Sly 3 Honor Among Thieves - Tumblr Posts

I sure love alignment chart memes and this one template really struck a chord with me for some reason

Redraw the legendary Sly Cooper: Honor Among Thieves quote

Funny, but,

here I am at the end and suddenly, all I can think about is what a coward I’ve been towards Carmelita- never took the next step.

Looking at Bentley and Penelope, it’s clear what life is about.

If Carmelita was here, I’d tell her straight out how I feel, and quit playing around.

Put our professional differences aside and see if we can make it work. But that’ll never happen now.

Can’t take this crushing… just let the pain stop.

Thinking out loud but good lord was it disturbing or was it disturbing that the only reason really that Sly survived the events of what went down on Kaine Island was because Dr.M was sadistically vindictive enough to torture him to death rather than play the cold, calculating villain that clockwerk was (I.e. stop messing around and kill the bastard who’s in your way to victory already)?

That thing he was plugged into was more than strong enough to just spike him into the shore rocks to get it over with, or swiftly crinkle him in like a soda can,

hell, if you fail the rescue as Carmelita, you’re punished with a cutscene of the monster literally devouring Sly, still conscious, in one gulp.

The setup originally kind of implied that the MO was going to be getting the life crushed out of him, but the funny thing is that broken ribs or limbs were “miraculously” not even on the list of injuries they found on the poor guy after he was let go. A concussion was, though.

That concussion was probably both… not intentional, and it might have deadass been what saved his life.

I kept wondering as a kid how squeezing the body = head injury and figured it was a suspension of belief sort of deal, and then today I realized that Sly most likely got the concussion during the face-off that started when Carmelita showed up- the beast was violently swinging him around for the majority of that mess, and it’s actually fortune in disguise that it rendered him unconscious. Any other incapacitating injury and M would have finished him off himself rather than turning his attention elsewhere and allowing the gang to retrieve him.

The crushing was only a cat playing with its meal. M didn’t just want Sly to suffer. He wanted to watch him fight against the inevitable, writhing on full display for the entire gang like the helpless worm he truly reduced Conner’s son to. It was probably the most joy the madman had gotten a taste of in decades and he was going to savor every second of it he could wring out. That’s seriously how deep his resentment for the Coopers had become. And he would have kept that up for as long as Sly had that tenaciously stubborn will and strength in him to keep struggling.

So,

I have to

notice,

the timing/connection between

dying in the rescue mission as Carmelita, and then immediately watching M’s play come to an end.

Fun “mission failed” screens from Sly 3

:)c

They’d give us a Dimitri game the fanbase would eat it up like a donut powdered in coccaine- jokes aside, I’d throw in for Bentley making the most sense. He has protagonist material that Murray (bless his heart) just doesn’t. Unless it was a driving game, or, a game focused on Murray where Bentley was still there to give guidance/direction.

OH, or, unless it involved his side arc with finishing his Dreamtime training with the guru. Now THAT would be an interesting (and respectful to Murray) title, even if pretty different from a traditional Sly game.

But seriously, Bentley has shown he can continue Cooper Gang operations in sly’s absence without skipping a beat. Completely renovated and took over Dr.M’s fortress and was implied to still be up to criminal stuff with Penelope in between checking in on everyone and working on the Time Machine post-Honor Among Thieves. He’s been going through more character development than Sly himself and he has his hands involved in everything from hijacking the dark web criminal market to watching over the Cooper vault.

I still can’t believe the audacity of him to just start chronicling his OWN section in the Thievius Racconus without Sly’s permission.

But the fact that the series treats this as completely ok carries a fascinating implication- that if Sly was going to step down from his mantle, it was just the logical next step for the torch to be passed over to Bentley, in a way, making him the honorary next Cooper and keeping the master thief legacy alive. Even without Sly having a child and raising them to inherit the cane, the clan still has a viable successor.

It’s almost like everything Dr.M could have dreamed of, except Bentley actually understood, respected, and earned that honor. 🥲

And ngl, I think that’s unironically beautiful and it highlights how their bond goes so much deeper than just friends. Sly and Bentley (and Murray) are literally family to each other in all but actual blood.

I think I’m trying to get at that a Bentley spin off wouldn’t have just been a nice add on to the series, it could have even made a continuation of the main narrative in place of The Sly 4 we actually got. But I am just popcorning ideas here.

Today i have mustered up the courage to ask you:

If Sly got a sidekick spinoff like Daxter and Secret Agent Clank, would it be a Bentley or Murray game?

