Phoenix Wright Taught Me That Lying Is a Lot of Work

One of the Nintendo DS games I’ve been playing a lot lately is Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

At the time I’m writing this, I’m actually very close to finishing it.

Or at least I would be very close to finishing it if my Nintendo DS Lite hadn’t decided that this was the perfect moment to break.

The game had only a little bit left. I wanted to know how the story ended. My DS apparently had other plans.

Fortunately, a replacement NDS Lite is already on the way, so there’s a good chance I’ll be able to continue playing today and finally finish the game.

Assuming this one doesn’t immediately break too.

Hehehe.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is probably not a game for everyone.

If you’re used to games where you punch people, race cars, shoot things, or generally make your fingers perform urgent tasks, Phoenix Wright might feel strange.

There’s a lot of reading.

A lot of conversations.

A lot of looking at evidence.

And then a lot of staring at someone’s testimony while thinking:

Something about this is wrong.

But that’s exactly why I like it.

I grew up playing the PS1 and PS2. My relationship with Nintendo only really started later, when I played the Game Boy Advance. That was when I began discovering that there were other kinds of games that, at least for me, could be even more fun to play.

Then I met the Nintendo DS.

And Phoenix Wright introduced me to another one.

A game where the main weapon is basically paying attention.

Lying is surprisingly high-maintenance

I’ve gotten a lot of things from playing Phoenix Wright.

Strangely, one of the biggest lessons has almost nothing to do with becoming a lawyer or winning a trial.

It’s about lying.

There’s an old saying that one lie leads to another.

Phoenix Wright has made me realize just how exhausting that process actually looks.

In some trials, you reach a point where everything seems obvious.

You have the evidence.

You know what happened.

You’re pretty sure you know who did it.

Okay. Great. Case closed.

Except it isn’t.

You find one contradiction in someone’s testimony.

Then a new fact appears.

That new fact creates another problem.

Someone gives another explanation.

That explanation doesn’t match something else.

Now there’s another contradiction.

Suddenly the neat little story you thought you understood has turned into a giant pile of problems.

And at some point I find myself looking at the screen thinking:

Why didn’t you just tell the truth in the first place?

But I guess that’s the problem with lying.

A lie rarely gets to live alone.

Once you create a fake version of what happened, everything around it has to cooperate with that version.

If reality says A but you claim B, you now have to explain why this other thing looks like A.

So you invent C.

But C creates a problem with D.

And now D needs its own explanation.

One lie has somehow acquired employees.

The Steel Samurai murder case and the case involving Miles Edgeworth were two of the most memorable examples for me.

There were so many moments where the situation seemed clear, only for the whole thing to change because one person’s testimony started falling apart.

And then there’s the final case that only exists in the Nintendo DS version.

That one has successfully made my head hurt several times.

I started the game because I wanted entertainment.

The game responded by giving me homework.

The annoying little things that turn out to matter

Phoenix Wright has also made me pay more attention to small details.

During the investigation sections, you examine crime scenes and the areas around them.

Obviously, you look for suspicious things.

The problem is that you don’t always know what a suspicious thing looks like yet.

Sometimes you find something and immediately understand why it matters.

Other times you find a piece of evidence and think:

What the hell is this for?

A piece of broken glass.

A fingerprint.

An old glove.

A random note.

Someone hanging around the scene.

At first, some of these things can feel completely disconnected from the case.

But you still have to pay attention to them.

Because eventually the trial starts moving.

People testify.

Evidence gets presented.

Stories begin contradicting each other.

And suddenly that stupid little object you barely cared about becomes the thing that destroys an entire testimony.

This is probably my favorite part of Phoenix Wright.

The game keeps punishing you for becoming too comfortable with your own conclusions.

You think you understand what happened.

Then you don’t.

You think someone’s testimony sounds convincing.

Then one tiny detail makes it impossible.

You think an object is irrelevant.

Two hours later, you desperately need that object.

Phoenix Wright keeps reminding me that “obvious” and “true” are not necessarily the same thing.

And after playing it for long enough, I think that perspective starts leaking out of the game.

Sometimes the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough information.

Sometimes we actually have plenty of information.

We’ve just already decided which parts deserve our attention.

That’s slightly different.

And probably more dangerous.

Because when we think we’re missing information, at least we keep looking.

When we think we already understand something, we stop.

A tiny detail gets categorized as unimportant.

A weird inconsistency gets ignored.

Something doesn’t quite make sense, but the larger story feels correct enough, so we let it go.

Phoenix Wright does not let things go.

Phoenix Wright grabs the tiny stupid detail, drags it into court, points dramatically at somebody, and ruins their afternoon.

I respect this.

A visual novel that somehow makes me nervous

At its core, Phoenix Wright is a visual novel.

You read.

You talk to people.

You investigate.

You present evidence.

You find contradictions.

That doesn’t sound especially stressful.

And yet I regularly get tense playing it.

There’s a specific kind of anxiety that happens when I’m absolutely convinced I’ve found the contradiction in a testimony.

I know what’s wrong.

I know which evidence proves it.

I confidently present the evidence.

And—

Nope.

Wrong.

Apparently I am not the brilliant attorney I believed myself to be four seconds ago.

There are also moments when a case seems basically finished, only for some new piece of information to appear and wreck everything.

The game doesn’t require fast reflexes, but it keeps me curious in a way a lot of faster games don’t.

Because Phoenix Wright isn’t simply asking:

Who is lying?

That would be easy.

The harder questions are:

Why doesn’t this testimony make sense?

Which exact part contradicts the evidence?

What does this tiny detail actually mean?

And how does it connect to all the other tiny details that seemed pointless an hour ago?

That’s where the tension comes from.

Not speed.

Uncertainty.

The expensive maintenance cost of a lie

I only have a little bit of the first Phoenix Wright game left.

Once my replacement NDS Lite arrives, I plan to play all the Phoenix Wright games available on the Nintendo DS.

Provided, of course, that my replacement NDS Lite decides to remain alive.

But even before finishing the first game, Phoenix Wright has already made one idea stick in my head.

You can probably make a lie look very convincing.

The difficult part is maintaining it.

Because reality keeps existing in the background.

There’s evidence.

There are other people.

There are timelines.

There are objects.

There are things you forgot about.

And once one small part of the story stops making sense, you need another lie to protect the first one.

Then another.

Eventually you’re no longer telling one lie.

You’re managing an entire infrastructure of lies.

And the funny thing is that the thing that finally brings the whole structure down may not be some giant revelation.

It might be a fingerprint.

A piece of glass.