► TIMESTAMPS ⏱ 0:00 Intro And Background 1:39 The Premise 3:35 Presentation 5:37 Expanding On The Past 11:31 Horrendous Writing 18:00 Episode 1 - Turning Japanese 21:20 Episode 2 - Go West Young Raccoon 25:27 Episode 3 - Clan Of The Cave Raccoon 29:42 Episode 4 - Of Mice And Mechs 39:38 Episode 5 - Forty Thieves 44:00 The Ending 50:25 Concluding Thoughts Yeah uhh... I wasn't expecting this video to be this long either. But at the end of the day, I'm really proud of it. I've had plenty of people asking me to cover this - it's been a long time coming so I hope it's everything you guys were hoping it'd be and more! Just a heads up there probably won't be another video for a couple months again. Work is about to get even busier and after running myself into the ground constructing this behemoth I could really use a break for a bit before I get working on the next video, so I hope this will be enough to hold you guys over! And finally, thank you so so much for all the support you've shown me, especially this year - it's truly been incomprehensible the speed at which the channel has been growing. It won't be much longer until we reach 1,000 subscribers which is absolutely surreal to me. It's a goal I've been chasing for soooo long so to see it quickly approaching suddenly is just insane. Love you all so much, thank you again for your time and endless support, enjoy the video! 😁❤️
More information from sly five Penelope tries to make sly erased from existence, and not go to the orphanage with Bentley and Maria by doing this they never stopped Professor clocks or the purple monkey and all of the Coopers. We just save never existed so Penelope goes back in time and fixes everything.
We... we don't talk about Sly 4. We don't talk about Sonic '06, and we don't talk about Sly 4. They never happened; it was just a mass hallucination. Just like in Ghostbusters. o_o
idk if it was fan speculation or not, but I believe they were considering Henriette Cooper as an ancestor but decided to drop her because of the fact that there was a pirate level in Sly 3 and they didn't want things to seem repetitive. Quite honestly though - considering the way they handled the female characters in this game - I'm kinda glad they left Henriette well alone. lol
Penelope was actually portayed as pretty friendly in the 3rd game, and was one of the nicest player characters of the thieves that sly teamed up with in that game, so it made absolutely zero sense that Penelope becomes a money hungry villain in this game. She was literally guilt ridden when seeing Murray was captured due to her plan in that game... Senzaru assassinating her character for shock value makes absolutely zero sense.
It would be better for writting....if she was "forced" to do all the work from a true villain. In some concept art of the characters, one of the suppose villains was a mole with a big drill on his back meaning this guy was suppose to be the brains of the group of villains behind Le Paradox. If I had to make this change in Episode 4, it would be this: "When Bentley investigates and finds out Penelope was the Black Knight all along, he was shocked for the reveal, But then finds out she was not alone. Then this "mole" shows up, to check on the progress of his operation. He would talk about how they did capture her, forced her to build the Time Machine for the whole time travel thing, while the mole would make sure he would take the whole credit. Basically, he would keep Penelope as his personal "slave" to do all the dirty work for him." That would make Penelope's story here better, and make it more of a rescue mission. But NOPE! Somewhere in the production team decided it was a "great idea" to just scrap the mole character and put her was a villains just for shock value, and the excecution resulted in character assassination. They did dirty to her, honestly.
Well she was already a villain before, she lied on the dating site about how she looked to Bentley, always paid attention to sly more than Bentley. And going off how Sly 4 ends and shows Penelope is back to messaging Bentley in the credits I think they planned on doing a redemption arc for her in the sequel that never happened
Personally, I think that the Penelope in Sly 4 is simply the Evil Twin, while the Good-ish one (Hey, she did plenty of illegal things) is being held prisoner.
You could fix a large chunk of the plot and remove some stupid coincidences by making one single change: Sly is happy with his life and has no plans to change. The plot is kick started when he notices weird shit, like his hands flickering in and out of existence etc, as his history is messed with. He SEEKS OUT Bentley out of desperation, who looks up suitable artifacts rather than them falling into his lap. This also adds a layer of tragedy to Sly and Carmelita's whole deal. Now instead of him going back to crime because he was "bored", he's forced to break his retirement, but all she sees is him leaving her for his old life, and now he has to prove himself to her again in the face of her towering grudge. The situation becomes more "oh how sad that circumstances forced Sly to break his loved ones heart" and less "girl just throw the whole man away". Further wrinkles could be added by Sly realizing how much he missed hanging out with his friends, and while the main plot line is Sly trying to save his present, the emotional stakes is Sly choosing whether to choose a familiar past or an uncertain future.
Exactly. With this storyline, they could’ve also had seperate episodes or at least heists where they have to steal the artifact that Bentley tracked down in the present in order to be able to travel back to certain time periods to save the ancestors. Them just randomly having all the artifacts they need was honestly just bad and lazy writing. If they had made getting the artifacts part of the gameplay, there could’ve been some episodes in the present and some in the past.
I pretty much said the same thing! I was like why didn't they tighten up the writing with this? I don't think, production was in a rush so what was the hurry? Not only does Sly Cooper stand out because of the style of the games but the story was handled with care that both children and adults could enjoy, take away, and learn something from. Sure, Sly had already come to grips with his past but if Sanzaru HAD to make a fourth installment the writing should have been as good if not on par with Sucker Punch. It seemed they just focused on gameplay and shiny new designs rather than a tight, coherent story. In the past three games everything was meshed well and connected meticulously, the story, characters, plot lines. Thieves in Time is really just "hey, look! You can ninja jump again!! Wowzers isn't that cool!? See, didn't you miss Sly!!?"
This would have been a much, MUCH better plot line. That, and if they fixed the ending, then I would’ve tolerated Penelope’s awful villain arc. At least we can cope by saying none of this is canon since it wasn’t developed by the original creators, Sucker Punch.
I can vividly remember following the black knight into the castle and as Bentley talks about Penelope I literally said, “why are you bringing her up? You haven’t mentioned her since the intro. “
Honestly it should've been that Penelope has been hypnotized by Ms Decibel, and that's how we get the Arabic artifact. It connects and doesn't ruin Penelope and all is good in the world.
Agree, That would have worked. I can see Penelope went out all by herself until the villains sneak behind her and kidnapped her. Later, Ms. Decible used her hypnosis to hypnotize her and forced her to work for them. Later, they ordered Penelope to fight Bentley. Bentley is forced to fight her. After he wins, she's free from control.
@@pippi_playstation Thanks, it would have work of her being kidnapped again and this time she's now hypnotized to help the villains. This would have save her character and also give Bentley determination to save her and also get revenge on the villains that wronged him, Penelope, and the entire Cooper clan. Also added after saving her, Carmelita had to take Penelope to the hospital; however, Penelope will be in police custody while she's in a coma. Bentley will get her after they deal with the villains and when Penelope wakes up, they'll get her out.
If you ask me, the boss for medieval england should’ve been Sir Raleigh instead. It makes total sense because he was the fiendish five’s engineer. He would hold penelope hostage and threaten/blackmail her into building his robots and mech suits or else bentley and the gang would be hurt if she doesn’t cooperate. Then during the boss battle, penelope swoops in to save bentley and sly where she and Raleigh engage in a sword fight. Penelope defeats Raleigh, she rejoins the gang and she and Bentley are still a couple.
Brilliant idea. 😊 A mad sky pirate frog gets rehired by Ceril, and with persuading Penelope he takes the persona of Black Knight with Raleigh's jolly roger on the mech's chest and builds the three-headed moat monster. And Raleigh's the one who makes Sly's medieval ancestor into a royal fool. And to makes maters worse (and for the nostalgia's sake); he attacks and destroyes castles around the England before plundering their treasures and has a basement under his new fortress where he collects the grooses. A Shear sight of that coning amphibian's mech holding Penelope in it's Grip could give Bentley a though of throwing up. For the part with the fight with Sir Raileigh the frog, i need some options from you how is it going to look like: A.) Is Sly Cooper is going to fought against Raileigh in his black knight? B.) In the first phase should there be fight with the giant mech like in the final project? C.) Should Penelope engage in swordfight with Raileigh in his Armor? Or when his out of his armor because Sly destroyed it? D.) Should Bentley in his "readjustmented" mount monster armor engage in fight with Raileigh?
@@maurycyoseka1057 I’m so glad you agree with me on this. 😊 And to answer those four questions… The boss fight goes like in the original, Where the first phase has sly fighting Raleigh in the giant mech, then in the second phase Bentley in his own mech fights Raleigh but after the frog had the upper hand and Bentley is knocked out of his mech. Penelope, who managed to escape from the workshop Raleigh imprisoned her in, swoops in to the rescue. After some banter, the two engage in a sword fight similar to lefwee’s boss fight in sly 3 but instead of a side scroller it’s open area. Whenever Raleigh let’s his guard down by teasing and gloating, Penelope strikes. Once his health is fully down, The two clash blades (Mashing the X button) and Penelope wins, in a QuickTime event she Punches and kicks the villainous frog and spins him around tossing him into a wall, Knocking him out. Thus she wins the battle and the episode ends.