Doctor M(andril), A Villainous Demonstration of Crafting the Perfect Sequel

I’ll cut right to the chase, there is no baddie in the Sly franchise (to me) that has before and will ever again top the writing of this monke right here. That’s not to put down Clockwerk in any capacity. In fact, the majority of what makes M so amazing is not what he is in a vacuum, but what he serves to build upon the events that preceded him. Clockwerk is the giant who’s shoulders he stands on, the two games before him the backdrop that makes him shine so brightly. I’ve always been a strong believer that stories are in large part only as good as their antagonists, and this is what Dr.M has contributed to make Honor Among Thieves the narrative peak of the Sly Cooper franchise.

For minor starters, everything about this freak is downright unsettling.

A mandrill monkey was a great pick for a scary looking, vicious little mastermind. Even with a fresh coat of purple and his short stature, he looks about as repulsive and menacing as he is on the inside. He’s completely obsessed to the point of being consumed metaphorically by his envy and resentment of Connor. He gave us a lot of interesting insight into the life and relationships of Sly’s father while leaving us with even more mystery and questions to ponder. He’s meticulous and intellectually gifted in his ways, but it doesn’t do anything to overshadow the fact that he’s also an utterly deranged madman.

Clockwerk’s hatred for the cooper line, as genuine and strong as it was, had this almost detached element to it, being more like a means to an end and fueled by superiority and rivalry competition. It was kinda hard to get your head around it, and the second game keeps him in your thoughts more like a slumbering eldritch horror waiting to rise again or a pure, immortal force of evil itself, rather than a person. He isn’t even really “anthro” in his design. Clockwerk is a monster, a robotic husk of a former individual.

Dr.M’s hatred for the Coopers on the other hand is… uncomfortably humanized. He’s narcissistic, yet he’s also paranoid and motivated by a rage that’s responding to his sense of inferiority and victimhood. He’ll use his warped justifications to stoop to the most heinous acts- not just because he wants to prove himself better- but because he wants to destroy/take everything Conner loves and accomplished. Clockwerk’s hate was cold and mechanic. M’s hatred is personal and boiling over with venom. Both of them were defined by little more than their loathing of Coopers, but while Clockwerk kept himself alive with his vendetta, M’s was the very thing that led to his demise.

Clockwork was “the enemy of all Coopers”, but he left the final member of the bloodline to wither and then bloom more vibrantly than ever to return and defeat him. He underestimated Sly, and was content to live on and continue his own work with the overconfidence that he had already won. I wonder in my head sometimes if maybe his power was actually starting to fade in the light of seeing that vendetta finally resolved. Or if that time-worn weariness and frustration was part of why Sly, barely an adult, was able to accomplish what generations of his most skilled family had failed to. He never knew Clockwerk during his prime, the great monstrous owl that his clan used to live in constant terror of.

Doctor M feels like he was really Sly’s own Clockwerk. A fresh and unfamiliar threat to truly test every skill he had spent a whole career of thieving to master, and someone who’s own history was far more entangled with Sly’s blood than he could have imagined. Clockwerk condemned him to death (or destitution) for no other reason than being a Cooper, but Dr.M actually wanted to watch the life leave his eyes because he was Sly Cooper, son of Connor.

And he’s not just fitting to compare to the old bird, but he’s more overtly a direct foil to Bentley’s character too. He’s a dark prophecy of the worst possible result of what would happen if the Cooper gang fell out with each other in a similar manner, or if some of Bentley’s foreshadowed insecurities (that started presenting after he became wheelchair bound) were allowed to fester instead of him finding support from others. That turtle is also the only character that Dr.M is able to speak to like an equal, because he sees himself in Bentley despite being on opposite sides.

He’s a really, really well-written main antagonist that does not try to take a whole new direction like Neyla; instead, he’s like a revamped version of Clockwerk’s “idea” done without milking out any more references or revivals of the bird and his role, which by this point was well-concluded and moved on from… The past of Sly’s family coming back to haunt him, the weight of honoring the legacy of his ancestors, and the struggle of exploring who he is both as a Cooper and the leader of his own found family, and Honor Among Thieves checked those boxes without ruining the closure he got back in Paris. Band of Theives will always be my personal favorite to return to, but all of what M represents, along with many other reasons, is why I consider the third to narratively be the best game out of the series.

“We watched as Dr.M just stood there, unwilling to leave as the walls caved in on the vault.

