i loved the games, but i had a problem that sometimes you could see plot-connections from miles away, but had no way to take advantage if that them, because you had to reach the point in the game where you actually figured it out.

besides, there is really a lot of redundant information given in these games.

...still, I dearly loved every single one of them and couldn't wait for them to be released. :D

I am rested and fed (leftover turkey drumsticks), so I will address this now.

The hting abotu Phoenix Wright's storytelling and the way that it differs from the standard mode... well, that depends on how you look at cutscenes.

One school of looking at cutscenes is what I think of as the Miyamoto School of In-Game Video: it actually has less to do with conveying narrative than it does establishing the challenge you are about to face, or breaking the pace after the completion of a challenge. In Super Mario Bros., the short ditty that plays upon completing a course (you know the one ) acts as a signal that you can breathe and take a short mental break, taking comfort in the fact that the game is taking control from you - which means, of course, that you're safe. The 3-D Marios do much the same thing every time one obtains a star or a ky or a Grand Star or whatever, but htey also add the other element of introducing new challenges through cutscenes: instead of indicating that you are safe, cutscenes like the ones preceding a fight with Bowser indicate mounting danger and challenge. Afterward of course you will get the "Reward" cutscene, but that initial indication of peril is still there. Miyamoto cutscenes are solely about enhancing or alleviating the experience of gameplay.

Then you take something like .... I suppose I will call Zelda's Aonuma cutscenes, because if it were up to Miyamoto they would still be essentially like the Mario games. Aonuma cutscenes are essentially the industry standard in that serve as a break from action and as a vehicle for storytelling in cases where dialogue may not be able to convey enough on its own. There's not a lot else to explain here.

Then there are the Kojima School of Cutscenes, which are not exclusive to that director but are exemplified in him. Kojima cutscenes are very nearly the entire point of his game, approaching the logical edge of how far a game can go before it ceases to be a game, held down only by the anchor of the core mechanics that link these monolithic scenes together. Instead of serving as a break from the action, cutscenes are their own source of drama, beause the beginning of a cutscene is not an indication of the safety of Snake, even though it is an indication of safety for the player - which runs in contrast to the cutscenes in Mario, where Mario and the player's safety go hand in hand.

The thing that all of these have in common is that cutscenes serve as bookends (of varying sizes, to be sure) for core gameplay that stands apart from them. They are ways to take a break. In gaming, this is almost universal.

Not so in Phoenix Wright. There is no clear delineation between "cutscenes" and "gameplay" in Phoenix Wright, outside of the ending cinematics that serve as the ending of each game instead of each chapter. Phoenix Wright abandons the difference between gameplay and cutscene altogether, taking the medium to a logical extreme that Kojima undoubtedly kicks the shit out of himself for not doing before these guys. Heavy Rain shares in this idea, too: it's a guided narrative where the only actions you can take serve to move the plot forward, where the gameplay is just a mechanic that serves to navigate farther into a cutscene. In  essence, Phoenix Wright as a series is one enormous cutscene, where the majority of the interactivity consists of scrolling through dialogue trees not unlike in conversation in a JRPG. The other part - and to me, the best part - of Phoenix Wright's gameplay (storytelling? they are blurred, is what I am saying) comes in the face-offs in court or outside of court, where one has to navigate and guide a scene, but even then one has to follow a very strict path in order to progress. Outside of figuring out where to press the enemy or present evidence, you actually play the game very little.

Before I continue, does all of this sound reasonable? Keep in mind, several adventure games - like Sam and Max - adapt the same kind of gameplay/storytelling hybrid tht Phoenix Wright does, but I agree that it's hard to think of one that carries it out to the same degree.

Phoenix Wright is the perfect example of why I think jrpg developers need to stop focusing too much on the story and focus more on gameplay. Visual novels I must admit have ruined a lot of jrpgs for me. Visual novels are much better suited for telling a story. They are basically interactive anime. Jrpgs on the other hand at the core still consist mostly of combat so at the end of the day, the combat better be good. And if jrpg developers use "story" to compensate for poor gameplay, then well, you're better off playing a visual novel IMO. Two gens ago when jrpg storytelling was a novelty to me, I though of the cutscenes as a "reward" for all the "work" you did in those dungeons. But now that visual novels give you the reward without having to make you go through all that work, jrpgs who rely heavily on story are effectively ruined. I'd take Phoenix Wright, Hotel Dusk or Tsukihime over Xenogears any day. I gotta be honest. I also prefer stories that don't take themselves too seriously. The visual novels I mentioned get that. Xenogears doesn't. The developers of Xenogears tried too hard to make some sort of literary classic. But at the end of the day, game programmer geeks can't measure up to classic literature so why even bother trying? You'd be better off reading a book than going through all that "work" to get to the meat of Xenogears' story anyway.