Reading this now makes me think that really a lot of the villains could have been return villains that got busted because of Sly, just like Paradoxes father was busted that's why he'd recruit them, and to fuck with Sly.
Sanzaru when writing the characters for this game: Murray: hungry all the time Sly: sarcastic all the time Carmelita: just sit there and look "sexy". Oh and stay mad at sly until the very end so you can have an emotional moment when he is sent back in time permanently Bentley: ...just be Bentley idk
You are mistaken about one point Bob is not the only really muscular Cooper, Slaigh MacCooper was the cooper famous for being super big and strong. "The strongest of the Cooper Clan, Slaigh MacCooper, could break any lock with a single blow." was the quote about him by Sly in the vault.
Sly 4 had a good idea and interesting story with the time travel plot and Cooper ancestors, the graphics were good, and the gameplay and mechanics were good, but they really dropped the ball with the writing and the characters. The majority of the main heroes feel like downgraded versions of themselves. Sly felt disrespectful to both Carmelita and his ancestors and Penelope's whole betrayal felt completely out of left field and just ruined a fun and likable character. Also Penelope's reveal and twist with being the Black Knight was the exact opposite of the reveal of Penelope being of the Black Baron back in Honor Among Thieves. The reveal in 3 was a clever twist and made sense.
Time/dimensional travel always has and always will be the dumbest plot points in the history of storytelling, silly boy you have so much to learn about this world
To be honest, that was probably the intention from sly 3 with the vault being a beautiful set up to it. So the idea was already there. Sanzaru shouldn’t even get credit for that. They were probably handed the idea, left to fill in the gaps, and boy did they mess it up with lazy writing and zero imagination. Just a boring, repetitive game
@@kgisabeast really? i never knew that before thank u for pointing that out oh wise one, wow, im in complete and utter shock after learning this new piece of information thank the lord the earth was blessed with the presence your brain
38:39 Here's the thing, Sly never even stole Bentley's "potential" in the first place since he was long retired for several years to live a normal life with Carmelita post-Sly 3 So that makes Sanzaru's Penelope motivation even more retarded & illogical. And plus, Sly saved her life from General Tsao's giant temple Dragon in Chapter 4 in Sly 3 and helped with the rescue mission in the Chapter 5 Pirate episode! Showing her that they have a "No Team Member Left Behind!" mentality and we saw she was clearly scared for her life when Captain Lafwee kidnapped her and held her hostage! I really missed SuckerPunch's Penelope...
The villain motive could’ve easily been fixed if Sly’s return to thieving involved him stealing many of Paradox’s earnings and treasures. After getting hit by Sly so many times, and hearing how his contacts keep coming up empty thanks to Sly, he’d finally break and try to rid Sly and his family for good. The justification is there. Having it all and making it despite the rocky start of his life. But now slowly starting to sink because of the same family line that got his father arrested, and him to fumble at the start of his life. Something about this game just screams “too many rewrites” or “first draft” kinda thing. Maybe that’s the reason for the delay (though could be something completely else). Edit: Actually, maybe Sony’s demands and PS Vita compatibility caused the delay. Makes me wonder if the story was hastily rewritten at points, due to the changes they had to make and scrapped content. Makes me curious how much cut content there is for this game.
what i dislike about sly 4 is how the game really has a sad cliffhanger ending with no real explanation since DLC was planned for it but scraped. would have love to seen bentley with penelope and sly with carmelita to really end of the franchise on a positive note, but thats just me. the ending of sly 4 left more thoughts, questions and urge for more than how sly 3 ended, and honestly wish that the franchise ended there.
If Le Paradox was mainly mad at Sly's dad then why he didn't just attack him on that night when he framed his dad? Or as you mentioned and did the most logical one kill Bob.
So I just finished watching the video, and... it's REALLY good. i probably agreed with most of what you had to say. also, I honestly thought you were going to "shake the controller" at the VERY end as a little goof.
I did too, but that's probably just because... Thieves in Time was the only Sly Cooper i ever played, so i didn't know much about the story before playing
Can we talk about how dirty the cooper gang did Toothpick? They basically just bullied the the ever loving crap out of him. Even stole man's lollipop 😂
@@MrJarheadTV And because of it he didn't hear the oncoming train while he was working on the train tracks and faded into obscurity as Bentley mentioned....
As a dude who worked at Party City when this game was released, I do remember selling Carmelita that costume. Also, the word you were looking for to describe Murray's horrendous writing is Flanderization. 😁 Congrats on the 200 new subs, dude!
I'm still holding out hope for Sly 5, OR remakes of the original trilogy with PS5 graphics, OR a complete reboot of the series. I just want something, absolutely anything! We just can't leave this series that's so widely loved and cared for with the ending Thieves in Time gave it. Our boy Sly needs to get out or Egypt, so maybe 2024 will show us news... We just need to hold out hope.
What i loved about this level 42:00 is that i think its the only time in the game were they mention a past cooper outside of the 5 we see in the game. When sly wants to steal the HUGE pile of gold and Bentley tells him that if he took a single coin it could mess up his own lineage, but to not worry since his pirate ancestor will one day heist that very pile of gold you're traversing. I really wanted more of those interactions were we get a little lore on past coopers not shown in the game.
Probably a happy accident on the writers part, but Murray's fossil necklace has one less bead than it did in Sly 3, possibly pointing to the idea that Penelope took a chunk to give to le paradox/ use for her time machine and so for that reason Murray's necklace gets them exactly when they need to be, not by coincidence but by design/ betrayal
@@MrJarheadTV I also bet they could retcon Penelope quite easily. She talks about Bentley being brainwashed. What if it was her? Mz Decibel hypnotises her, but because she has a strong mind, the levels required to crack her cause some moonlight level splits in her personality. So in the next game, Sly and the gang have to perform an Inception style "mind heist" in the vein of a psychonauts level where they have to enter her mind via the Guru and fight off her differing personalities. Could make for a really trippy hub world.
The idea of Siril overreacting to such a minor thing is not really a "bad" reason that I personally wouldn't be against. You got villains that turn good, have very good, and justified reasons for their actions, or are such magnificent bastards that you love to hate. Siril would be the kind of villain that's a hate sink; the kind that have no good qualities and are meant to be hated (though more on the scale of annoying that actually hated). He should've been revealed from the start as the villain with the rest of the time being used to showcase how petty he was, thereby making his pettiness his fatal flaw and the reason he gets taken down.
This was a nice video, and I agreed with a lot of its' contents. I really don't like the cutscenes. The Sly cutscenes throughout the trilogy were interpretive, illustrating actual events, but without literal detail. It never attempted to make half-baked, unfinished animations pass off the footnote of each chapter. They picked their poses and relied mostly on tweened stills in order to sway the emotion of the viewer. They maintain thick borders and lineless backgrounds to always maintain a specific focus in any particular scene, and their shots are all thought out illustrated by actual comic book artists with some inspiration for the animations themselves coming from contemporary SatAM cartoons. Thieves In Times' cutscenes rely too heavily on bad tweening animations. They struggle to strike the dramatic poses we're familiar with in the original trilogy, and for something stylized around something as organically dynamic as comic book drama, Sly needs those poses. They used a lot of raster work on these new Thieves In Time cutscenes, and I feel like it's to add unnecessary detail. If they had left a lot of things up to the funkified cartoon pop of the original trilogy, the detail would be implied anyways, so it seems like they underestimated the power a standalone image can have, and relied on generated stenciling to try and give their environments life, something the original trilogy never struggled with. I have no real comments about the writing. LeParadoxs' design is meant to be something of a mockup of Sly - stinky french rat who brings Sly back to their mutual homeland, both have a family business in thieving - and that alone would be a cool idea for a villain. They then imbued him with a lot of flaws without enough time to pick at - be it womanizing, pridefulness, list them off - and he kind of comes across as some mischievous underling more than an overarching bad guy. The creative syntax simply can't save poor writing. And last, the 3D stuff. A lot of it is ok. Some of it leaves really good impressions, but there's always some kind of problem in pacing with their 3D cutscenes. I feel like the animation missed the mark a little bit as well. Some impacts don't work right, a lot of the characters show their gums off so you can actually count how many teeth they have - feels less like funkified cartoon pop, more just like a lot of attention going to the wrong places. They don't have it being interpretive as an excuse because they struggle to be so literal now, but they don't use the vertex animations or modelwork to make any of it really look good - and so every cutscene feels a little bit off. This could be because they don't play with lightring enough, or didn't take the colors of the characters themselves into consideration when building them or their environments. That wouldn't be too big an issue and a minor foot off of the original trilogy if it weren't for the childish "gotcha" humor, even going so far as to be meta about it - which in Sly Cooper where every character is supposed to show some agents of cynicism comes off as more like insecure writing. Oh - and the level deisgns sucked nads. Go West Young Raccoon worked out really well, but any other level as severe weenying issues, to the point that you need the map to figure out where you are, an issue I'd never had with any Sly Cooper game before. That hurts. Well hey, good video, that's my wall of text for the day.
