The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles ending undoes his criticism of Britain

The Ace Attorney series has always been concerned with the definition of justice. For the past 20 years, gambling attorneys have defended wrongfully accused clients while attempting to address the corruption and injustice of what is ultimately a broken legal system. They have questioned and explored what a fair outcome looks like within those limitations and the moral responsibility of a person working with them.

Chronicles of The Great Ace Attorney, recently localized after five years as a Japan exclusive title, is a spin-off that takes place in England and Japan during the Victorian and Meiji era. (Although it is packaged as a set, it includes two sets, The Great Ace Lawyer: Adventures Y The Great Ace Attorney 2: Solve.) The protagonist Ryunosuke Naruhodo is canonically an ancestor of the main series protagonist Phoenix Wright, but this is not really necessary to tie the games together. They already share enough functional and thematic DNA.

Asks the usual questions about truth and justice. But its new setting, heavily informed by the British and Japanese empires, casts those questions in a new light. In doing so, the game struggles to answer them convincingly and confuses its own messages.

[Warning: The rest of this article contains full spoilers for the ending of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles.]

Chronicles of The Great Ace Attorney he is immediately critical of Britain and Japan’s relationship with him. Ryunosuke’s partner, Kazuma Asogi, is the main spokesman against the unequal treaties signed between the two countries, saying at one point that “our weak government is afraid of upsetting England’s policy makers.”

When Ryunosuke is charged with murder in the first case, an English woman named Jezaille Brett takes the stand. The culprits of the opening Ace Attorney The cases are always pretty obvious, giving the player a chance to learn the ropes, but Chronicles of The Great Ace Attorney play with this expectation. The appearance of Jezaille is more than a tutorial: it is a thesis on what the game wants to say about the injustice of the empire.

Jezaille is immediately and severely racist. She claims that the Japanese are not trustworthy or intelligent, and is particularly critical of the “vulgarity” of their language. Despite this, the judge and prosecutor flattered her and England in general. When Ryunosuke begins to make accusations, he is criticized for potentially damaging the fragile treaty between the two countries.

Ryunosuke is acquitted, but it is highly implied that Jezaille will get away with the murder. Although Ryunosuke might not be suffering the guilt, he is frustrated at how imperialist diplomacy obstructed justice and ultimately prevented the full truth from being revealed.

Coming to value the truth above all else is an essential bow that unites everyone Ace Attorney protagonists. In the second game, Justice for all, Phoenix Wright has a bad ending if the player continues to ask for a not guilty verdict for his truly guilty client. In Dual destinations, Apollo Justice leaves the team for a while, wondering if the truth is the same for everyone. Miles Edgeworth’s redemption arc begins with asking the judge to continue with a trial that he was about to win because he doesn’t think the real story has come to light, and his focus on this question continues for most of the rest of the series, even in its own spin-off. (This is my official plea for everyone to play so much Ace Attorney Investigations games.)

What makes Ryunosuke unique is that his main barrier to exposing the truth is not a single case or person, it is the entirety of the British Empire and its relationship to the growing Japanese empire. This barrier is everywhere: traveling to Britain, Ryunosuke experiences both casual and selective racism. Like Jezaille, various characters claim that the Japanese are not trustworthy or comment cruelly on their appearance. His main rival in the game, the prosecutor Barok van Zieks, uses insults and openly admits that he does not like the Japanese. This racist mistrust is shown to influence the decisions of the jury, although given the presumption of the game, this can only be taken so far, as Ryunosuke always needs to win for the player to continue.

Ryunosuke’s troubles continue when he realizes that winning a case doesn’t necessarily mean finding the truth. Shortly after arriving in Britain, the Lord Chief Justice hands him a case defending a local Irish millionaire named Magnus McGilded. During the trial, Ryunosuke or the player are never clear whether McGilded actually committed the crime or not. When Ryunosuke gets McGilded found innocent, he, like Phoenix and Edgeworth before him, asks that the trial continue regardless to determine what really happened. Due to McGilded’s wealth and influence, Ryunosuke’s request is denied.

