Speaking with Official Nintendo Magazine in the U.K., Ace Attorney series creator Shu Takumi says that, after working on the third game in the original Ace Attorney trilogy, he was against the idea of creating a fourth game.
“I felt that Phoenix’s story had been told, and that the series should not continue,” Takumi revealed. “Knowing when to end a story is very important and I wanted to avoid dragging it out and having it become a shadow of its former self.”
Regardless, Takumi did go on to work on Apollo Justice, the fourth game in the series, and as he has stated in the past, he was against bringing Phoenix Wright back for the game.
“Years later, when it was decided within Capcom that Ace Attorney 4 would go ahead, my position was that we should change the main character and tell a new story,” Takumi says. “I didn’t plan to have Phoenix in the game, but my colleagues said they wanted him to appear in some form, which is why he ended up being the accused in the first case in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.”
While the latest game in the series, Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies, brought both Phoenix and Apollo back—and also introduced a new attorney in the form of Athena—Takumi wasn’t involved with the title. He is, however, involved with a brand new Ace Attorney game that he says will be “completely different” from past titles.