You bring up a great point about the cutscenes. You really hit the nail on the head on the more nuanced aspects of their presentation and I appreciate you bringing that deeper level of insight up. I touched upon moreso just the artstyle aspect of things which is of course a big point of contention for a lot of people, but the points you bring up are also something that I wish I dug into more! And just many of the other things you bring up in regards to the 3D stuff like the modelwork, lighting, coloring, etc. is all great stuff that I'd like to learn more the ins and outs of one day as well. I really appreciate your comment, I know I've still got plenty to learn and comments like yours are very insightful so thank you! Glad you enjoyed the video as well!
@@MrJarheadTV I tried not to write too much because after some point I might as well make my own whole video essay about it - but I'm too lazy for that right now. I look forward to seeing your other Sly videos and giving my big dumb 9 paragraphs on them too! Keep up the good work, I can definitely tell you like the video editing process.
I think a big improvement to some of the coincidences involving time travel would be short mini-missions involving you stealing an artifact from the time period you wanted to go to in the present as a sort of intermission between chapters
The thing that sunk this game for me was the uncomfortable sexist overtones I got while playing it. Firstly because of the needlessly sexualized redesigns of the female characters (while the returning male characters were basically unchanged). Then there's the fact that they couldn't be bothered to include any female ancestors (Bob was a character Sanzaru made up. Why couldn't they make him a beefy cave woman instead?). Then there's the fact that the only non-sexualized female character (Miss Decibel) is constantly subjected to jokes about how fat and unappealing she is to the man she fancies. The Penelope twist was awful for a multitude of reasons. But it was especially bad because nobody in the gang shows a shred of concern for her until five minutes before The Twist happens. The twist would have had a bigger impact if you saw Bentley and the others worry about her and show distress about her being missing throughout the game. But they're having a great time without her until Sly awkwardly reminds us that she's missing right before the Black Knight shows up. And then the story frames Bentley going all Oscar Pistorious on his girlfriend as an empowering moment for him?? As if he was lacking in confidence before engaging in a little domestic violence and knocking his ex unconscious?? WTF? And then there's Bentley's speech about how Penelope (the ONLY female member of the Cooper Gang and Bentleys intellectual equal) was actually a moron the whole time. And only succeeded in the last game because she was aided by her much smarter boyfriend. Why would Sanzaru write her like this if we're supposed to take her seriously as a villain? Why would she choose to be some jerk's lapdog when she has the funds and criminal experience to be a crime boss in her own right? Why would a pilot/engineer suddenly want to be a weapon designer so badly that she'd throw away everything she has in order to do it? Oh, and don't even get me started on how gross that belly dance mini-game was. Carmelita is supposed to be the love of Sly's life. And he doesn't slap the sh!t out of Bentley for degrading her like that!? I'm supposed to root for him to get the girl when he treats her like trash!? Ugh! TL;DR Playing Thieves In Time as a female fan of this series was painful. It honestly felt like the game was actively telling me, "The Sly series is just for immature boys now! Go away!" the entire time I was playing it. I don't know what the hell Sanzaru was thinking when they made it that way
And also, why couldn't they have explored the Seven Seas with Henriette (an already established female Cooper) and her crew, and take down a new threat at Blood Bath Bay? And also, they should've used the mole as the villain of "Of Mice and Mechs" (in my fanfiction universe, he's another Dutch robotics expert named Wimhof, who attended the Netherlands' famous international school of robotics and was expelled one day, becoming a notorious criminal who didn't care who he hurt or how much he hurt them unlike Penelope who's still noble at her core and values her friends).
Never saw it like that but ya Sly 4 was Trash. Why Bob was even in the game when there were a plethora of ancestors to choose from was mind boggling. Could've easily put Harriet (pirate) in. Garbage game.
Penelope should never have been written as a villain and yea, the way female characters get treated in this one is just awful. Carmelita's redesign feels like Sanzaru was just going for the whole "sexy Latina" while ignoring how Carmelita was this strong-headed cop committed fully to enforcing the law and catching criminals.
At this point, Sucker Punch should be the ones handling this game. They got better narration and story telling as shown with their recent Ghost of Tsushima. They also made every character so unique and well crafted. Sanzaru on the other just did a really poor job of continuing the story that doesn’t really need a continuation. Gameplay and art style overhaul is nice and all, but the execution of plot was so poorly thought out. It feels like Sucker Punch should’ve done this game more justice as I’m seeing with a lot of folks. To top it off, I discussed this with my buds while ago that it feels like they should’ve just start with a new generation of the cooper gang, a brand new adventure, and a brand new story. Also, that belly dance mini game is a nightmare to beat for the trophy like it was dragging too long and I wanted to move on to the next part of the mission. Plus you also be dealing with input lag due to framerate dropping on cloud.
Well, there's always fanfiction. As it is, there's an interactive that I add to - kinda centered around Carmelita Fox, it could be set at any point in the franchise's history, even creating alternative timelines where the Inspector actually joins the gang as early as Sly 1, or during Sly 2 or 3 (not to mention a cute section where a young Sly and his friends get adopted by Carmelita's parents, around the time of the cookie heist). There's even a Post 3 thing where Carmelita gets amnesia, and believes that *she's* the thief. Then there's all the crossovers - Bad Guys, Zootopia, Kung Fu Panda, Puss in Boots, and more. Likewise, an explanation on what Penelope's deal is - kidnapped by Evil Twin Sister. Then there's the different dimensions Carmelita ends up in, like one where that Sly (and his family) is involved in Law Enforcement, and that Carmelita (whose family is a long line of thieves) is in charge of the Gang, and more crossovers - Monsters Versus Aliens, Biker Mice From Mars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.....
I love the Sly Cooper franchise, it's faint because I remember watching videos of the games back in 2008 when I was little and if Sly Cooper 5 comes out, I definitely would want to play it for the high-quality graphics and game mechanics.
Video idea: Take the main 3 PS2 boys, Sly, Ratchet and Jak and give a quick review on each of their main PS2 trilogies then rank them all. Each entry would have like a 3-4 minute quick review and you just go one after another, then ends with a ranking of the 9 games worst to best
I have actually thought about that! I've got some other ideas for videos in the meantime but maybe a couple years from now that's something I could do!
Personally I didn't mind Penelope being evil since she did shady stuff as the Black Baron. But you're right. Sly left her the Cooper Vault with a damn pirate ship. That aint billions. Also her motivation was weak. Like maybe she had the itch to be something similar to the Black Baron
The only thing that was a mistake was not giving us a sequel after ending the game on a cliffhanger. Or at least make the ending a nice conclusive ending.
One good thing fos Sly 4: The worlds (hub worlds) are colorful and the music fits them like a "fist in the eye" (a Finnish saying) PS: Grizz has become a meme in Finns Sly community. At least some Finns think so. PSPS: Grizz's (English) voice actor voicing him makes Grizz really sound like a gangster.
definitely the only sly cooper video essay series i’ve ever enjoyed. really awesome work here dude, you pretty much nailed it when it comes to what brings the game up and down. for the sake of discussion, the villains kill me more than anything else really. as good as the interactions can be at times, it just sucks how much they don’t really matter. at the core of the series is the constant feeling of being in hostile, unfamiliar territory. every past villain has been inseparable from their environment; the area can’t exist without them and vice versa. the tension is constant because just walking thru the level gives the villain a sense of grandeur and power, something to be feared. in thieves in time, the whole point of each villain is that they Literally are not supposed to be there. at it’s core it’s meant to break your immersion. and not only do the really gorgeous hub worlds not really reflect this strong outside influence wreaking havoc (almost entirely period-appropriate guards, minimal traces of LeParadox forces) but the characters devolve into madlibs. they can be anyone from anywhere doing anything for any reason. all we get is a small brief at the start on the who and what and why, but we’re given really nothing to care about. whoever this villain is, they’re kinda just some chump on leparadox’s payroll. and since the writing already doesn’t do much justice here … you get the point. would’ve loved to play as kid cooper against like, a fucking wild west carmelita type sheriff or something more period accurate
That's a great point you bring up about how the connection the villains have with each area differs in this game from the previous ones, it also doesn't help that yeah they don't seem to be taken very seriously. Also like you said each time period has guards appropriate to their time period, with England being kinda the only exception with those mechanical wolves walking around. Thank you for your comment and I'm happy you enjoyed the videos!
This game would have been 100% fixed if at the beginning Bently reached out to sly about the book, and sly decided to go for broke and just confess to Carmelita about the amnesia and to ask for help saving his family's history. And then we could have had the amazing moment of Carmelita immediately agreeing to help because she cares about sly, and a comedic bit of her already knowing he'd been lying the whole time. Because ofc she would, she's a detective and sly is a dumbass lol
Also could have even salvaged the Penelope twist by instead of having her just randomly turn evil, she could be motivated by resentment towards Bently out of miscommunication and insecurity. The parallel to Carmelita and sly making it work by being honest, and Bently and Penelope not being able to because they're not able to be honest to eachother would have been actually really nice in a tragic sort of way
Plot wise it's rather hard to accept how a certain former party member becomes a rat. Despite having tons of fortune as a well known champion. My take, and in an ironic way, she had a fleet of airships, planes and even a small army. Sounds familiar, instead of being a edgy bird She controls a mech and lives. But as it is, i hope Penelope just gotten convinced like Ms. Decibel.
