Quick Look: Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney Trilogy

@dasakamov: Since people are blaming the character designs on male devs who didn't consult women, it's probably worth noting that the lead character designer for Ace Attorney was a woman. She had free reign on designs and it was her vision to make both the male and female characters appeal to the opposite sex. For instance, the director wanted Edgeworth to be an old man but she vetoed it in favor of making him a younger guy:

http://gyakutensaibanlibrary.blogspot.com/2016/07/turnabout-interview-1-suekane-kumiko.html

She also did work on other Capcom titles, along with Fire Emblem and a couple of manga, but drawing sexy dudes is her main thing:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/963987.Kumiko_Suekane

@steveurkel:It's 100% an adventure game. Shu Takumi the series creator has confirmed this himself. It's in the tradition of the Japanese style detective adventure games. With a long history stemming back to titles like Portopia on the NES. Which were directly inspired by early Sierra adventure games like Mystery House.

From Shu Takumi:

I was still pretty wet behind the ears, but as I'd originally joined Capcom with a desire to create mystery and adventure games, this was a huge chance for me to make my mark as a creator. In the end it took a team of seven 10 months to produce the first GBA Ace Attorney title.

(later in the interview)

MC: Can you remember when the idea of Ace Attorney first came to you? How did your bosses respond to the idea of a lawyer-based adventure game when you first described it to them?

ST: It was in 2000 when Mr Mikami said I could make my own game and my original idea was a fairly typical adventure with a detective as the main character. Most mystery adventures have the player choose from a number of different dialogue options for their character in order to progress the story, but I wanted a new gameplay style that enabled players to deduce for themselves what was happening,

Credit Official Nintendo Magazine

Many adventure games do not conform to the Lucas Arts style point and clicks. There's the Myst style, old-school parser games, modern episodic adventures, etc. Visual Novels are actually a splinter genre that evolved from the original Japanese style of adventure games. Defined by the removal of exploration, investigation and problem solving mechanics of Japanese adventure games. Which are all elements Ace Attorney retains.

A GiantBomb user named LentFilms wrote a great blog about the history of Japanese adventure games and how they evolved. It's a really good read with a particularly awesome interview featuring Rika Suzuki (from CiNG) and Yuji Hori (Portopia and Dragon Quest) listed in the sources.

@11111110: And she did a fantastic job with the designs. I wouldn't change a single one. It's funny to see people say that her design is out of place for a courtroom adventure. But Ace Attorney's whole schtick is being comically over-the-top. Von Karma literally whips people during testimony lmao. These aren't dead serious, by the books portrayals of court proceedings by any means. Having a sexy lawyer character is completely in-keeping with the overall vibe.

And there's a lot more to Mia than sex appeal anyways even if it is a particular aspect of her design.

Anyways, from the comments I'd figured this was a bigger deal. Abby barely mentioned her gripe in passing and she's fully entitled to her opinion even though I disagree that the design is offensive.

No, that's wrong!

Anyway, yo this art isn't great. If people want to conflate that with being hypersexualized, eh. Weird hill to die on. The original art for gba/ds was great, this took a serious hit in the remake, which is a bummer. That conversation might be worth having if the original art was being discussed, but this is just comically bad.

This art isn't "remade", it's scanned from the original art made for the GBA games.

@s5n8k3: It kinda feels like you keep quoting great minds of antiquity as a kind of subtle appeal to authority, which to me somewhat underpins the weakness of your point of view. Maybe this was unintentional but you can see why I thought this.

The sexualization of, particularly very professional characters like Mia (pre-2000's media was utterly saturated with these portrayals) is typically thought to be, overabundantly, men appealing to men. It leads to an air of exclusivity where women don't feel quite as in on the enjoyment. And honestly, it is super easy to remember how bad this problem was before the 2000's-ish when we all started getting better about it.

"Stokely Bellweather"