(no subject)
I'll have a more serious update some time this weekend. I first wanted to wish happy Ostara/Equinox to everyone who celebrates it ^_^
This week, I went to Toronto overnight, and pored over old trial records. Nothing much was there -- these were ordinary people, their crimes uncontroversial, and they were dispensed with quickly.
Still, I got some information that can help reconstruct the circumstances: names of witnesses, for example, which help create a sense of the context of the crime. It's enough that I can probably say what what happened in two of the trials.
While I was going to Toronto to look up these very serious and real trials, I spent much of the train-ride playing the very strange courtroom-drama game, Phoenix Wright 4 (or, I guess, technically Ace Attorney 4).
It's far from the best of the series. Two of the court cases just seemed tedious. Two were fun. The last case was not up to their usual standards. Some particularly odd moments, even by this series standards:
It's still a fun series of games, and bringing Ema Skye back as the new detective helped save it. And yeah, I'll probably get the fifth when it comes out.
This week, I went to Toronto overnight, and pored over old trial records. Nothing much was there -- these were ordinary people, their crimes uncontroversial, and they were dispensed with quickly.
Still, I got some information that can help reconstruct the circumstances: names of witnesses, for example, which help create a sense of the context of the crime. It's enough that I can probably say what what happened in two of the trials.
While I was going to Toronto to look up these very serious and real trials, I spent much of the train-ride playing the very strange courtroom-drama game, Phoenix Wright 4 (or, I guess, technically Ace Attorney 4).
It's far from the best of the series. Two of the court cases just seemed tedious. Two were fun. The last case was not up to their usual standards. Some particularly odd moments, even by this series standards:
- Legal education for prosecutors in Japan must be terrible. In this game, they keep getting their prosecutors from Germany. In Canada, you can't transfer from Quebec's civil law system to the common law system without going back to law school and starting from scratch -- I had to look that up for a detail in a story once. Imagine switching systems, jurisdictions, and languages.
- Maya Fey is missing. One of the two main characters of the last three games -- Phoenix Wright's assistant, sister of his mentor, his two-time client, the woman he risked his career to protect from a hit man, and the only romantic interest and source of sexual tension -- is gone, and not mentioned once. It's as if Princess Leia or Han Solo was simply written out of the script in Return of the Jedi, and nobody notices.
- You know, everyone Phoenix Wright interacts with either gets killed, or thrown in jail. This leads us immediately to the Murder, She Wrote problem, of why nobody ever suspects Angela Lansbury of being a mass-murderer even though she's the only connection between the people who are getting offed constantly around her. I think it's pretty obvious that her character kills, uses her knowledge of forensics to pin the crimes on innocent bystanders, and then writes stories about it. Maybe that's where Maya Fey is -- she got too close to the truth, and her corpse is now in a steamer trunk in the Wright & Company law offices.
It's still a fun series of games, and bringing Ema Skye back as the new detective helped save it. And yeah, I'll probably get the fifth when it comes out.