This is my least favorite Sly game. Not to mention, Penelope's betrayal came completely out of nowhere. EDIT: Or have Le Paradox threaten Bentley and the rest of the Cooper Gang if she didn't cooperate. That would've been a better explanation of WHY Penelope betrayed the gang than what the game gave us!
@@MrJarheadTV you don’t suspect Ms. Decibel having a hand with Penelope’s betrayal? That hypnotist was practically wrapped around LeParadox’s fingers. Plus early development designs showed that not that Penelope was never meant to be a villain but Ms. Decibel was never meant to be a hypnotist, she was meant to a scholarly forger.
@@MrJarheadTV But there also wasn’t anything disproving it either. It’s a old story development trick creators use. I think that’s because sanzaru wanted to see how fans react to their Penelope and threw in Ms decibel as a plan B alternative way to fix her and their mistake in case they can’t come up with anything else. Think of it like an escape clause. Because sanzaru mentioned that if they couldn’t do a sequel they would do a DLC instead.
Personally I feel like if that were the case, using Ms. Decibel as a copout is still just bad writing, it's like hoping for the fans to make connections to fix the plot rather than actually writing a good one. I just feel like that's a lazy way of asking the fans to write their own story, rather than leaving things up to interpretation and letting people make their own connections based off of things the writers clued in, because as I said I don't feel there was anything actually in the story at all that alluded to that. As I said in the video, she wasn't mentioned once after the England episode (besides the credits but even then that had nothing to do with Decibel).
Also penelope fell in LOVE with sly in an a cold Alliance but when she fell in love with bentley after she still had feelings and ALSO SLY SAVED HER LIFE FROM A BIG DRAGON IN SLY 3 ALSO and after all that...hates sly!??!?!?!?! WHY
The thing i hate about this game is how they ruined Penelope I mean it wouldn't be as bad if she actually got a redemption moment like i spent the entire game thinking she was gonna show up and help during the final fight but no. they just ruined her for no reason making everything that happened with her during sly 3 pointless
Great video! What I really don't understand is why so many people on places like reddit try as hard as they do to rationalize this game's writing and design decisions. Like Carmelita's new getup and personality, Sly in Egypt, and especially the Penelope betrayal. They treat any criticism of the game's story either as childish whining or a refusal to give Sanzaru Games a chance. Sanzaru is hyped by them as just a poor victim of Sony and the fanbase. "They were just passionate fans of the series with the noblest of intentions. With all the right ideas and brilliant observant minds who paid close attention to the trilogy were going to make this awesome trilogy/story saga of their own. But you ungrateful fans and Sony's executive meddling ruined any chance of the series continuing." "So shame on you for spitting on poor, poor Sanzaru. How dare you criticize and be upset by cliffhanger endings, cringe dialogue, lame villains, forced nonsensical betrayals, and character assassination. They just needed more money and time to let the game cook, and it would've been a masterpiece. You're just idiots who don't get the big picture, like I do."
I see sanzarus main goal of sly 4, a crazy update in the gameplay for the next generation of playstaition. They still focused on the story but had the crazy coincidences to reach there goals of time travel and the cooper ancestors gameplay. To be honest, playing sly 4 is fun because of the visual appeal and gameplay. Not so much the storyline.
I remember ages ago when I first finished this game. The person I was talking to said “oh that kinda makes sense for Sly to go to Egypt. To become SLYtunkhamen”. Made sense to me at the time but I dunno now.
Sly 4 was my first Sly game, I tried it when it was free on PS+ on the Vita, and I liked it so much that I 100% it and immediately bought the Sly collection. Of course I loved the older games. Playing the collection made me appreciate the OG games and the progress the devs made from one game to the next. Having 100% every game in the series (screw the Sly 3 challenges!), I dont really think 4 is a bad game. Even if it doesnt hold a candle to the trilogy in character developement and writing (Penelope's plot and Le Paradox's motivation were bad even for someone new to the series), but it still my favorite gameplay of the series, going back to Sly 1 after this made the controls rough for me. Sly 4 was tight and snappy, even better than Sly 3 IMHO.
I can agree with that, for all its faults character and writing wise, I don't think you'll find many people who think Sly 4 isn't fun to actually play.
35:46 Okay, I’m gonna come in here, I like a thing of FanFiction, where she’s not doing it for money, she’s doing it against her will because Le Paradox is holding Bently hostage in a time loop, to explain it, Le Paradox both killed and didn’t kill Bently after a check up on his spine. And has a communicator like Bently gave to Lizard guy, but a bit more primitive which sends just a red dot or blue dot, red was kill and blue was leave. That’s why I liked the fanfic better than the game when they went over the game for its arc. 42:00 also, during this chapter’s…”finale”, it also allows Penelope to be a part of it. 54:16 I’ll bring up a bit of the ending of the fanfic. Due to Le Paradox’s plan he partially succeeded because his partner in this crime killed the first ancestor from Egypt and they need to find a way to kill the killer and put time back on pace. They kill the killer because if they didn’t all of time would be destroyed, and the reason Sly didn’t instantly disappear was because of divine intervention of the only time god, and in a sad ending, Sly and Carmalita had to give up their first child to put time back on track. THAT, is why I feel the one fanfic is better than this game. In its entirety.
Sly 4 had great graphics and gameplay too bad the story wasn't as good and that the game didn't sell well at all, honestly the only way I can see Sony make a new game is through a Remake of the Thievous Raccoonus. The reason I think that is the case instead of a Sly 5 is due to the sales as I mentioned, but as I said that is up to Sony. Anyways great video!
Gameplay wise it was great, but story wise it didn't make fans happy as characters were flanderized and important elements like how time travel works were not explain, it can be Fixed with a sequel that improve gameplay. Mainly by making Carmelita more of a playable character, give 'The Murray' a more fitting ark of being the main man needed as Sly and Bentley recover from the last chapter. Also maybe fixing Penelope story by getting rid of the money and more focus on her feeling over shadow by Sly and felt like she knew more about Sly then Bentley and getting rid of Sly would give her a dream life where her and Bentley would have everything, making every great invention they can think of. Other things like a Crime Family/ Mafia that LeParadox was in to explain why he became so big, and to be are new group of villains as they were secretly helping and supplying him with stuff for the Time Travel thief plot well using the time machine Blue Prints to make a smaller one that let them come up with there own rewrite of history so the Mafia can be the one ruling Ancient Egypt during the time of 1 of the 3 Slytunkhamen, and I say do the third one who was the one who made the Cooper Vault. Just improving on what we have is the best way to get a Sly 5 but a Reboot where we get a new trilogy thats similar but different then Sly 1-3 where events happen differently so each game can flow between each other smoothly would be better at this point.
10:28 I... it's been over 10 years since I first played this game... I've finished the story multiple times, and yet I never even realized that the green, blue and pink hacking avatars Bentley uses were meant to represent the main trio. It seriously never even crossed my mind and now that I see it, I can't believe I never noticed myself.
You can also see clockwerk in all of the hubworlds if you look hard enough. And Bentleys binocucom crosses out Penelope’s name after her betrayal. There are a lot of little details you can miss
To me this game is a nice 4th Title in the series. But yeah I also see the problems it has. But the only thing I really feel doesn't fit is the betreal of penelope. I mean she says she never liked Sly. When in fact she said in Sly3 that she only joined the Group because she had a crush on Sly until it transfered to Bently.
Everytime i tried playing this game, i always stop. It just doesn't feel like Sly for me. I will however watch this entire video! The intro is really gripping! - Keep it up! i Love the Sly content! :D
@@MrJarheadTV I paused halfway through, and waited until dinner. So the second part was enjoyed with my DINNER! - Now that is when u know a video is good, when u have to make a FEAST for it :D
SUCH A GOOD AND WELL THOUGHT OUT VIDEO. captures all my thoughts exactly. I needed this and immediately watch it after seeing the thumbnail. thank you so much for your great work!!
