Lady Layton

[Doctor Floptopus]

A place to discuss the new instalment in the series!
- It was too easy. Puzzles were all basic, and the cases were all easily worked out - I had the answer by the second clue in all cases, and often before.
- Having said that, the fact that there were only two sliding block puzzles was nice.
- Mystery Room is confirmed canon, which pleases me as I loved the characters in that game (especially al and Lucy) and I'm looking forward to seeing them return.
- The naming was some ace attorney level shit.
- The only really likeable main character was Sherl. The others were pretty grating (though Kat grew on me).
- Personal crack theories:
1. Sherl is the professor.
2. Al is Descole's son.
I'll elaborate on these in the spoiler below:

Spoiler

1: Sherl has no memory of his past, so no idea of his age. His mannerisms are fairly similar to that of teen Hershel from MM, and the game seems to hint it in a few places: before Kat tells him about her father, at one point he jokes "yeah, and I'm a professor of archaeology." He's also almost always the first person to speak after she muses about where her dad is, most notably in the final case coda when she says (paraphrased) "he [the prof] is probably out there somewhere, totally oblivious to how worried alfendi and I are." Sherl then immediately shows up, which seems like an allusion to me.
2: We know that targent seemed (IMO) reluctant to kill Hershel or sycamore in the azran legacy. From this, we can deduce that bronev doesn't want to harm his own blood, and also that he knows Sycamore is his blood. Therefore, it seems unlikely that he would kill sycamore's son knowing that it's his grandson.
Also, looking at how much Barton has aged in mystery room, I'd say it is about 30 years on maximum, meaning that alfendi (who is probably about 35 going by position and the timings) was alive during the original games. It seems unlikely that Hershel had a child in the original games, especially since he doesn't strike me as the type to have a child outside of a serious relationship. Therefore, al was almost definitely adopted (and Kat definitely is), so who are al's parents? Descole seems like a good shout, since he has an established missing son, a relationship with Hershel, a resemblance to Al and is in prison so can't raise a son.

3: Speaking of parents, though, it begs the question as to who kat's parents are. If she's not Layton's daughter, whose is she? Unlike alfendi, she's clearly been raised by Hershel from a young age: in photos and her actions she seems to take after and idolise him, unlike al who has something of an estranged relationship with him. She's clearly only in her twenties, and lady Layton probably takes place a while after mystery room given that Layton was still around in mystery room and Kat seems pretty close to Lucy, so must have known her for a while. So kat's probably 10-15 years younger than Al (explaining his exclusion from family photos) and also is unlikely to share parents with him. So, who's her father? Who's her mother? It looks credibly like she could be Hershel's child, or maybe related to Emmy or Flora. But why would Hershel raise Emmy or Flora's child? Is one of them dead? Who's the father if that is the case? So many questions! I'm probably overthinking everything, but since I breathe Layton I wanna knooooooooow

So yeah, post your opinions/hopes/ships/theories here!