#sly thoughts

[designraccoon]

The Sly 1 racing minigames are funny in hindsight, because I’m pretty sure they’re only time the Cooper Gang competes in contests without cheating. In Sly 2 & 3, Bentley always just has the gang sabotage their competitors [the lumberjack games, the holland plane competition, etc.]

Crack Headcanon: this is because the van minigames are planned solely between Sly and Murray, who are both too honorable.

Murray: “These dogs want me to race them three times around a track for a key :(.”

Sly: “here’s my strategy: get in there and drive your best! It's all you man. Drive the van with the left analog stick, and if you manage to pick up any nitro power-ups, you can get a boost by pressing the square button. Go get 'em! I’m sure you can win this and prove you’re truly and fairly the better driver.”

Bentley if he were involved: “slash their tires”

[designraccoon]

Being a Sly Cooper fan is like, if Spider-man were a character who only appeared in a series of obscure PlayStation 2 games from the early 2000s. And the people who played those games [especially as kids] were like “this ‘spider-man’ stuff has so much story potential! The idea of a fun kid-friendly story about a vigilante animal-themed superhero who has a tense relationship with both the Law and supervillain criminals, a character motivated by the tragic death of his family member forcing him into a position of responsibility at a young age, the superhero origin as a coming-of-age story, the main character’s unique way of effortlessly climbing across rooftops, the light colorful tone that still takes the core of the story seriously, the fun dynamics with other heroes who have their own unique powers, the colorful rogue’s galley of wacky themed villains with tragic backstories, the moody atmospheric art style, the way it gestures at deeper themes while also still remaining colorful and kid-friendly, etc etc.”

But then like…., instead of becoming a massive franchise, spider-man remained a scrappy little series of comic book stories that only you and approximately fifteen [15] other people remember. And any Official attempts to continue the character’s legacy [like the trailer for a movie that never came out] portrayed Spider-Man as a Wacky Loony Hammy Egotistical Joke Character like Crash Bandicoot, rather than a comic book superhero.

Though I do think there’s something sorta special about the fact that Sly Cooper never got franchised into oblivion? I don’t know how other Sly Cooper fans feel, but I’m actually sorta glad the series just Is What It Is. A lot of the media I loved as a kid has become so oversaturated that they’re now just Marketable Plushie Commercials to me [like anything owned by D*sney, lol]. But for all its many faults, Sly still feels a bit personal in a way that bigger “better” more polished kid’s franchises never can. Again, it’s sorta like an alternate universe where Spider-Man was a short series of messy flawed origin story comics from 20 years ago that a couple kids got really invested in, but that got cancelled after a limited run and never caught on with anyone beyond that.

[designraccoon]

I replayed Sly 2 with my cousin recently, here are a bunch of random funny things I noticed/I forgot about!:

Bentley refers to Dmitri’s disco as his “discotheque”

The mission where a Very Nervous Bentley has to bomb Dmitri’s disco ball SHOULD have been called Panic at the Discotheque

After you bug Rajan’s office, you can eavesdrop on Rajan speaking over the intercom-thing in the safehouse. At one point you hear Rajan talk about how he’s grown obsessed with eating his own spice (spice that causes people to become angry/unstable), adding more Explanation about why he’s become so unhinged.

The game is haunted by the ghost of Jojo the Raccoon, who may crash your game if you summon him....Iconic

When you’re eavesdropping on the Contessa, there’s a moment where she’s like “I can’t wait to find out where the Cooper Gang’s money is hidden, imagine the wealth that gang has accumulated!” At this point in the game, we had exactly two (2) coins

 When Carmelita’s wandering around the hub in He Who Tames the Iron Horse, the best Pro-Gamer Strat(tm) is to lure her around using the alarm clock gadget so that she can fight guards for you

We tried to find out who would win in a fight, Carmelita or the bears

It took a lot of alarm clocks to bring them together.

We never found out who won because we kept getting bear-ed to death, preventing us from witnessing the end of the fight. But we can obviously assume Carmelita won

Bentley’s sleep darts do not work on Carmelita in Sly 2. RIP, can we get an F in the chat

So many of the guards in Sly 2 spend a their time sleeping on the job as an idle animation.....and it’s really cute/funny. Like, in the Contessa’s level, the bat guard sleeps by folding his little wings around his head, and the wolf guard lies down like a puppy. How can you expect me to want to fight these little dudes??????

[designraccoon]

To Overthink Sly Cooper-- Neyla is basically the worst of both Sly and Carmelita? She’s a cool competent cop, like Carmelita-- but she doesn’t have Carmelita’s moral code(tm).  She’s a stealthy acrobatic thief working with a tech genius, the way Sly works with Bentley-- but she doesn’t have Sly’s loyalty to his friends.