Anyone notice how the backstories for the villains are carbon copies of some of those from Sucker Punch's trilogy? Like El Jefe is like General Tsao and maybe Sir Raleigh without motivation (like glory or boredom respectively), Toothpick went from loving the Old Western movies as a kid to being a notorious gangster as an adult with no clear connection (unlike Muggshot who was bullied and wanted to put his tormentors in their place, being inspired by the gangsters on the big screen), the Grizz is comparable to Dimitri without the passion and hard work the latter put into developing his kinetic aesthetic style and his motivation to punish the art world for rejecting him (the former's "paleo-graffiti" style just seems to be there as a way for him to get greedy and want more fame and money), the butchered version of a certain robotics expert (whom I like to call Peonlpe after another review's name for that version) was like Neyla without any of the buildup that made her villain twist work, Miss Decibel jumped from "I can't play the trumpet properly" to "I'm going to hypnotize people into committing crimes for me" without a clear reason (except maybe hypnotizing the audience to applaud her, but I still can't really see how she makes the jump from failed trumpeter to notorious criminal) unlike Don Octavio who had connections in the mafia that recruited him and were fans of his opera music after rock music took over the Italians' hearts in the form of bands like the Oscars, and Le Paradox is like a weak Clockwerk who just wanted to eclipse the Cooper line and lacked the owl's mysterious past that made him cool to many players. I hope Sucker Punch can come back to the helm someday and decanonize Sanzaru's additions to the timeline with a real _Sly 4_ game...
I feel like having sly wanting to pull a heist immediately at the start of the game is stupid because they could’ve just had Bentley reach out to sly and tell him the thievous racoonus is disappearing and for them to go back in time, without any character assassination. and LATER ON it shows sly actually enjoying their heists again. I don’t know, on one hand I love the ending when carmelita says ‘sly…’ and sly goes ‘I know’ but their fallout is just so contrived.
Grizz is ironically and unironically the Best villain in the game. He's threatening Bob, the first Cooper, something that the Cooper gang wouldn't have had a single clue about if they followed the thievious raccoonus like they had planned. If it weren't for Murrays neclace and incredible luck, Grizz and Le Paradox would've won. And besides that, his actual personal plan is probably the best out of the villains. Make fake cave paintings in prehistory and dig them up in the modern day to gain a shit ton of money. And something that won't mean anything to most people... *Hiss finnish voice acting.* In english his voice is clearly based on afroamerican rap culture. But in finnish, his performanse is like a funny uncle whose rapping and rhyming lacks style, consistansy and sense. This isn't a bad thing. The *entire* finnish community of Sly loves this take on the character way more than the original, due to simply being so stupidly funny.
I was reading the comments, and have really nice ideas of solving the plot issues. I would really like a remake of this games with certain changes: 1. The Plot details 2. Sly's dialogues and "personality" 3. THE MURRAY's personality 4. Penelope don't being bad 5. The coincidence of the artifacts being handed to them 6. And the main villain introduction (it was to early Aside from that, the gameplay and animations are good, but I would like them to bring back the comic style telling
I'm sorry but I literally lost my shit at this part 10:29. And was laughing uncontrollably for 20 minutes I almost ended up in the Hospital due to lack of Oxygen. So thank you friend. You monster. 👀😲😂.
Surprised there was no mention of the originally planned PSP Sly game focused on time travel. Some concept art exists, including one some kind of evil shadow Sly (oh late 2000s)
I have a theory that the reason they made Penelope evil was to try and set her up as the one who built Clockwork’s robot body or something in a sequel or maybe even the Egyptian dlc. In interviews they did say Clockwork was going to be involved it would make since for him to make a final appearance and would also explain why Le Paradox was such a weak main antagonist because it was misdirection or something.
Part 4 of the Sly series was a mistake and the story was all over the place. The villains were complete idiots. The main villain was the worst villain of the Sly Cooper series. Wish the story would have been where the ancestors got pull from the past and into the future and they go on this futuristic adventure. We would also like to have Conner Cooper (Sly's Dad) appear and go on the adventure with his son. Sly, his friends, Carmelita, the ancestors, and Sly's parents have their own boss battles. As for Penelope, it would have work if she was kidnapped and hypnotized and had to work with the villains. Had a battle where Bentley was forced to fight a brainwashed Penelope. After the fight, Penelope is freed from control, but has to be taken to hospital. Bentley gets upset and angry and vows to stop the villains. That way Penelope and Bentley's relationship wouldn't have been ruined. Had it end where Sly's parents and ancestors return to their time. The main villain tries to use the time machine to destroy everything Sly tells Carmelita to shoot the machine to stop it and save everyone. Carmelita shoots the machine; however, the main villain pushes Sly into the time portal before it was destroyed. Carmelita defeats the main villain. Bentley, Murray, the present Cooper gang and Carmelita are upset of losing Sly. The credits of the villains now in jail, Penelope woke up from her coma and has to escape the hospital with Bentley's help, and the gang are searching for Sly. The twist is that they found Slytunkhamen instead. He's now in the future with the Cooper gang. It ends with Sly now in a different timeline, he's now in the future. He meets a thief that is a Cooper and the Cooper looks at Sly and said, (these two different ways) first ending would be saying 'Dad?' or a second ending would be saying 'Grandpa?'
Bro you deserve so many freaking subscribers. Your video games you reviewed and the games I grew up playing are so closely intertwined. Sly is my favorite game series of all time and it never gets enough love!
One of the guys at Sanzaru did an interview I think in 2019 where they were asked about Sly 5 and why they ended the game the way they did, and that's when they revealed that whole thing was supposed to be in the game but the Vita had to ruin that lol. It's kinda odd that it took like 5 or 6 years before they clarified what the whole situation around that was but that's apparently it
@@MrJarheadTV saw another theory video, my take away, what is sly is the first ancestor in the theivius racoonus, in a time paradox style story, sly defeated clockwork before he cyborged up and hence why sly beat him both times
Dude. Spot on. My biggest lament is not that 4 ends on a cliffhanger setting up the next game that won’t be made. My biggest lament is the Penelope “twist”. It’s so damn unfair to Bentley. They really could have leveraged her to a much more heroic position while still providing a disguise twist to make a call back to 3.
Pretty wild. Loved Sly growing up. But I agree with the majority of your thoughts on Sly 4. They did Penelope and Carmelita super dirty. I don't find the game near as charming with the other characters. And it's worse because that's it. The final send off. It's been a decade and people still whisper excitedly about Sly 5 lmao. It's almost as bad as the Bully community about over hyping anything at all to make it look like a sequel is in the works. Alas, we'll never get a true finally like how Sly 3 was set up to be.
Sly already called a previous villain he fought an egomaniac. So WHY did he used that word "ego" twice in the game? It's like combaining that line at 22:10 with Sly's previous critic on The Boss' statuet and you will get " Talk about an overinflated ego.".
Since the story of the game ended with Handcliffer and making a sequel is almost impossible these days and the characters are completely changed in nature, yes, yes it was a mistake
This Whole video is right on the money! Thieves in Time is a good game that should have been a GREAT Game. What keeps it from being so, is exactly what you described. Sly being a dillhole, Carmelita being the stereotypical angry Ex for 85 percent of the game, Murray's flanderization, that damn ending, and worst of all(in my opinion) Penelope's sudden and unexplained heel-turn. There's a quote from one of my favorite characters that she needs to hear: "Intelligence is not a privilege, it's a gift. And you use it for the good of mankind." - Dr. Otto Octavius That whole section, especially Bentley vs. Penelope was painful to get through and the messed up part is, it REALLY Didn't NEED to happen. Side note: If the devs REALLY needed The Black Knight to be this big, imposing figure, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense why they had Penelope build a whole dang Mech Suit when Muggshot is RIGHT. FREAKIN. THERE! But aside from that, this is a really well done video. Your editing is masterful and you had me laughing a good bit. Can't wait to see what else you have in store!🦝💎
I'm convinced El Jefe is the best written interaction her specifically and only because this boss battle was the teaster/ preview clip they pushed hard before the game came out. Like it was the ONLY thing they released for so so long that of course it had to look good and not be cringe af.
I never really understood why the last fight was a QTE, bc all the other boss fight were fight. But then i leared that apparently they only had the budget for either the section with all the ancester or the final boss fight. WHICH ITS STUPID WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU MAKE A FINAL BOSS A QUICK TIME EVENT
It also just doesn't make sense to me like I feel if you have a budget to work with you'd make sure you put the money you need to be able to develop a fully fledged, proper ending to the game on all accounts _aside_, right? The ending should easily be one of your top priorities. Be smart with the budget so that if it runs low you can atleast do something that might be more lackluster in like the middle of the game, that way hopefully people just forget about it by the end thanks to the game having a strong opening and ending.
