Platformers went through an interesting evolutionary cycle since video games started dominating entertainment scenes. Originally the medium’s dominant genre, to the point where even games that focused more on action had platforming elements, it turned into a way for a fad to express itself after Sonic the Hedgehog proved to be successful enough to attract imitators. The genre arguably peaked during its transition to 3D, when the PlayStation started getting icons such as Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, and Rare developed its own identity with its “collect-a-thon” platformers. Gaming culture changed in the 2000s and platformers, 2D and 3D, were overshadowed by the booming sandbox and first-person shooter genres. It seems that only the PlayStation 2’s platforming trio, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, and Sly Cooper, stood the test of time and entered the collective psyche of players.
While Jak and Daxter got a few supplementary works and Ratchet and Clank is still going strong, Sly Cooper was left alone once the trilogy concluded in 2005. Aside from crossovers, 2013’s Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time was the only major release the franchise has gotten since Honor Among Thieves, While Sly did not go through a downfall as infamous as Crash, Spyro, or even Sonic, Thieves in Time was controversial enough among the fanbase for everyone responsible for the series’ future to ignore it even today. If Sly were to come back, it should reboot the timeline.
Thieves in Time’s Unfortunate Decisions
On the surface, Thieves in Time is the perfect way to bring back a dormant series into a new generation of systems. The characters’ looks were updated while remaining familiar, the core elements of the gameplay remain, and the premise revolves around the juxtaposition of thievery and another concept. Despite their prior involvements with the series only consisting of The Sly Collection, the people at Sanzaru games know to create a blueprint for a typical Sly Cooper adventure, something other platformers that lost their original developers, like Crash Bandicoot, struggled with for decades.
That being said, the appealing nature of Thieves in Time did not prevent players from finding major things to criticize about it without relying on nostalgia. While the gameplay, such as the slower and heavier controls, had its detractors, the writing earned the ire of most critics. Characters were considered to be more irreverent and snarkier than in previous Sly Cooper games, and some of their newer traits, like Carmelita’s femme fatale demeanor and Murray’s appetite, were seen as stereotypical and tacked on. However, two story elements stood out for the worst reasons possible: Penelope’s random and poorly thought-out betrayal, which sours Bentley’s development in Sly 3, and the cliffhanger ending in which Sly gets stuck in Ancient Egypt that never got addressed due to the planned DLC being canceled.
A new game, whether it is Sly 5 or a proper reboot, that retcons Thieves in Time may be necessary. The Cooper Gang being betrayed by one of its own members is an interesting topic that the original trilogy never explored, and Penelope’s own shady history makes her a fine character to use when developing such an idea. What brought the idea down is the lack of properly paced buildup prior to the reveal and Penelope suffering from the game’s worst case of character derailment. She is mentioned in the beginning and forgotten until the fourth chapter, only for her to be reintroduced as a callous, manipulative, and greedy wild card. Even her special love for remote-controlled machines, the basis of her segments in Sly 3, is left unmentioned.
The ending, on the other hand, prevents a straightforward continuation of the series to be made. Since the main character has gone missing, the creators are left between making a standalone story starring only Sly, or making a more standalone sequence with the rest of the Cooper Gang. Either way, the cliffhanger was poorly planned, and any future Sly installment should ignore it, just like how Crash 4, the first original new Crash game in over a decade, decided to directly follow Warped instead of anything released after Naughty Dog’s time with the series.
There have been few, if any, updates on Sly Cooper’s future, so even thinking about what a new Sly game could do is wishful thinking at best. Despite this, if Sony were to commission a new installment, it should go back to where Sly 4 started, write the characters, especially Penelope, in a more grounded way, and aspire to emulate the best aspect of the original trilogy’s physics. This will not only win over Sly Cooper fans but a potential brand-new audience too.
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is available on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita.