Sly 2 Band Of Thieves - Tumblr Posts

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

The implication of cannibalism (Or at least the spirit of it)?! In my E for Everyone nostalgic classic? It's more likely than you think!

What she says: I’m fine

What she means: In Sly 2: Band of Thieves, Jean Bison says everyone knows that all turtles are stupid/useless– showing there’s anti-turtle prejudice in the Sly Cooper universe. But the rabbit hole goes deeper. While we never see non-Cooper raccoons or other hippos, we do see other turtles in Mz Ruby’s level, and that’s where things get Creepy. In the Sly Cooper universe there’s always a clear divide between “human animals” and “animal animals”- but not for these turtles. One of the guards is an undead turtle who throws his head at you, but he doesn’t wear clothes like “human animals” do and cowers in fear when you approach him, like a cornered animal.  Mz Ruby has a turtle servant named Chumley escort you to her– and while he has a name, the ability to understand English, and the human role of a servant, he looks/acts just like an “animal-turtle.”  The level is also full of ropes that have dead turtle “decorations” on the ends.  There are even moments when Bentley says he’s too disgusted and can’t bear to watch Sly go through this mission– he makes general comments about how the level is “unsanitary” but was that the Real reason?? How does this world treat turtles??? What happened to the turtles in the Sly Cooper universe????????

What would

What would happen if Neyla ate catnip

Been playing Sly 2 recently

Okay so this is not even a critique or much of a commentary but it’s just acknowledging some Sly Cooper… design choices that keep bouncing around in my head rent free

Like I’ve never seen anyone talk about some of this

- the boldness of making a full 1/3rd of the enemies to be encountered in Paris frog people

- Speaking of Paris, apparently those flashlight guards kid me could only guess were some kind of scary cows have this entire time been warthogs.

- just always thought these cyclops squid guards from Relaigh’s level were interesting.

- boldness part 2: Pigs have consistently been the animal of choice to represent the wider police force behind Carmelita, up until only the third game

- Between the bats, the pigeons, the parrots, and the vultures I need Sucker Punch to answer me straight whether or not all the avians are actually typically capable of flight or not. In-game play seems to suggest they do have some limited form of flight and may just be weighed down by personal objects. Clockwerk flies, sure, but he’s a massive jet boosted android. But wait, Arpeggio’s entire sad backstory is that he couldn’t fly, so that MUST mean the norm for birds in this world is fully flight-functional wings. The reason I’m BEGGING to know is so I can say if it’s canon or not that bird people in Sly Cooper can just take off at any moment by flapping their arms ala Bojack Horseman, because it would be hilarious

- sorry I’m actually not finished with the birds but seriously, are their wings functionally hands or not? Clockwerk has literally been seen to only grab things with his feet, the bats in the Contessa levels certainly don’t seem to get any manual dexterity out of theirs, but????

Okay! So that actually settles it- except in game vulture guards also… only ever… use their feet to handle those same crossbows.

I’ll try to tell the little hamster in my brain it should really stop asking questions about the birds at this point tbh

meanwhile, here’s a noise that’s been lodged in my brain for nearly two decades that i myself mimic when i’m frustrated by, say, getting my password wrong

Some mission failed screens from Sly 2~

Scenario- Sly 2: Band of Theives, but it’s bound to pg13 movie rules.

“Clockwerk,

He was consumed with jealously for the Cooper Clan’s thieving reputation.

Is it inappropriate to refer to him as a monster?

No, not at all.

What kind of person stays alive for hundreds of years with the express intention of wiping out a rival’s family line?

Imagine the hatred fueling that first decision, to replace his mortal body… with soulless machinery.

Ultimately, it did the trick. Clockwerk lived on….”

oh me? nothing much. just at my job patrolling the same linear path through a warehouse as always. yeah i can hear someone creeping around and as soon as they step into my line of sight they are dead as fuck. but not until then. cant be too hasty with these things

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.

Just had to pass on this little gem I found the other day it is jammed to the max with vibes and groove

That part at about 1:45 especially my body just CANNOT stay still when that wave rolls through my ears. First rate jam and underrated cover.

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

Bentley during the prison break