
Everyone knows that when a magician is cornered, all of their trick sleeves suddenly reveal what they hide! It's Stage Magic in Fiction 101! |
Nooooooooooooooooooooooo- Dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon'tttttt- .....too late. |
And thus Phoenix loses his badge, and Shadi Enigmar is never to be
seen again. Well, until seven years later, under an alias, but he didn’t stay
around for very long.
Seven years later, this mystery of the past combines itself with the case of the present. By the way, if you liked
this trial part with Phoenix, be happy, you’ll see him again. A lot. And
Apollo? Forgotten until the next trial section. Yeah, it’s as I said. The game
with his name on the cover puts him aside for a while.
The MASON system is now turned on, and will let the
jurors of the present case shuffle through the past and the present, to
discover the elements that are still missing in the murders of Magnifi Gramarye
and Drew Misham. Which… unfortunately, will be in Part 5.
No comments:
Post a Comment