Too Many Mysteries: Why I Can’t Handle Phoenix Wright

This year, I tried for the second time to play an installment of Phoenix Wright, mystery-solving, case-winning video-game lawyer extraordinaire. And, for the second time, I gave up in frustration close to the beginning of the game. I did this even though this particular game was a crossover with Professor Layton, a series I really enjoy, and I’ll never get to play the Professor Layton segments until I complete the Phoenix Wright segments that alternate with them.

Why did I give up?

Well, I love mysteries. Any kind of mystery is enough to get me hooked on a book, game, podcast, TV show, or movie. I loved the works of Agatha Christie, Tana French’s In the Woods, Takeo Takahashi’s Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers anime of Ishio Yamagata’s light novels, Sarah Koenig’s Serial, and Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown stories.

When playing Phoenix Wright, I found I’d know from the start of the case whodunnit and how to prove it. But the game wanted me to build up to this conclusion step by step.

It wasn’t enough that, duh, she couldn’t have committed the crime if she had to hold a staff to do it and her hands were already full. I had to point out first that she couldn’t hold the staff in her right hand, then that she couldn’t hold it in her left. And I got penalized if, heaven forfend, I decided to point out her left hand was busy before I mentioned her right.

To me, there was a frustrating gap between what I knew and how the game wanted me to prove it. Through viewpoint characters, it kept insisting that making my case the prescribed way was following logic. But logic had nothing to do with how I perceived the challenge.

See, the thing about mysteries, whether the kind where you solve the case vicariously through the protagonist (like Sherlock Holmes) or are asked to deduce the solution yourself (as in Encyclopedia Brown), is, if you read enough of them, you start to notice the narrative patterns.

I spent a significant amount of my childhood figuring out why Encyclopedia accused Bugs Meany about stealing some kid’s ball or how he could prove Wilford Wiggins was lying yet again. These stories (and those of Einstein Anderson, Science Detective; the protagonists of 5-Minute Mysteries; Shadow from those annoying MindTrap riddles; the Clue game spin-off books… etc.) purported to help me practice observing facts and deducing conclusions, but really what they taught me was how authors present key ideas and red herrings.

For example, when an author suddenly waxes eloquent, there’s probably some important quality in that paragraph of description. Likewise, if the narrative provides an unnecessary adjective (for example, specifying that a character caught the ball in her right hand as opposed to just her hand), that’s probably important, too.

If some detail of the scenario is implausible or ridiculous (like someone having blue lights illuminating their garbage pile), that’s probably because it needs to be that way for the mystery to work. If there are a bunch of random facts, one of them is probably the key to the case, and the rest are camouflage.

When playing Phoenix Wright, this led me to annoying moments along these lines:

ME: Okay, so the problem is she couldn’t have put her hand on the car hood immediately after a long drive (because, duh, why would you take such care to mention the action otherwise?). Car hoods heat up when you drive a long time, so she has to be lying about the trip. How do I tell the game what the problem is? Let’s pick… the car hood.

GAME: Wrong!

ME: Um… okay, her hand on the hood.

GAME: Wrong!

ME: Uh… the smile on her face indicating she isn’t being burned by the hot car hood.

GAME: Wrong!

ME: Then what????!

GAME: (after trial-and-error) You had to choose the map! The map that tells us she told us she was on a long drive!

ME: But she already told us that! That is something we already knew without referring to the evidence!

GAME: Logic, mofo. Now what’s the next step to finding the contradiction?

ME: Surely this one must be the car hood/hand/smile…

GAME: Nope! Hahahahaha!

ME: (?°?°??? ???

etc.

The problem is, neither solve-it-yourself nor solve-it-vicariously mysteries actually use much logic. Sure, clues have to be logical, but when I call the murderer before the first commercial break or at the end of chapter one, I’m not using logic within the world of the story–I’m not thinking, “Okay, could so-and-so have done this bad thing? Is it plausible?”

Instead, I’m using narrative logic. I’m thinking, “Would it feel fair if this person were the killer? Do they appear early enough and prominently enough that their guilt won’t feel like a cheat?* Would their guilt make an interesting story?”

Using these criteria was how I guessed the identity of the fake in the Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers anime; the way you can tell the mystery was a good one is that my guess felt more like rooting for a sports team that you know should win rather than a spoiler, and the ending, in which the “detective” revealed the identity of the guilty party, was emotionally and intellectually interesting. That was when all the in-story logic became intriguing: how did the guilty person do all that without us figuring it out?

Great mysteries have to work with both sets of logic: not only does the nefarious plot have to make practical sense within the world of the story (but not be obvious until the final pages), the audience should feel that each suspect would make a great guilty party using narrative logic.

Since the whole point of most mysteries is that all the suspects should be in-story-logic able to be the guilty party, solid narrative logic is key. It keeps the audience engaged with the story, hides some of the in-story logic holes, and it makes sure the audience trusts the storyteller(s). If I don’t feel like the writer/designer/director/programmer is working within the rules of the genre–if everything feels arbitrary, and I don’t trust that there are any patterns that help me predict what comes next–then I might as well be watching someone else’s dreams.

When narrative logic falls apart, so does at least my enjoyment. Sorry, Phoenix.

* Protip: A significant portion of the time, the culprit is the first new-this-episode, named character the protagonist(s) meet. Getting your bad guy in there up front is the easiest way to make them a major character and start your audience caring.

3 Replies to “Too Many Mysteries: Why I Can’t Handle Phoenix Wright”

  1. I don’t think I want to experience mysteries from your level of reading comprehension any time soon ;) But I fully get what you’re saying about not feeling like the story is spoiled by guessing the result. At least, I think so. My own analogy is thus far incomplete.

    I’m reading Armada by Ernest Cline right now, and I’m pretty sure there’s a Big Reveal coming that I think I know what it is, but Cline is purposefully skirting it. It doesn’t help that he’s dealing with a giant sci-fi trope as the subject matter…but I have the feeling I’m not going to be disappointed in this reveal.

    I don’t want to say anything for fear of spoiling anyone else, plus I haven’t finished reading it yet. Only just got to page 201.

    1. You know, I’ve been mulling this over for, like, all week, and I can’t think of any. There are lots of games that had intriguing mysteries to start (the Professor Layton series, the Persona series, The World Ends With You), but I didn’t feel like their endings achieved the strong sense of resolution that more traditional narrative mysteries do. Maybe I just don’t play the right kinds of games? I guess the first two series probably came the closest, particularly Persona 4 Golden.

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