I want jrpgs to in a sense go back to their old-school roots (more gameplay focus, less story focus, much more non-linearity in exploration) while still innovating GAMEPLAY and tweaking GAMEPLAY so that it has more modern sensibilities at the same time. IMO someone should take the Dragon Quest template, add more depth to the combat, give the user more customizability and depth with regards to skill progression and that's about it. I think Dragon Quest is a good base to work from. The games, especially the early DQs, have more non-linear exploration, less focus on story (and the jrpg stories are getting cliched anyway so that's a good thing). And DQ can be challenging without being too unforgiving (normal enemies whoop dat ass and save points are infrequent in dungeons and even non-existant before DQ7 but if you die, you don't lose all your progress. You keep all your xp but you lose half your gold and have to start all the way back at town. It's punishing, it keeps you on your toes in the dungeons but it's not "throw your controller at the TV in rage" unforgiving) It just badly needs an upgrade combat and skill progression wise.

I enjoyed it, but I don't think it necessarily has the best storytelling of any game. It does a lot right, but it's incredibly easy to portray a games story with the game model they use, it isn't really much of an accomplishment at all, and it's method for telling stories certainly isn't original or new by any means. It is basically a point and click adventure game on the DS with a story that cannot even begin to touch the greats like The Day of the Tentacle for instance.

Great games though, even though the series has degenerated to a rather shitty state with the latest iteration.

Another example of this (and most definitely a better example of it) on the DS is Hotel Dusk. That game has significantly better story and plot than Phoenix Wright and does things basically the same.

One thing you all should be aware of is how awesome the music is in Phoenix Wright :P Its very good.


Still, credit is due, but lets not get forget that it's merely a clone.

That's not entirely true. There's a part in the second game that's being led up to for a long time, continually giving the impression that you'll have a major moral decision to make. Then when it finally reaches that point, there's a typical illusion of choice mechanic to get you to make the decision they want you to make (I personally would have made the other choice, if I was able to).

I made a thread expressing my annoyance at it on another forum...

Oh yes, it all sounds reasonable. Of course, you have yet to explain how it is you disagree with me. I can see what you are on about, how storytelling differs in type between different types of genres and directors. How what a cutscene is supposed to achieve can differ as well. I can also sense that there is more coming. I'll read it if you write it, and we'll continue the discussion from there.

With all due respect, I think you are dead wrong. The method they used is the thing I'm praising. The complete fusion of story and gameplay they have achieved is an accomplishment, if only because it is completely original.

What regular point'n'click adventures do is play a bit of story for you that ends in a puzzle. If you solve the puzzle, you get to continue with the story. You already know why you want to do something, you only have to figure out how to do it. The point of the puzzles in Phoenix Wright is that you have to do it the other way round. Unless you figure out the story, you cannot proceed. You know how to do the puzzle (easy, present the evidence!) you just have to figure out why.

Instead of having a separation between story and puzzles, Phoenix Wrights story is the puzzle. Piece by piece you figure out what actually happened. It makes immersion in the story important for the player to succeed and that makes all the difference when it comes to storytelling.

I haven't played Hotel Dusk (but I plan to...). It most likely has a better story and plot than Phoenix Wright does, but I highly doubt it has better storytelling, which is what this thread is supposed to be all about. Then again, I could be wrong, given that I haven't played it yet.

EDIT: I have now figured out why my postcount is so low here on VGChartz. This post took 26 minutes to write, and it's only four paragraphs! Ouch!

You just haven't played the right adventure games. They do exactly the same thing. It isn't original at all. There have also been thousands of mystery adventure games and detective adventure games that are just as good as well. they just dont have that japanese flair so they are not popular.

I'll make this more brief in respect of your time.

Phoenix Wright's storytelling, as a synergy of gameplay and plot, is not actually much of a game narrative as such. It's great as far as pulling you in goes because it gives you the illusion of advancing the plot (even though you yourself have done no such thing, as you point out - you're just tyring to guess at what Phoenix or Apollo is figuring out in his head), but an argument could be made that as far as game narratives go the structure of it is not necessarily desirable.

I want to say before I go into this that I understand the values you're tlaking about, and operating under your value set I will agree that Phoenix Wright's narrative structure is pretty close to ideal. Anything following this point is essentially outlining video game storytelling value sets wherein PW's narrative is not ideal.

The thing about the Ace Attorney series is that there is no choice in the game, not really, not even as much as you would get in the most linear of JRPGs or even platforming games. When it comes down to it, you are watching an anime series where you msut repeatedly press the Play button in order to advance, and from time to time figure out what it is that the writers are thinking (which is not always intuitive, particularly in Justice for All). One cannot play the game divorced from these mechanics, and while this makes th narrative focus very strong it also means that the gameplay must necessarily suffer. I cannot ever hop into one of the better cases and go straight into a courtroom battle, with the notable exception of the fourth case in Trials and Tribulations. Experimentation is impossible, influence on the narrative is outside of the realm of the game's design, and gameplay is either a second or third banana depending on whether you see music as being inherent to the narrative or not.

