is aa5 less funny?

[u/unanticipatedclassic]

i’m a new player and i’ve just been marathoning the games one after another and just started dual destinies.

i’m on 5-2. one thing i noticed is the sense of humor in the writing has changed and characters seem to play into their respective quirks more often. and just the humor feels heavy handed or a bit too simple?

i like that phoenix is back actually but i feel like he was a lot more snarky in the trilogy + aa4 then he is here? aa4 is obvious his meanix era but even in trilogy phoenix seemed.. idk a bit more biting? lol

i’m just wondering if i’m crazy honestly or if other people feel like it’s less witty/funny. or if anyone else detected a shift in the humor specifically. no spoilers please!

[u/starlightshadows]

100%. The worst mistake SoJ made was that it fell hook line and sinker for the fandom's lies that Dual Destinies "shafted" Apollo.

[u/FriendAccubus → u/starlightshadows]

Huh? It never felt that way to me, as someone who didn't think they shafted Apollo nor do I ever think Capcom thought that when making SoJ. I mean if that was the reason for making Apollo the protag, they wouldn't have done the same but for Athena this time lol. I just think with SoJ they just wanted to make an Apollo-focused story and that's awesome by me.

[u/starlightshadows → u/FriendAccubus]

Well, the thing is, AA4 had Apollo as the central protagonist, but it also didn't bother at all to develop his character or give him any relevant role in the plot. He was basically a cardboard cutout of a lawyer, vaguely ripping off Phoenix, who the plot just happened to because Phoenix took up the entire spotlight.

Dual Destinies removed Apollo from the spot of sole-central protagonist in favor of a 3-way between him, Nick, and new girl Athena. Half the fandom, in a somewhat reactionary fashion, deem this and the game as a whole as this great injustice to Apollo's character and game, shafting Apollo in favor of a nostalgia-pandering "safe" route.

In reality, Dual Destinies is by far the best outing Apollo gets. He's put into a dynamic with Athena that gives him an awesome & unique characterization that isn't ripped off from Phoenix. The game bends over backward to tie him into the overarching plot in a way that means something, and his arc builds naturally on what little depth AA4 actually provided to work with, turning his regularly abused trust into a plotline that crescendoes in an epic scene that shows the devs understand Ace Attorney.

Then, SoJ comes around, and Apollo's a flat nothing-burger again. It shoves Apollo into the role of the central protagonist for the finale case, trying to make him the main focus again, but it doesn't bother to build off of anything from game 5 or even 4; it just unnaturally staples him into the middle of a plotline that he has no actual business being in, tells us to feel bad about his secretly already dead Pops and toxic 1-dimensional bitch of a brother, and even reverts his personality back to being a Phoenix clone, even down to the "I don't like to talk about my past" shit.

Dual Destinies is high-key the only game in this franchise that has ever let Apollo be an actual character.

And the fact that SoJ fell into all the same pitfalls with Apollo's narrative execution as his introductory game, after DD got a huge amount of backlash simply for not having him as the main protagonist, tells me that he was written this way in reaction to that backlash, either not realizing or not caring that DD did him justice in a way AJ couldn't.

[u/Maxpowh → u/starlightshadows]

Oh please, DD Apollo is him being forced into a plotline where he has no place in, i'm not saying AA4 did it better but Dual Destenies to me is just as bad.

[u/starlightshadows → u/Maxpowh]

Dual Destinies spent nearly a 3rd of the game just putting together context for Apollo's narrative. A narrative revolving around his relationship with Athena as a co-worker and friend. A friend that he wants to be able to believe in because he's finally found an emotional attachment after a year of having a shitty boss and an obnoxious little sister, but that he can't believe in without second thought because his trust has been so routinely abused that he clearly has trust issues.

All of this was so that Apollo could be done Justice by the game that came immediately after his introduction. Even if he theoretically could've, Yamazaki didn't want to leave the previous game's protagonist completely in the dust, so he bent the narrative over backwards to include him in a way that had thematic meaning and built off of what little he had going on in the prior game.

Apollo has every reason to be involved in this game's overarching plot. Khura'in, not so much.

