#Professor Layton and the curious village

[quantomeno]

Professor Layton and the Raiders of the Lost Legacy

aka "I've finally pinpointed exactly what's wrong with Azran Legacy and it's Indiana Jones"

(spoilers for all the layton games. Not many for Indiana Jones films but there are some mostly to do with the Last Crusade)

(also sorry this is such a long post I got carried away)

So, the other day I was rewatching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (it was new years eve and I had nothing better to do and it was on tv) and as a Layton fan I chuckled a little at the opening where Indy talks about how archaeology isn't about hunting for buried treasure etc because as we all know, Layton spends even less time being an archaeology professor than Indy and honestly even less time doing anything remotely related to archaeology.

And as the film progressed, I had Layton in the back of my mind. I was a massive Indiana Jones fan around the same time I was a massive Layton fan but since Layton in the original trilogy is hardly an archaeologist I don't think I ever really made the connection between the two series.

So, the problem I've always had with Azran Legacy is twofold. One is the story letting you do the different locations in any order, because it forces the overarching plot to stagnate and is what I think is a big factor in the rushed revelations at the ending (where we have like five different things going on and like everyone dies and comes back to life like woah, slow down). The other is that it just doesn't feel 'Laytonesque'. Now, Miracle Mask also has this issue, and in that case it's kind of the point because of the move to a new console and the new graphics and the series was getting repetitive by then. And some of the things I'll discuss later will be true of MM but I think they're more pronounced in AL.

The thing I realised watching the last crusade was that there's something else: AL is an 'Indiana Jones game' (in a sense).

OK there are a few key features of an IJ film for those who haven't seen them:

Indy meets someone who wants him to track down a valuable artefact that has some sort of mystical properties (e.g. the Holy Grail)

He discovers that some bad guys are after the treasure for evil purposes (it's often nazis)

What follows is an often violent chase across countries as he tries to piece together the mystery

In the end, Indy discovers the secret but just before he can get to the treasure, the bad guys get there first

He typically gets betrayed at a pivotal moment by someone he trusted

Indy has to help the bad guys under duress (e.g. his dad is shot and can only be saved by the Holy Grail)

The bad guys get the treasure but then do something stupid because of their greed/pride/ignorance and then they get killed by the magic power of the treasure (and the myths around it are thus proven true)

Indiana Jones rejects the allure of the treasure's power and either returns it to its rightful owners, leaves it alone or it ends up hidden away in a storage facility and forgotten (despite the fact much is made of his catchphrase 'it belongs in a museum', most of the major treasures don't actually end up in a museum)

Now, if we look at Azran Legacy:

Layton meets a guy (Sycamore) who has found a mysterious girl frozen in ice who is tied to some greater legend

He soon finds out Targent is after the girl and then they discover the second clue (the Azran eggs) and realise Targent want the 'Azran Legacy'

What follows is an occasionally violent chase around the world as Layton tries to piece together the mystery and find the eggs before Targent

Layton puts together the key from the Azran eggs but it gets stolen by Descole (his 'arch nemesis' who who was disguised as Sycamore)

Everyone chases Descole to the Azran sanctuary but then Layton gets betrayed by Emmy who was secretly working for Targent

Bronev (Targent's leader), in his desire to get the Azran legacy at all costs, sacrifices the frozen girl (Aurora) by stabbing her with the key

Laputa Castle in the Sky happens robots are unleashed on the world and to stop them everyone present must sacrifice themselves

Aurora (she got better) resurrects everyone with Azran magic science and then dies herself (she was a robot so she wasn't really alive anyway)

The Azran sanctuary and the robots crumble to dust and Layton, having rejected the allure of power and so on, returns home (after dealing with some family drama but that's a whole other story)

But you see the point? Azran Legacy is a stereotypical treasure hunting plot. Which is of course The Point, but it really shows just why it doesn't feel like a Layton game.

Compare Lost Future which is often the target of criticism for its over-the-top final act. Why is LF still a Layton game? Because we don't have the 'magic' elements Azrran Legacy has. Because the location is quite fixed and isolated. Because the evil guys aren't chasing us around the globe. Sure, they appear every time we go onto their turf, but 1) that's their turf and 2) they are no chase scenes. There isn't this final act where the villain wins the prize because there is no McGuffin.