Compare this with Metroid Prime - the first game in particular, bcause the third (and the second to a degree) abandon this. Metroid Prime's method of plot advancement is very simple: you can know about the story if you want. Otherwise it's perfectly reasonable to think that you will be able to get thorugh the entire game wihtout necessarily having any idea of the backstory or anything like that, just collecting items and barrel-assing your way through the game's challenges. Metroid Prime's narrative works not because it is well-written, thoguh it is, but because it firstly must be initiated by the player and secondly because it is not integral to one's experience. You can skip almost all of it. That's fantastic.

Fire Emblem games are another example of this same design: you can experience as much or as little of the flavor as you want. You can watch all of the battle animations and the reams of dialogue and cutscenes to your heart's content, or if you prefer you can skip all of that crap and attack the game as a turn-based strategy gam and nothing else, devoid of the trappings of narrative or plot. Fire Emblem is not as strong an example as Metroid Prime in the sense that its narrative does not need to be initiated by the player, but it's actually stronger in that the plot really doesn't matter at all and you can do without it in its entirety. The freedom of this is baffling.

Then take the Mother series - specifically Mother 2, or EarthBound if you prefer. That's a relatively linear JRPG experience wherein one cannot get through without experiencing the story, but the way that it differentiats itself from Phoenix Wright in two ways. The first is that it operates around a core gameplay mechanic that functions without the trappings of the story. The second is that it invests agency in the player, making thm the perpetrator of their ow actions rather than the characters. It does this in a big way, too, though I will rfrain from going into how it does this; suffice to say that when you beat the game, there is no question that it was you, rather than Ness, who is responsible for your victory.

Those little moments where the player is invested with power, is made to be responsible for his own actions - the final shot fired in Metal Gear Solid 3, the dawning realization of the import of your unthinking goal-based action in Shadow of the Colossus - are the ones that I find the most powerful.

Those are the two schools of game storytelling I currently find more powerful than that of Ace Attorney: the ability to skip out on a story if you so please, and the sort that makes you responsible for your own actions. That's not to say that other methods are innherently inferior, either - I preferred the storytelling in Wind Waker, wherein you are looking in on a conflict much more ancient and terrible than the playable chaacter can possibly know, to every game in the AA series - it's just that, taken as a rule, those are tthe ones I find best.

Do you see?

Edit: This was not more brief at all

True, it was not brief at all, but very interesting.

I do see. I also understand. I just do not share your values. I'm a story junkie. A good story draws me in completely and I cannot think about anything else even long after I finish it. Only once have I had that experience with a game, at least because of the story. Civilization, Torchlight, Mass Effect, Gran Turismo and other great games can produce the same high, but for different reasons. There, the gameplay is always the center of attention. Collection, progression, perfection, that's what gets to me when I play other games.

Never ever before had I played a game only because I want to know how it ends. And for me, how much I want to know what happens next/how it ends is the true measure of storytelling. It's a measure of how deeply immersed I am in the story, how much I care about what happens on the screen and about the characters, how deeply what happens moves me. Without that level of immersion I will always be detatched and cold to what happens to characters or worlds.

Unfortunately I have not played any of the games you mentioned to finish. I have never owned any of them, but played some with friends. I could never quite become immersed in the world of Shadow of the Colossus even though it's probably the most beautiful world gaming has ever seen. I have never really cared about any link, and Metal Gear Solid 2 left me completely bored and practically itching to get some control over what happened, only to be disappointed by the limitations of that control when I did. Super Metroid is probably the most atmospheric 2D game of all time, but the thing that kept me playing was collection and progression, not story.

I have never felt that a gaming world has been real enough for my actions to have any meaning whatsoever outside of that experience. When a character dies in a game I think mostly of lost equipment and skills, but when a character dies in a book I can feel incredibly bad about it. I once put down Jane Eyre in the middle because I knew that from that point on, things could only get worse. I didn't want to spoil their happiness (I later did finish the book).

When it comes to taking control of my mind and putting it singly on a story, there has been no game that has ever succeeded as well as Phoenix Wright. But I think I understand that you do not consider this to be the true measure of storytelling in games. I can agree with you that as far as gameplay goes Phoenix Wright is sorely lacking and that this is a direct result of the way story and gameplay is fused together. This is not the end all way of storytelling in games, it's even highly inappropriate for most games. But it is the first game that can rival the experience I get from non interactive mediums.

I have been trying to put my feelings into words here, and I'm not very good at that. If it sounds like I'm rambling, I probably am. I do apologize.