Thieves in Time was my introduction to the Sly Cooper series. I was young and played it around 2016 on my dad’s old ps3. For me back then I absolutely loved this game, but after years of sometimes playing the game and playing the HD collection of the original trilogy on ps4 I can see some of the games flaws that I never got as a kid such as story and some of the gameplay. But personally even now I still love this game, even though I haven’t played the game in a while as the ps3 I played it on is buried somewhere in my garage. The last time I played I always remembered enjoying playing as Sly’s ancestors, especially Tennessee. I really like guns and Tennessee just added fuel to that fire when I first played the game when I was like 12. But I’m getting ahead of myself, I don’t know if I’m a bit blinded by nostalgia but I love this game. (Also I had a massive crush on Carmelita when I was younger before I found out I was gay but that’s not important…)
While it is nice that Sly got some appreciation on the PS3, I often wonder if it was worth it when the plot we got was covered tons better by years worth of fanfiction from the fandom over the years. Like I'm not even going to call this badly written fanfiction because it's an insult to some of the 'Sly travels back in time' fanfiction that I've read. lol The way they handled Penelope is just unforgivable. There were just so many other ways they could've tackled her betraying the gang. Somebody brought up the concept of her being hypnotised - which I loved - or she could've been blackmailed/threatened. I would've found it a lot more compelling if she feared for Bentley's safety as opposed to her feeling he was "squandering his genius". It's actually borderline scary how she thinks Bentley doesn't deserve any input in what he wants to do with his life AND that he would murder his best friend for money they didn't need. I could go on for days about how "yikes" her mindset is. Especially when Bentley as a character has struggled with self-worth throughout the whole series. I also never realised how stupid it was that Carmelita got sent back in time by Le Paradox up until now. How... exactly was that going to solve the issue of her 'knowing too much'? Why not just kill her then and there? Or, better yet, give her some much-needed agency by using his other time machine herself to help out Sly because, despite being mad at him, she still wants to help him? But considering how they handled her character too: that's too much to ask. I get that a lot of Sly fans appreciate this game for "it's better than nothing" reasons but I personally just wouldn't be sorry if it never existed. The original trilogy was great and ended perfectly. The only real thing I (sorta) liked about this game was Le Paradox and the idea of him belonging to a rival gang of thieves struggling to make ends meet because they're skunks and they're hardly as sneaky or subtle as raccoons for obvious reasons. It's just a shame it's hardly explored and he just comes across as a Clockwerk expy as a result. You may as well have had a Clockwerk descendent in his place because that at least would've made any background unnecessary because we already know the lore of Clockwerk from previous games already.
When I was younger and still had issues with the game I was still really glad it existed cause like you said it was one of those "better than nothing" situations. When you're younger you're just greedy lol and you want more and more, but yeah as you get older I'm just like yeah probably should've just let things lay as they were, no need to bring Sly back for this.
@@MrJarheadTV Oh yes, absolutely. I felt the same way back when this game came out but the longer I've gone without playing it and replaying the original trilogy over and over: I think that's a sign that something is majorly lacking for me, so what's the point of it exactly? I just didn't get the same enjoyment out of it as I did with the original trilogy. Also, that ending. Fuck the ending. I completely ignore it and say Sly got off the blimp somehow when it comes to fan content because I can. haha This video was very enjoyable and covered the game very well. Appreciated your humour a lot of the time too. And kudos to you for looking at the game on a technical level and pointing out the good parts that the awful writing prevented me from realising. I do think the developers had an appreciation and love for the franchise but that can only get you so far sometimes.
After literally just finishing thieves in time again I have to say that I agree with most of what was said in this video. The game itself might come close to being my favourite Sly experience, but there's too many grievances for me to ignore. The story completely falls off after the ice age chapter: Penelope got her character assassinated, Ms. Decibel doesn't leave much of an impression at all and le paradox is just a moron. I think that there's also not enough time for the other members of the gang to shine aside from Sly and Bentley because of the mission structure. Murray only gets two full missions to himself and you barely play as him outside of one minute segments besides that, and you play as Carmelita a grand total of three times, two of those being in the same episode. Oh and as a final note I have to say that Sly's "you won't get away with this, I'll find you" line is the funniest piece of dialogue in the entire game, which is incredible because it wasn't supposed to even be funny
Penelope being a traitor is one of the most egregious things about Sly 4. Poor Bentley. :( Also a nitpick but Gallath and Salim shouldn't know how to ninja spire.
I wish Bentley would have just gone back in time to around the time period of sly 3/2 to recruit sly rather than destroying his character by giving up on Carmelita so haphazardly. I think going back to play as the ancestors is a great idea but just executed poorly. And idk why people have a problem with some fan service with Carmelita, she was a babe and almost turned my 15 year old mind into a furry, thankfully I escaped with my life lol
Your videos are such quality content, with in depth reviews and fantastic editing to compliment it. I've just binged all the R&C videos and now here I am on the last Sly video! You deserve so many more subs!
Ah yes, never finished this game, had it on the psp, but it was fun no doubt as you said, and had one of the most unfortunate endings, ever. (Oh wait, think this is on PS now, sweet)
Going from the trilogy to Sly 4 is like going from Teen Titans to Teen Titans Go One was a series that while still light hearted and fun, had some pretty mature themes and subjects for a kid's game, like one of the main plot points of 2 was _drugs_ While the other made the series way too overly childish in both tone and style, which is kind of weird to say given Carmelita's redesign It's a shame since the game could've explored some pretty interesting topics and continued on the themes of legacy from the original games with things like how you never truly know everything about a person or a _never meet your heroes_ type chapter
On the point about Murray's personality, he didn't quite have that strength or bellowy voice he used to have. He just kinda sounds like a normal dude. And on top of the overuse of eating jokes, they found any and all times they could to have him refer to himself as "The Murray." Its like Sanzaru was like "You guys like that? 'The Murray'? Well here you fucking go" and made that precede every line of dialogue he has. He doesn't even say it the same anymore as I mentioned. It got really lame really fast, and even replaying all of the original trilogy like a year ago, it never once felt like that before. Subtlety was extremely lacking in this installment.
► TIMESTAMPS ⏱
0:00 Intro And Background
1:39 The Premise
3:35 Presentation
5:37 Expanding On The Past
11:31 Horrendous Writing
18:00 Episode 1 - Turning Japanese
21:20 Episode 2 - Go West Young Raccoon
25:27 Episode 3 - Clan Of The Cave Raccoon
29:42 Episode 4 - Of Mice And Mechs
39:38 Episode 5 - Forty Thieves
44:00 The Ending
50:25 Concluding Thoughts
Yeah uhh... I wasn't expecting this video to be this long either. But at the end of the day, I'm really proud of it. I've had plenty of people asking me to cover this - it's been a long time coming so I hope it's everything you guys were hoping it'd be and more!
Just a heads up there probably won't be another video for a couple months again. Work is about to get even busier and after running myself into the ground constructing this behemoth I could really use a break for a bit before I get working on the next video, so I hope this will be enough to hold you guys over!
And finally, thank you so so much for all the support you've shown me, especially this year - it's truly been incomprehensible the speed at which the channel has been growing. It won't be much longer until we reach 1,000 subscribers which is absolutely surreal to me. It's a goal I've been chasing for soooo long so to see it quickly approaching suddenly is just insane.
Love you all so much, thank you again for your time and endless support, enjoy the video! 😁❤️
More information from sly five Penelope tries to make sly erased from existence, and not go to the orphanage with Bentley and Maria by doing this they never stopped Professor clocks or the purple monkey and all of the Coopers. We just save never existed so Penelope goes back in time and fixes everything.
We... we don't talk about Sly 4. We don't talk about Sonic '06, and we don't talk about Sly 4. They never happened; it was just a mass hallucination. Just like in Ghostbusters. o_o
the fact that Henriette Cooper and Sly's Dad were skipped over as ancestors was a massive missed opportunity
Definitely a big screw up, I assume they were hoping to be green lit a Sly 5 to go forward with that but... yeah...
idk if it was fan speculation or not, but I believe they were considering Henriette Cooper as an ancestor but decided to drop her because of the fact that there was a pirate level in Sly 3 and they didn't want things to seem repetitive.
Quite honestly though - considering the way they handled the female characters in this game - I'm kinda glad they left Henriette well alone. lol
@@rjthedetective*Cough* Camerlita belly dance *Cough*
I’m pretty sure they were planning on making a sequel considering how 4 ends
@@HylianWindRiderbest part of the game honestly
Penelope was actually portayed as pretty friendly in the 3rd game, and was one of the nicest player characters of the thieves that sly teamed up with in that game, so it made absolutely zero sense that Penelope becomes a money hungry villain in this game. She was literally guilt ridden when seeing Murray was captured due to her plan in that game... Senzaru assassinating her character for shock value makes absolutely zero sense.
It would be better for writting....if she was "forced" to do all the work from a true villain.
In some concept art of the characters, one of the suppose villains was a mole with a big drill on his back meaning this guy was suppose to be the brains of the group of villains behind Le Paradox.
If I had to make this change in Episode 4, it would be this:
"When Bentley investigates and finds out Penelope was the Black Knight all along, he was shocked for the reveal, But then finds out she was not alone. Then this "mole" shows up, to check on the progress of his operation. He would talk about how they did capture her, forced her to build the Time Machine for the whole time travel thing, while the mole would make sure he would take the whole credit. Basically, he would keep Penelope as his personal "slave" to do all the dirty work for him."
That would make Penelope's story here better, and make it more of a rescue mission. But NOPE! Somewhere in the production team decided it was a "great idea" to just scrap the mole character and put her was a villains just for shock value, and the excecution resulted in character assassination.
They did dirty to her, honestly.