He’d spent his life lusting over the Cooper Fortune, and he wasn’t going to give it up, no matter what the cost…”

Sly Cooper: Honor Among F#*%s

You know how this goes by now. Sly 3 now hypothetically follows PG13 movie guidelines. Someone gets one F-bomb by the end of the game, choose wisely.

We gotta start accurately calling Sly Cooper a low fantasy universe at some point. It’s retrospectively wild how much supernatural shit is going on in front of your face that you don’t think about because it’s like… nothing to the characters that it’s happening to. People who have never played Sly Cooper have no clue how nonchalantly it grinds this rail between just “real world noire but furries” and straight up DC superpowers stuff.

• The surprising amount of undead, in hindsight

Black magic is just, you know, a thing…. and outside of when it’s the weapon of choice of the villain of the week, it’s not even really brought up. Tsao was building an army of honest to god vampires and Mz.Ruby has been fraternizing with homemade ghouls since she was a child. A second-game side quest involves descetrating a tomb, kidnapping a bunch of restless ghosts, and then unleashing them on the cops for a good prank. For Pete’s sake, Clockwerk, biggest bad of the franchise, is basically an eldritch machine possessed by the vengeful spirit of someone who became too petty and angry to die.

• There are people born with innate superpowers

So, there is no debate going on with the deal about Cooper abilities and this point, right? Sure, the Theivious Raccoonus has a lot of good pointers any thief worth their salt could gain from, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say somethings along the lines of gliding down lasers or turning invisible on command are a bit out of most readers’ capabilities. The 1st game’s humor in explaining off gameplay mechanics as in-universe phenomena had the unintended consequence of establishing that the Cooper clan members literally have a criminally inclined sort of spidey sense- literally hallucinating glowing auras and blue sparkles around anything both valuable and not nailed down. I think I also awkward appreciated the parallel to be spotted between the Cooper honer code and the self imposed limitations other media supers live by. That idea of “you have the gift of amazing power and you will choose to use it responsibly”, all the better here for the ways in which the clan’s premise subverts classic hero/villain dynamics.

• Ancient techniques of sorcery

run right alongside conventional weaponry

Some supers are born in this world, a lot of them are made. As if anyone with the time to practice and learn can just pick it up like karate. Religion has to be crazy in Sly Cooper considering there’s entire spiritualisms given demonstrable and epic power in what their followers are capable of. Murray literally can do some degree of magic from the third game and onward and there’s no telling what else he learned over the course of his Dreamtime training. Anyone with the wits and resources of the Contessa can figure out how to toy around with freaking mind controlling dark arts. Don’t get me started again on the whole “army of undead” thing which gets even weirder by the implication that the world does nothing to regulate these kind of abilities UP AND UNTIL the user starts to roleplay a cocky little warlord with their zombie friends. And Flame Fu is right there. A lot of what the panda king can do is closer to Bentley’s realm- very complicated and meticulous works of pyrotechnics, but Flame Fu is a whole something else that belongs in this discussion.

• Magical items and mythical beasts

The Mask of Dark Earth, the guru’s special stone, an entire kraken, a whole laundry list of things in The Contessa’s possession, an enormous swamp serpent, haunted trees, whatever the hell kind of ring Dimitri was wearing in the second game, a giant stone dragon statue that turns out to be AN ACTUAL FREAKING DRAGON in dormancy, a supercharged ancient bamboo forest, potentially the Cooper cane itself, and the not-to-be-overlooked every single piece of Clockwerk’s cursed body. I know I’m probably forgetting something because that was just off the cuff. It’s kind of wild that most of what we watch the Coopers focus on stealing can be stuff like museum paintings in a world where magic flying carpets are confirmed to exist. The hell. Why was I ever mocking the pirates in Bloodbath Bay for their paranoia and superstition?? Best part was always that basically none of it phased the resident smarty pants nerd character like it usually would anyone who fills that trope. Because of magic is just an accepted and normalized thing in the world, why WOULD Bentley talk about it any different than he would the history of lumberjacks or combustion physics? Instead of conflicting against his understanding of science, it just tacks onto it as more additional info, you know… the way it would if magic was just another set of rules to study and understand.

The real thing that messes my head up is how absurdly large Dimitri is.

Not in the 2D cutscenes, mind you, but that makes it even weirder somehow. His 3D character model is HUGE and for no reason like??? One second they imply he’s not much bigger than Sly which might actually make sense for a marine iguana and then there’s these times you’re just gawking at him like “wait what th-“

Sly is really just a little guy, isn't he?