It’s like, Neyla is who Sly or Carmelita could become if they threw away their morals. 

[designraccoon]

Another thing I Just Think Is Neat: according to the level commentary, the trees in Mz Ruby’s level are based on the trees in the classic fairy tale illustrations by Kay Nielsen:

You can see it in how the trees’ canopies are actually just a flat green shape, with only a couple dots on the very ends to trick you into thinking the flat green shape is actually a group of leaves.

[designraccoon]

My favorite thing about A Tangled Web is that the entire level hub itself is designed like a spiderweb.

Like. Most of the level involves climbing around these curved narrow stone bridges/buttresses, which connect smaller buildings and towers to the Contessa’s castle at the center of the level hub.

They’re like strands of a spider-web, with the Contessa’s castle as the center of the web.

It’s hard to get good screencaps but Neyla’s side of the map also feels like it’s a arranged as a spider-web? 

The little rounded structure in the circular courtyard is like the center of the web, with little alleys and bridges heading off in other directions.

Part of why Neyla’s side of the level feels “cramped” is bc all all the outer alleys are steeply curved and circular--bc  they’re the outer edge of the spider-web.

There are so many other locations designed like that too! It’s everywhere!

Like-- the courtyard outside the Contessa’s castle is like a circular web, with the well (that is a secret shortcut to the docks) at the center of the web.

And it’s hard to get a screencap, but the docks beneath the castle are these four narrow twisty paths that connect at a central point, like four strands of a spider-web meeting at the center:

The spider-web layout of the level is easiest to see when you’re looking down from the Contessa’s blimp. (You can actually ride the blimp at any time, not just in the final mission! The trick is that you can stand on top of the blimp balloon, and stand on the balloon itself, instead of trying to get to the basket underneath. And then the blimp will take you on an aerial tour of the level, and then you can look at the level design!)

Even the interiors of buildings are often arranged in spider-web patterns too. Like!- this circular crypt is designed like a spider web, with the trap on top of the stairs as the center of the web.

This little room is also a spider web:

Also: you can sneak past the guards here by spire-jumping onto a sword and then leaping onto the chandelier above. A chandelier that looks like a spider-web!

Idk A Tangled Web is my favorite level design in the series because the designers/artists took a simple observation-- “gothic architecture kinda looks like spider-webs” and just rAN WITH IT, lol.

And it’s really cool that it’s not just the details of the architecture that look like spider webs (spider-webs patterns in the shingles, spider-web patterns in the arches, spider-web patterns in the stained glass windows, etc) it’s also the level’s basic design/layout. 

The level is designed to make you feel like you are a little fly frantically running around on the tiny strands of a big tangled web. 

And I just think that’s neat!

[designraccoon]

I like how in every Safehouse you can always see the Big Important Thing the level revolves around from the window....constantly reminding you of what the story is about/what you’re supposed to be doing.

In the Black Chateau, you see Dmitri’s nightclub:

In A Starry-Eyed Encounter you see Rajan’s ballroom palace:

In The Predator Awakes you see Rajan’s jungle palace:

In Jailbreak you see the prison:

In a Tangled Web you see the Re-education Tower against the moon:

In He Who Tames the Iron Horse you can see the train station, where the trains are passing by::

In Menace From the North, you can see the northern lights (the level revolves around the Northern Lights Battery)

In Anatomy for Disaster you see the maze of Arpeggio’s blimp:

In Sly 3 you see Octavio’s sign (through the left window)

And then after you break it, you still see the broken sign looming over the safehouse, a constant reminder of your amazing victory:

In Rumble Down Under you see the mining crane:

In Flight of Fancy you see the Black Baron’s blimps:

In A Cold Alliance you see Tsao’s ancestral treasure vault on the mountain (the one that you eventually destroy):

And in Dead Men Tell No Tales you see the Skull Keep:

[designraccoon]

In one of the Sly Cooper commentaries the designers said that the Cooper Gang’s real power is tricking villains into defeating themselves. 

Sly doesn’t use brute force-- he uses the villain’s own strength against them. 

And you’d think the designers brought this idea up while talking about the way you often defeat villains using their own tools (like defeating Jean Bison with his own logging equipment or defeating Octavio with his own tar)....or the way you manipulate the police and criminals trying to capture/kill you into fighting each other instead (like the Neyla vs Contessa war)...... or the way you take advantage of the villains’ vanity (tricking Muggshot into fighting you in Sly 3)....or the way you use the monsters in the villain’s hubs to defeat them (like feeding miners to the alligator in Sly 3)....or the way you use the highly fortified architecture of the villain’s own hideout to sneak around unseen....

But actually the designers brought this idea up in a conversation about how you defeat the Bomb-Totin’ Roosters in Down Home Cooking