Well she was already a villain before, she lied on the dating site about how she looked to Bentley, always paid attention to sly more than Bentley. And going off how Sly 4 ends and shows Penelope is back to messaging Bentley in the credits I think they planned on doing a redemption arc for her in the sequel that never happened
But in 3 she tries to kill sly and when got revealed insta tly 180 turn and nobody points it out😅
Personally, I think that the Penelope in Sly 4 is simply the Evil Twin, while the Good-ish one (Hey, she did plenty of illegal things) is being held prisoner.
You could fix a large chunk of the plot and remove some stupid coincidences by making one single change: Sly is happy with his life and has no plans to change. The plot is kick started when he notices weird shit, like his hands flickering in and out of existence etc, as his history is messed with. He SEEKS OUT Bentley out of desperation, who looks up suitable artifacts rather than them falling into his lap. This also adds a layer of tragedy to Sly and Carmelita's whole deal. Now instead of him going back to crime because he was "bored", he's forced to break his retirement, but all she sees is him leaving her for his old life, and now he has to prove himself to her again in the face of her towering grudge. The situation becomes more "oh how sad that circumstances forced Sly to break his loved ones heart" and less "girl just throw the whole man away". Further wrinkles could be added by Sly realizing how much he missed hanging out with his friends, and while the main plot line is Sly trying to save his present, the emotional stakes is Sly choosing whether to choose a familiar past or an uncertain future.
Exactly. With this storyline, they could’ve also had seperate episodes or at least heists where they have to steal the artifact that Bentley tracked down in the present in order to be able to travel back to certain time periods to save the ancestors. Them just randomly having all the artifacts they need was honestly just bad and lazy writing. If they had made getting the artifacts part of the gameplay, there could’ve been some episodes in the present and some in the past.
I pretty much said the same thing! I was like why didn't they tighten up the writing with this? I don't think, production was in a rush so what was the hurry? Not only does Sly Cooper stand out because of the style of the games but the story was handled with care that both children and adults could enjoy, take away, and learn something from. Sure, Sly had already come to grips with his past but if Sanzaru HAD to make a fourth installment the writing should have been as good if not on par with Sucker Punch. It seemed they just focused on gameplay and shiny new designs rather than a tight, coherent story. In the past three games everything was meshed well and connected meticulously, the story, characters, plot lines. Thieves in Time is really just "hey, look! You can ninja jump again!! Wowzers isn't that cool!? See, didn't you miss Sly!!?"
This would have been a much, MUCH better plot line. That, and if they fixed the ending, then I would’ve tolerated Penelope’s awful villain arc. At least we can cope by saying none of this is canon since it wasn’t developed by the original creators, Sucker Punch.
dude they should have hired you at senzaru games fr cuz this plot sounds waaaay better than what they came up with
I can vividly remember following the black knight into the castle and as Bentley talks about Penelope I literally said, “why are you bringing her up? You haven’t mentioned her since the intro. “
I did the exact same thing the first time I played
Honestly it should've been that Penelope has been hypnotized by Ms Decibel, and that's how we get the Arabic artifact. It connects and doesn't ruin Penelope and all is good in the world.
Yup, that could've worked 100x better
Totally agree.
Agree, That would have worked. I can see Penelope went out all by herself until the villains sneak behind her and kidnapped her. Later, Ms. Decible used her hypnosis to hypnotize her and forced her to work for them. Later, they ordered Penelope to fight Bentley. Bentley is forced to fight her. After he wins, she's free from control.
@@AH-is5yg oooh I like!
@@pippi_playstation Thanks, it would have work of her being kidnapped again and this time she's now hypnotized to help the villains. This would have save her character and also give Bentley determination to save her and also get revenge on the villains that wronged him, Penelope, and the entire Cooper clan.
Also added after saving her, Carmelita had to take Penelope to the hospital; however, Penelope will be in police custody while she's in a coma. Bentley will get her after they deal with the villains and when Penelope wakes up, they'll get her out.
If you ask me, the boss for medieval england should’ve been Sir Raleigh instead. It makes total sense because he was the fiendish five’s engineer. He would hold penelope hostage and threaten/blackmail her into building his robots and mech suits or else bentley and the gang would be hurt if she doesn’t cooperate. Then during the boss battle, penelope swoops in to save bentley and sly where she and Raleigh engage in a sword fight. Penelope defeats Raleigh, she rejoins the gang and she and Bentley are still a couple.
Brilliant idea. 😊 A mad sky pirate frog gets rehired by Ceril, and with persuading Penelope he takes the persona of Black Knight with Raleigh's jolly roger on the mech's chest and builds the three-headed moat monster. And Raleigh's the one who makes Sly's medieval ancestor into a royal fool.
And to makes maters worse (and for the nostalgia's sake); he attacks and destroyes castles around the England before plundering their treasures and has a basement under his new fortress where he collects the grooses. A Shear sight of that coning amphibian's mech holding Penelope in it's Grip could give Bentley a though of throwing up. For the part with the fight with Sir Raileigh the frog, i need some options from you how is it going to look like:
A.) Is Sly Cooper is going to fought against Raileigh in his black knight?
B.) In the first phase should there be fight with the giant mech like in the final project?
C.) Should Penelope engage in swordfight with Raileigh in his Armor? Or when his out of his armor because Sly destroyed it?
D.) Should Bentley in his "readjustmented" mount monster armor engage in fight with Raileigh?
@@maurycyoseka1057 I’m so glad you agree with me on this. 😊
And to answer those four questions…
The boss fight goes like in the original, Where the first phase has sly fighting Raleigh in the giant mech, then in the second phase Bentley in his own mech fights Raleigh but after the frog had the upper hand and Bentley is knocked out of his mech. Penelope, who managed to escape from the workshop Raleigh imprisoned her in, swoops in to the rescue. After some banter, the two engage in a sword fight similar to lefwee’s boss fight in sly 3 but instead of a side scroller it’s open area. Whenever Raleigh let’s his guard down by teasing and gloating, Penelope strikes. Once his health is fully down, The two clash blades (Mashing the X button) and Penelope wins, in a QuickTime event she Punches and kicks the villainous frog and spins him around tossing him into a wall, Knocking him out. Thus she wins the battle and the episode ends.
That would've been so sick! I love this idea!
Reading this now makes me think that really a lot of the villains could have been return villains that got busted because of Sly, just like Paradoxes father was busted that's why he'd recruit them, and to fuck with Sly.
32:55
"We could have made billions in weapon designs!"
[Norman Osborn has entered the chat]
Sanzaru when writing the characters for this game:
Murray: hungry all the time
Sly: sarcastic all the time
Carmelita: just sit there and look "sexy". Oh and stay mad at sly until the very end so you can have an emotional moment when he is sent back in time permanently
Bentley: ...just be Bentley idk
SHRIMP COCKTAIL!
Penelope: everything you know about yourself is a lie, we tell you who you are now
You are mistaken about one point Bob is not the only really muscular Cooper, Slaigh MacCooper was the cooper famous for being super big and strong.
"The strongest of the Cooper Clan, Slaigh MacCooper, could break any lock with a single blow." was the quote about him by Sly in the vault.
Honestly, Bob feels like a ripoff of Slaigh.
And I like Bob as a character, he’s adorable and lovable.
I wish the plot twist was that Penelope was really the one brainwashed
Sly 4 had a good idea and interesting story with the time travel plot and Cooper ancestors, the graphics were good, and the gameplay and mechanics were good, but they really dropped the ball with the writing and the characters.
The majority of the main heroes feel like downgraded versions of themselves. Sly felt disrespectful to both Carmelita and his ancestors and Penelope's whole betrayal felt completely out of left field and just ruined a fun and likable character.
Also Penelope's reveal and twist with being the Black Knight was the exact opposite of the reveal of Penelope being of the Black Baron back in Honor Among Thieves. The reveal in 3 was a clever twist and made sense.
Time/dimensional travel always has and always will be the dumbest plot points in the history of storytelling, silly boy you have so much to learn about this world
To be honest, that was probably the intention from sly 3 with the vault being a beautiful set up to it. So the idea was already there. Sanzaru shouldn’t even get credit for that. They were probably handed the idea, left to fill in the gaps, and boy did they mess it up with lazy writing and zero imagination. Just a boring, repetitive game
@@kobe24OBCity So true.
@@zillobeast5257sly 3 literally ends with Bentley making a Time Machine.
@@kgisabeast really? i never knew that before thank u for pointing that out oh wise one, wow, im in complete and utter shock after learning this new piece of information thank the lord the earth was blessed with the presence your brain
38:39 Here's the thing, Sly never even stole Bentley's "potential" in the first place since he was long retired for several years to live a normal life with Carmelita post-Sly 3 So that makes Sanzaru's Penelope motivation even more retarded & illogical. And plus, Sly saved her life from General Tsao's giant temple Dragon in Chapter 4 in Sly 3 and helped with the rescue mission in the Chapter 5 Pirate episode! Showing her that they have a "No Team Member Left Behind!" mentality and we saw she was clearly scared for her life when Captain Lafwee kidnapped her and held her hostage! I really missed SuckerPunch's Penelope...