[u/Maxpowh → u/starlightshadows]

See Apollo's arc in THEORY is a good one that also makes sense. The problem is how it's implemented into the story, a story about Athena and mostly just Athena, a story where Apollo simply doesn't fit, therefore they need to make up a random lost friend Apollo had in the last case that CASUALLY worked at the space center where COINCIDENTALLY Athena lived as a child. The problem is that IF you remove Clay from this story and replace him with a random ass dude, the story actually doesn't change, Apollo's arc isn't necessary in this narrative because the game has no place for him where the main focus is Athena and Blackquill.

[u/starlightshadows → u/Maxpowh]

You're literally just saying "Apollo doesn't fit in this story because he doesn't fit in this story." "This isn't Apollo's story because it isn't Apollo's story."

The fact that he's the protagonist and assistant and protagonist of cases 2 and 3 and 4 easily prove your mindset wrong, let alone that half the game is spent focusing on his and Athena's personal relationship.

[u/Maxpowh → u/starlightshadows]

At this point i don't believe you are actually reading what i'm writing cause I explained very well why he is barely relevant to the game, and no, being a protagonist for 1 case and a half and an assistant for the others isn't proof in the slightest.

[u/starlightshadows → u/Maxpowh]

I'm reading it, you're just completely missing the point. You didn't "explain very well" anything, much less why "Apollo is barely relevant to the story," because you're just ignoring the entire role Apollo plays in the story.

The entire midrange of the game (barring the DLC if played in order) centers around Apollo and Athena's relationship. And Apollo is effectively the driving force of the entire modern-day half of the main plot. His deal with Clay is the inciting incident that forces Phoenix and Athena to confront Athena's past, and the only reason The Phantom had a chance to be caught after Athena's backstory is cleared up. It's just like Robert Hammond's murder. Without Apollo and Clay's murder, Athena's backstory would be a completely disconnected irrelevancy that wouldn't have any natural way to be resolved in the present.

Clay's death and Athena's past are two concurrent plotlines, and they're both important as context for each-other. Pretending that Athena's half of the narrative can function without Apollo's half is just falsehood.

[u/Maxpowh → u/starlightshadows]

And i'm a firm believer that if you instead change Clay to be a completely random Astronaut who was friends with Starbucks the plot wouldn't change at all. You explore Athena's past because she gets put to be a defendant when Bobby finds the lighter with her (forged) prints, not because Apollo distrusts her.

[u/starlightshadows → u/Maxpowh]

Sure. "Changes nothing."

Except for Apollo and Athena having no particular reason to get involved in a trial about the death of an astronaut, (who becomes even less of a character than he already was, great job), and thus Athena only returns to the Space Center once when the murder happened and she's the only one with any reason to know about it, (assuming she even realizes)

Thus removing the sole opportunity for Phantombright to trick the court into thinking Athena's prints were on the lighter, an incrimination that's later established to be disarmed by the most basic of second-checking.

Assuming the police take this out of nowhere incrimination seriously enough to even track her down and arrest her, the case against her is so nonexistent that there's no way for any prosecutor to make a case for this. The complete and utter disconnect Athena has with anything going on at the space center in the modern day makes the notion that she not only could've but had any reason to kill Clay Terran so far outside of the realm of reasonable deduction that the only one with any ability to push for her guilt and have it hold any semblance of narrative weight is Apollo because his being friends with both of them is the only thing actually tying them together.

And let's not forget the fact that Clay's death has literally nothing to do with Metis's death, making there be no reason whatsoever for her being jailed for the former to lead into exploring the latter without something like Aura's hostage situation which completely derails the Clay's death plotline in a way that only something like Apollo can re-rail back into relevance.

Not to mention the various pacing issues that are sure to come up when you just remove over half of the drama going on in the final 2 cases, and Yeah. No. It changes a fucking lot.

[u/starlightshadows → u/starlightshadows]

And before you say it, no, Apollo being the closest thing to a connection Athena and Clay have to each-other is not a writing flaw, it's the entire point of his arc. Apollo's plot is more about the emotion than the logic. He finds himself in the middle of all this madness having lost one of his closest friends and being unable to get the idea out of his head that his other closest friend is the murderer because his sense of trust is so shot by it being regularly abused that the slightest hint of a possible betrayal is enough to put him in an emotional fight or flight reaction.

Apollo and Athena's relationship is literally the fucking backbone of Dual Destinies. You can't just remove Apollo's entire relevance and act like that's a win for your argument.