In the Ace Attorney series, justice is synonymous with the full story of any event held in a courtroom. Giving the protagonists the impetus to unravel all the mysteries comes in handy when that’s what the player is working to do anyway. Games are not shy about targeting the overall power structures that are to blame, but Chronicles of The Great Ace Attorney It struggles to apply that framework to something on the scale of an inherently unjust empire.

The British Empire is heavily criticized for gambling in certain respects, mainly legal corruption (as in the case of Jezaille Brett) and anti-Japanese racism. But it doesn’t look beyond these to the broader crimes of their empires. Although Japanese characters experience racism and struggle with unequal diplomatic treaties, even people from Africa, India, or Korea are never mentioned who can show the full extent of colonization. Interestingly, the only character who comes from a truly colonized country is McGilded, who is used as the face of British greed and corruption despite being Irish. The game focuses primarily on Britain’s behavior at home, for example by using poor white Londoners to provide some class feedback. In particular, the brave orphan pickpocket Gina Lestrade is repeatedly exploited by the wealthiest inhabitants of the city, and her story is a compelling look at the problems faced by the poor in the capital. For a game that places the empire as the enemy and whose characters struggle to examine the entire story, Chronicles of The Great Ace Attorney it does not go all the way in search of that same complete truth.

Chronicles of The Great Ace Attorney it is, of course, a lawyer’s game, so it is not necessarily surprising that it focuses exclusively on how the law becomes a tool of corruption and oppression. But the ending really highlights the limits of not exploring the full range of injustices of the empire. Throughout the duology, the corruption escalates, with Ryunosuke battling increasingly powerful characters. In the final case, he is trying to remove the Lord Chief Justice, Mael Stronghart. There’s a lot going back and forth, but Stronghart ultimately argues that if he weren’t allowed to completely manipulate the courts, London would plunge into violent chaos. His speech puts the majority of the judiciary watching the trial on his side, and it appears that Ryunosuke is stuck, unable to dismantle the power structure itself.

Until Herlock Sholmes shows up, he says he has the Queen on the line and that she has heard everything and will get rid of Stronghart.

To emphasize how far out of the left field this ending is, consider that Sholmes appears as a hologram, seemingly just making up such a thing, despite the fact that the rest of the game often relies on the characters being limited by the technology of the game. it was victorian. Similarly, while the rest of the game has been slowly building up to show that corruption rises to the top, bringing the Queen as the hero from the side of justice is pointless. The game holds that the whole system is one of cascading failures with no possibility of reform, except that its imperial figure is as just and moral as it appears and will, by itself, correct all the errors of the legal system.

The end of Ace Attorney The cases, especially the endings of each game, are usually silly and wild, but their deus ex machinas follow a certain pattern. Ultimately, they argue that an individual trying to do good under a system of injustice needs two things: perseverance and a good group of allies. Found friendship and family may not be able to dismantle systems of oppression, but they do make a difference in people’s lives.

So when a former rival or even a channeled spirit bursts into the courtroom with key evidence at the last minute, it makes perfect sense within that topic. It’s cheesy, but it’s always been the bright heart of Ace Attorney games. This happens multiple times throughout Chronicles. But at the end of the game, it is suddenly replaced with Queen Victoria’s boss girl moment. The ending sticks to the theme of having good allies that makes the games serious and hopeful, but in doing so it completely fails to address the core injustice it sets out to address.

It’s a shame because Chronicles of The Great Ace Attorney he’s a good ace lawyer play. It’s fun, moving, and full of character in every way. By drawing attention to the themes of the series through its setting, it actually made me appreciate more of the way those themes exist in the other games. But by failing to address empire and injustice holistically, he creates a mismatch in focus and an ending that ultimately undermines his narrative.