Like, seriously, aren't there only like a handful of characters that are smaller than he is? Almost everyone else just kind of looms over him.

hiii heehee hoohoo

this little fountain area was my fav part of the venice level

please reblog if you leave a like!

Bare with me i have a ton of thoughts about this I need to try to get out in one big vomit blast

The worst part is how it’s NOT that hard to sell the “Penelope betrays the gang” premise. That’s a completely workable and believable follow through from the third game, where she was introduced as a twist villain off the bat. She’s cute and has been great to her friends as seen but she is not a fundamentally good person. She’s not, and that doesn’t count against her as a character, either. Dimitri is not a good person. He’s every bit the same sleazy, self absorbed lounge lizard you beat the hell out of in Paris. He helped the Cooper Gang for the same reason his once fought against them, because it aligned with his own interests. I’m sure he feels a lot more warmly towards them now, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with their moral code. The same with Panda King. His character development that suits him to joining the gang has NOTHING to do with atoning for or feeling a hint of remorse for the countless people he has killed/exploited; it’s freaking about putting aside his deserved embarrassment so he can come through for the daughter he abandoned when she needed him. Everything else for the gang was repaying a debt.

And Penelope is not that different from King or Dimitri in this realm. She was a career criminal with an enormous, merciless death count who tried to kill the gang when they were inconvenient to her ambition (to only provide her skills to “the best”) and joined them when she found the cards fell differently. She absolutely did not align with Sly’s principles of honor and integrity as the Black Baron. She rigged every tournament in her favor, cheated her ass off, and tried to literally yeet Sly off of a plane rather than accept losing at her own game. The Black Baron was not an imprisoning role she felt restricted to play… it was the Hyde to her Jekyll. The costume and her technology let her actually defy restrictions and be every bit the ruthless dogfighting blowhard she couldn’t be otherwise. Black Baron was someone who reveled in blasting his opponents out of the damn sky threatened his own staff with, and I quote “If we lose- if I lose, I’m going to take it out on all of you.”

What I’m saying is all of those qualities she showed when she was the Baron didn’t leave after she ditched the disguise. And it saved Bentley’s freaking life in Bloodbath Bay when she brought that side of herself back out again.

I really want to remind all of you that Lefwee is the only trilogy boss that was straight up MURDERED by a member of the Cooper gang.

I shit you not, Sly, Murray, Bentley, none of them have never actually killed a main antagonist directly. Clockwerk/Clockla? Carmelita was the one who laid the hate chip to a final rest. The Mask of Dark Earth? Also the cops (and it kind of just exploded on its own technically). At worst you only get the Batman treatment from Sly once you’ve made him an enemy. Penelope fed an entire man alive to hungry sharks and did a victorious emote over his final cries. It had me jaw dropped for what a suddenly dark closer it was, because we hadn’t seen something that nonchalantly brutal since Arpeggio’s death.

“Stand and take it!”

Point is, Penelope had the guts all along. Her widdle innocent Coco Bandicoot ass appearance completely belies a cheeky genius capable of utterly savage things if backed into a corner or taking a chance to chase glory.

You think Bentley’s romantic jealousy toward the crush Penelope was kindling for Sly was the only insecurity of his that had been obviously bleeding through to the surface? You think his frustrations about being paralyzed were the only things he probably found Penelope a cathartic ear to vent to when they became closer? Those chapters leading up to the heist on Kaine Island were a subtly tense period regarding Bentley’s view of himself and his role in the brotherhood. He explicitly was starting to ask himself some of the same questions that set Dr.M up for an ugly fallout with his and Conner’s relationship. Dr.M was a test for both Sly and Bentley to acknowledge some of their faults and remember what truly mattered to them, which both of them passed. Wholesome and wonderful.

But Penelope only joined on board for maybe the last few months or so of this team actually being a team. I don’t doubt that she fell in love with this mental powerhouse who could finally match up to her competitively, in fact I think the realization that it was actually Bentley and not Sly who had outsmarted her during the ACES played so so much into that. So what does that leave of her impression of Sly? All of this work, all of this sacrifice on some of their parts, to get Sly in spitting distance of his family inheritance, and then after Bentley invests every bit of faith against the doubts he probably clued her in on, this “lifelong friend” mf goes missing in action. No note, no goodbye, god forbid Bentley also told Penelope about the discovery that his BFF actually just ran off to elope with the very cop that tried to put all of them behind bars for years now.