And that is the other key thing: Layton games actually very rarely have McGuffins that are actual items.

CV's golden apple is really Flora.

PB has the box, obviously and that one I concede.

Last Specter has the flute? I guess. But the golden garden is the real treasure everyone's hunting for but that's not a 'thing'.

LF has the time machine? Maybe that counts?

Eternal Diva has Ambrosia/the secret to eternal life, but Ambrosia is again a place and the secret isn't a thing either.

MM has the mask (duh).

And AL has the eggs and later the key. The point being that there's an actual hunt for the eggs. Unlike in Last Specter where the flute never really changes hands.

The next point that then arises is why don't PB and MM suffer from this problem?

PB has only got Don Paolo as the 'villain' who wants the treasure. The other treasure seekers are either the real owner (Anton) or his brother who is kind of just hanging around grumpily and leaves after being told off by a hotel clerk. There's no 'chase' and the treasure doesn't physically appear until Don Paolo drops it and then leaves the plot entirely. Also its 'magic' is explained scientifically in a (somewhat) believable (or at least comprehensible) way.

MM avoids it because it is actually a Scooby Doo plot and not an Indiana Jones plot: the villain is a guy with a grudge in a costume, the magic item had no powers and was just a key to some weird contraption that lifts up the city (for reasons) and all the 'magic' was just circus tricks. The fact it mirrors the Last Crusade's "other hand" scene is hardly relevant. Even the ruins segment is decidedly not Indiana Jones since, again, there's no race against time aspect and there are no bad guys chasing them. MM definitely takes a lot of cues from IJ but overall the game is still Laytonesque. It is a character study more than an adventure.

And for people who complain about the weirdness of Last Specter. That's not that weird. Dinosaurs existed once it's not completely insane that a big aquatic animal was hiding in the town's reservoir.

I think this even ties into why I dislike the AL 'finger point' scene: all the other games build up to that moment because it answers an important mystery at the core of the story (or leads to it). Because a Layton game is a mystery game, but AL is hardly a mystery story, or it's really just a bunch of mini mysteries embedded in a treasure hunting chase story. Like, there is the 'what is the legacy' mystery, but that's not something you solve the same way you do the hallucinations of PB or the identity of LS's spectre. It just appears by itself at the end.

In trying to make a big, exciting, globe-trotting game, Level 5 overlooked the fundamental features of a Layton game, in particular the overarching mystery, and supplanted them with treasure-hunting tropes. AL is the least Laytonesque game of them all as a result and while this is not inherently a bad thing (we all know the original trilogy's twist was getting a little stale the fourth time they did it), it does change the flavour of the game to such a degree that I personally don't love it to the same degree as the other games.

Also the whole Layton I am your brother and also Bronev is our father bit was way too rushed and I can't forgive it for that. Honestly that's actually 75% of why AL is my lowest-ranked main series game but that's less fun to talk about than all this.

[beasblues]

more doodles and sketch pages! started going through some of the requests I got on my stories, such as the first batch of gumshoes and the last slide, featuring the two dahlias ^^

[justkillingthyme]

🎩New Game 🧩

[spaceistheplaceart]

i misread candies...

[merquplex]

the golden apple 🍎 🎀

closeup:

[s0f1kka]

Throw away your Nintendo DS system.

Edit by me

[i-post-random-layton-screenshots]

[izzaa13]

merry christmas everyone, have a flora

[vgadvisor]

[samthecookielord]

Petition to get layton a bed hello????

[raspberrybirb]

It's Flora Friday time of the week

[beasblues]

more doodles and sketch pages! started going through some of the requests I got on my stories, such as the first batch of gumshoes and the last image, featuring the two dahlias ^^

[justkillingthyme]

A compilation of every voiced line of Hershel laughing

Minor spoilers warning for all games

*do please tell me if I’m missing one and I’ll go back*

[several-worms]

:^)

[merquplex]

too sick to finish this today but it's flora friday yippee!

[s0f1kka]

Professor Layton cult

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