The Hero We Deserve

One issue I’ve been coming up against repeatedly in these articles is the concept of the video game protagonist – that cipher for the player, for whose actions the player is, in whole or in part, responsible. Nowadays, when we think of the Typical Game Protagonist, the figure that comes to mind is, almost invariably, a grim, stubbly white dude, probably stoic and gravelly-voiced, quite often toting some kind of firearm, which may well be obscenely oversized. Take a quick glance over footage from most years' E3s, and you’ll see wave upon wave of Mr Typical Game Protagonist as far as the eye can see*. It’s no secret that this industry has, perhaps more than any other, a massive problem of representation. Women in games are often oversexualised, reduced in narrative terms to fridge-bait or sexy lamps – a result partly of the innate ultraconservatism of much of the industry with regard to social issues, partly of whining man-babies with a disproportionately loud collective voice whose fragile minds are threatened as much by difference as by any kind of disagreement.

All of this is why I want to take a few moments to appreciate a character who I’m coming to believe may be my favourite video game protagonist; an antidote to many of the prevailing clichés of the industry. A man, admittedly, but one surrounded by interesting, complex female characters on whom he relies constantly, without sexualising them and with only hints of romantic interest in one of them. Rather than stoic and grim, he’s passionate and often goofy, prone to saying remarkably stupid things in situations of great pressure. Rather than solving problems by shooting and/or hitting things, if anything he stands against those who use violence, using his wits to confront them with the evidence of their crimes. If you hadn’t guessed, I’m talking about the man in the blue suit: Phoenix Wright.

 

The man certainly can point.

Oddly enough, Phoenix isn’t even my favourite character in the Ace Attorney series, an honour which goes to his burger-chomping assistant Maya Fey. But he is a deeply fascinating character, and a brilliantly-constructed protagonist. Over the course of the series, we see him as a child abandoned by almost everyone; a lovestruck, easily-manipulated student; a callow rookie defending his mentor’s sister from a murder charge in only his second trial ever; a dogged defender facing down infamous criminals and intimidating prosecutors; a disbarred stubbly pianist apparently awash in a sea of “grape juice”; a loving and protective father; and finally (to date, at least) as a mentor, semi-legendary already in his mid-30s. It’s quite a ride.

But throughout all this, what’s most fascinating about Phoenix as a protagonist is his sheer ordinariness. He’s not some special chosen one; he’s just a man with a law degree. He’s not the most intelligent or even the most logical person around, and he doesn’t have any special powers, even if he has friends who do. What he has is a good heart, and a determination not to abandon the innocent, born from having been in that very position himself.

I think this partly accounts for why I feel Phoenix is a more interesting protagonist than his two proteges, Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes. He lacks Apollo’s semi-mystical bloodline, with his ability to spot people’s tells like a magic version of Tim Roth in Lie to Me, or Athena’s super-sensitive hearing and consequent ability to read emotion in people’s voices. All Phoenix has is a badge, a sharp mind and a deep belief in people. Even after he gets a magical jewel which allows him to see when people are hiding things, it’s still up to him to figure the mystery out; he can see that people are keeping secrets, but not what the secrets are.

Then there’s his goals. He doesn’t set out to fight monsters (in any literal sense), or save the world, or even anything as grandiose as bringing justice; he just wants to help people. And so he does, not only defending the innocent from murder charges, but managing to save people from themselves – Edgeworth from his ruthlessness, Maya from her low self-esteem, Franziska from her obsession with perfection, Godot from his single-minded hatred. Person after person refuses his help for one reason or another, but he tries anyway. His help may not be enough, or it may come too late, but his relentlessness is admirable nonetheless.

What’s more, he’s not a perfect protagonist**. It’s all too easy to fashion a player avatar who is constantly right, whose biggest obstacle seems to be other people not recognising their blessed brilliance; when is Commander Shepard, for instance, ever wrong about something? Phoenix, on the other hand, makes plenty of mistakes. In court, he frequently doesn’t have a clue what’s going on (which can be mildly frustrating for a better-informed player). Outside of court, he’s not a pure avatar of virtue and rightness either; he snaps at people who bring up Edgeworth’s disappearance in Justice for All, he’s too blinded by infatuation to acknowledge the mounting evidence against Dahlia Hawthorne (a good example of his best feature, his belief in people, working against him) and, most infamously, he attempts to run across a burning bridge when his best friend is in danger. It all combines to make him wonderfully human in a very endearing way.

Historically, games, from platformers to shooters, have tended to be combat-focused, or at least to have some strong element of what might loosely be termed violence, to the Daily Mail’s everlasting horror. It’s part of the wish-fulfilment nature of the medium, making the player feel strong. In a sense, Ace Attorney still does this, but in a different way. Phoenix’s job, and the player’s, is to outsmart his opponents, to cut through the lies of the villains. While the series has its share of moral complexity, it still tends to go in for relatively straightforward good versus evil clashes, and boo-hiss villains. What’s refreshing, though, is that these battles never come down to a physical fight. The villains are defeated by confronting them with irrefutable evidence of their misdeeds, and it’s no less satisfying than shooting or punching them, especially given the elaborate breakdowns which the series tends to afford them. The games go to considerable lengths to make you hate these people, just to make yours and Phoenix’s eventual victory all the more pleasurable.

Since I started writing this post a couple of weeks ago (I was working on it slowly, OK?), a new Ace Attorney game has been announced, and the only returning character revealed at this (very early) stage is Phoenix himself, who would appear to be the focus of the game. Hardly surprising, since he’s the only character to appear in every instalment of the series (if you count his cameos in the two Investigations games), but some fans are already complaining that plot points involving other characters are being left hanging. While there’s some truth to that, as far as I’m concerned, Phoenix is the heart of the series, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Now please give us Maya back, Capcom. Go on. You know you want to.

Even Conor Lenihan wants to be Phoenix.

* - To be absolutely fair, as many commentators pointed out, this year’s E3 was notable for quite a few prominent female protagonists, which may hopefully be a sign of some slow progress. The industry certainly does not lack for prominent and talented female commentators and creators.

** - He does, admittedly, seem to be completely impervious to harm – he’s been tasered, poisoned, fallen from a bridge into a freezing river, hit by a speeding car and whipped into unconsciousness, yet he never seems to require more than a day or two in hospital.