Bentley of course knows Sly like a brother and where the man’s heart and commitments actually are. He knows that Sly earned that trust and he came out of the third game more solid than ever in his respect for the Cooper legacy and their leader.

….Did Penelope?

cause I’m not gonna lie,, I think the freak not.

Without Sly in the picture, Bentley proved capable of inventing fucking time travel and hijacking the entirety of Thiefnet. Thinking that the raccoon was only holding back dude’s potential wouldn’t even have just been in line with her in-character beliefs, it was more or less exactly what Dr.M concluded just by observing the gang from the outside. Penelope is right about Bentley. What makes her wrong in the important sense is her disregard for where Bentley actually is his own person with other priorities and ambitions besides that of the Contessa or Muggshot…. or the Black Baron. She can’t “become a villain again” because she actually never stopped being a villain, see?

And that’s why I’m so fucking mad about what thieves and time did with that raw premise. Bringing Bentley’s character development a little closer to the foreground now that we’ve pretty much finished with Sly’s coming of age? Making the part of him that’s a good friend who believes in Sly’s principles confront the part of himself that we all know had been making more devious and destructive plans over the years? Setting up this philosophic showdown between a genius thief with honor and a genius thief without honor where they still love each other but also have their own higher priorities tugging them apart and it’s agonizing for both of them?!? Jesus Christ that would actually be a story worth tolerating Bob Cooper after all!

It was a good idea and Sanzaru kind of dragged it over the drain and slaughtered it. The execution feels so hamfisted and abrupt, they obviously don’t show a lot of understanding for Penelope’s motivations, and honestly wtf is Le Paradox even here for? Paradox absolutely did not have to be here to make this work and he kind of slaughters it a little bit harder, because now you have to actually sell me the bigger bridge that Penelope, who’s risk averse, hard to impress, and arrogant as all fuck would volunteer as an underling to this joker. That actually, she needed him to be able to kill Sly who she already sees as an intellectual inferior. Yeah, real boss babe baddie you cultivated there, stooping down to be a dragon in chief instead of the main antagonist herself.. not! If Penelope weren’t here, Le Paradox would just be a shameful clockwerk wannabe beating a dead horse at best. She shouldn’t sell out for some skunk, she’s frustrated that Bentley sold out for some raccoon.

If he had to be there, the roles honestly should have been swapped regarding who’s the one atop all operations. Give her room to at least pretend she’s forced to do something she doesn’t want to. Give her that red herring to try and distract the team away from finding out who’s actually trying so hard to kill Bentley’s best friend. Give her that chance to be Mr “pugilism is my passion” again until the new mask is literally ripped off and she has nothing left but excuses. By all means, let this coward be riding a smug high about throwing an entire arsenal at Sly, but not about breaking Bentley’s heart. Don’t reveal her to actually be stupid for no other reason than to grant Bentley a soapbox to monologue about how dumb she is and how she knew nothing about him. Really the biggest problem with the whole thing was that the cooper gang was actually already apart and realizing their identity outside of the trio. Sly 3 ends with Bentley accepting Murray and Sly giving him space he uses to do exactly what Penelope wants tbh??? They were happy partners in crime with no hint/foreshadowing that they would end up fighting over the Master Thief code, and then she for… some reason??? Decided to stage a cause for the gang to come back together… so she could get rid of sly for the offense of… getting the gang back together. I don’t get it either.

It was a decent first draft, but they should have gone about it any other way than the route of a writer trying (intentionally or not) to convince you instead that the grand moral of everyone’s relationship drama (looking at what they did to my poor Carmelita too) was just “bros before hoes” and no one in the Cooper gang gets to fall in love without someone completely compromising everything they believe in and are, actually.

I’m not angry that they did it. I’m angry that they did it badly.

im bored

Scarlet talks about [Sly Cooper]

Furry crime game series from the early 2000s my beloved. Here’s some of my think thonks about it.

- Analyzing Doctor M as a posthumous foil to Clockwerk

- Picking apart the reasons Clockwerk needed to spare Sly as a child

- Breaking down what went so wrong with Penelope’s Thieves in Time arc (and how I would have handled the Black Knight instead)

- Brief reflecting on the fantasy elements that have been present throughout the series.

- Arguing Bentley as Sly’s successor to inherit the Thievious Racconus and by extension the Cooper legacy

- In which I massively overthink the Carmelita-Playable Kaine Island rescue mission

- Fun observations of some animal/npc designs through the games