The villain motive could’ve easily been fixed if Sly’s return to thieving involved him stealing many of Paradox’s earnings and treasures. After getting hit by Sly so many times, and hearing how his contacts keep coming up empty thanks to Sly, he’d finally break and try to rid Sly and his family for good.
The justification is there. Having it all and making it despite the rocky start of his life. But now slowly starting to sink because of the same family line that got his father arrested, and him to fumble at the start of his life.
Something about this game just screams “too many rewrites” or “first draft” kinda thing. Maybe that’s the reason for the delay (though could be something completely else).
Edit: Actually, maybe Sony’s demands and PS Vita compatibility caused the delay. Makes me wonder if the story was hastily rewritten at points, due to the changes they had to make and scrapped content. Makes me curious how much cut content there is for this game.
The writer of Sly 3: *Puts a throwaway line about time travel
Sanzaru: Write that down! WRITE THAT DOWN!!!
"But Bentley, I was just trying to persuade you to see things my way by killing your best friend!"
This took me out...and the EDITING! 🤣🤣
what i dislike about sly 4 is how the game really has a sad cliffhanger ending with no real explanation since DLC was planned for it but scraped. would have love to seen bentley with penelope and sly with carmelita to really end of the franchise on a positive note, but thats just me. the ending of sly 4 left more thoughts, questions and urge for more than how sly 3 ended, and honestly wish that the franchise ended there.
“I felt his (Tennessee Cooper) voice actor did a great job with him”
Man oh man let me introduce you to Sam Riegel
If Le Paradox was mainly mad at Sly's dad then why he didn't just attack him on that night when he framed his dad?
Or as you mentioned and did the most logical one kill Bob.
Le Paradox wouldn't possible have know about Bob Cooper. Or at least he could forgot that Bob even existed.
I honestly loved thieves in time, despite its flaws. Can't wait to hear what you have to say about it.
So I just finished watching the video, and... it's REALLY good. i probably agreed with most of what you had to say. also, I honestly thought you were going to "shake the controller" at the VERY end as a little goof.
Glad you enjoyed! 😁 And that could've been a good joke to make but I also just seriously hate that part so much so I couldn't lol
I also Enjoyed sly 4 when i was younger and i remeber when i didn't learned how to run until the end of the game.
I did too, but that's probably just because... Thieves in Time was the only Sly Cooper i ever played, so i didn't know much about the story before playing
Can we talk about how dirty the cooper gang did Toothpick? They basically just bullied the the ever loving crap out of him. Even stole man's lollipop 😂
Plus didn't he go like blind and deaf after everything too, poor guy lol
@@MrJarheadTV And because of it he didn't hear the oncoming train while he was working on the train tracks and faded into obscurity as Bentley mentioned....
As a dude who worked at Party City when this game was released, I do remember selling Carmelita that costume. Also, the word you were looking for to describe Murray's horrendous writing is Flanderization. 😁
Congrats on the 200 new subs, dude!
That's it, flanderization's the perfect word, and thank you! 😁
Honestly, I feel like Sly had it worse when it came to flanderization.
@@SuperSonicMaster17 Bentley seems to be the least... flanderizated? flanderized? Idk
Bentley was probably the least ruined of the whole pack
I'm still holding out hope for Sly 5, OR remakes of the original trilogy with PS5 graphics, OR a complete reboot of the series. I just want something, absolutely anything! We just can't leave this series that's so widely loved and cared for with the ending Thieves in Time gave it. Our boy Sly needs to get out or Egypt, so maybe 2024 will show us news... We just need to hold out hope.
What i loved about this level 42:00 is that i think its the only time in the game were they mention a past cooper outside of the 5 we see in the game. When sly wants to steal the HUGE pile of gold and Bentley tells him that if he took a single coin it could mess up his own lineage, but to not worry since his pirate ancestor will one day heist that very pile of gold you're traversing. I really wanted more of those interactions were we get a little lore on past coopers not shown in the game.
Probably a happy accident on the writers part, but Murray's fossil necklace has one less bead than it did in Sly 3, possibly pointing to the idea that Penelope took a chunk to give to le paradox/ use for her time machine and so for that reason Murray's necklace gets them exactly when they need to be, not by coincidence but by design/ betrayal
That would actually be a really great idea but unfortunately like you said probably just a happy accident
@@MrJarheadTV I also bet they could retcon Penelope quite easily. She talks about Bentley being brainwashed. What if it was her?
Mz Decibel hypnotises her, but because she has a strong mind, the levels required to crack her cause some moonlight level splits in her personality.
So in the next game, Sly and the gang have to perform an Inception style "mind heist" in the vein of a psychonauts level where they have to enter her mind via the Guru and fight off her differing personalities. Could make for a really trippy hub world.
@@isaacmarshmallow8751 I love this mind heist idea so much!
I'm no story designer, but even as a kid, I think back at how I wish they showed some insight to Sly's father in the final scene
Same, I feel like maybe they wanted to save something like that for Sly 5 but... yeah...
The idea of Siril overreacting to such a minor thing is not really a "bad" reason that I personally wouldn't be against. You got villains that turn good, have very good, and justified reasons for their actions, or are such magnificent bastards that you love to hate. Siril would be the kind of villain that's a hate sink; the kind that have no good qualities and are meant to be hated (though more on the scale of annoying that actually hated).
He should've been revealed from the start as the villain with the rest of the time being used to showcase how petty he was, thereby making his pettiness his fatal flaw and the reason he gets taken down.
This was a nice video, and I agreed with a lot of its' contents. I really don't like the cutscenes. The Sly cutscenes throughout the trilogy were interpretive, illustrating actual events, but without literal detail. It never attempted to make half-baked, unfinished animations pass off the footnote of each chapter. They picked their poses and relied mostly on tweened stills in order to sway the emotion of the viewer. They maintain thick borders and lineless backgrounds to always maintain a specific focus in any particular scene, and their shots are all thought out illustrated by actual comic book artists with some inspiration for the animations themselves coming from contemporary SatAM cartoons.
Thieves In Times' cutscenes rely too heavily on bad tweening animations. They struggle to strike the dramatic poses we're familiar with in the original trilogy, and for something stylized around something as organically dynamic as comic book drama, Sly needs those poses. They used a lot of raster work on these new Thieves In Time cutscenes, and I feel like it's to add unnecessary detail. If they had left a lot of things up to the funkified cartoon pop of the original trilogy, the detail would be implied anyways, so it seems like they underestimated the power a standalone image can have, and relied on generated stenciling to try and give their environments life, something the original trilogy never struggled with.
I have no real comments about the writing. LeParadoxs' design is meant to be something of a mockup of Sly - stinky french rat who brings Sly back to their mutual homeland, both have a family business in thieving - and that alone would be a cool idea for a villain. They then imbued him with a lot of flaws without enough time to pick at - be it womanizing, pridefulness, list them off - and he kind of comes across as some mischievous underling more than an overarching bad guy. The creative syntax simply can't save poor writing.
And last, the 3D stuff. A lot of it is ok. Some of it leaves really good impressions, but there's always some kind of problem in pacing with their 3D cutscenes. I feel like the animation missed the mark a little bit as well. Some impacts don't work right, a lot of the characters show their gums off so you can actually count how many teeth they have - feels less like funkified cartoon pop, more just like a lot of attention going to the wrong places. They don't have it being interpretive as an excuse because they struggle to be so literal now, but they don't use the vertex animations or modelwork to make any of it really look good - and so every cutscene feels a little bit off. This could be because they don't play with lightring enough, or didn't take the colors of the characters themselves into consideration when building them or their environments. That wouldn't be too big an issue and a minor foot off of the original trilogy if it weren't for the childish "gotcha" humor, even going so far as to be meta about it - which in Sly Cooper where every character is supposed to show some agents of cynicism comes off as more like insecure writing. Oh - and the level deisgns sucked nads. Go West Young Raccoon worked out really well, but any other level as severe weenying issues, to the point that you need the map to figure out where you are, an issue I'd never had with any Sly Cooper game before. That hurts.
Well hey, good video, that's my wall of text for the day.
You bring up a great point about the cutscenes. You really hit the nail on the head on the more nuanced aspects of their presentation and I appreciate you bringing that deeper level of insight up. I touched upon moreso just the artstyle aspect of things which is of course a big point of contention for a lot of people, but the points you bring up are also something that I wish I dug into more! And just many of the other things you bring up in regards to the 3D stuff like the modelwork, lighting, coloring, etc. is all great stuff that I'd like to learn more the ins and outs of one day as well.
I really appreciate your comment, I know I've still got plenty to learn and comments like yours are very insightful so thank you! Glad you enjoyed the video as well!
@@MrJarheadTV I tried not to write too much because after some point I might as well make my own whole video essay about it - but I'm too lazy for that right now. I look forward to seeing your other Sly videos and giving my big dumb 9 paragraphs on them too! Keep up the good work, I can definitely tell you like the video editing process.
I think a big improvement to some of the coincidences involving time travel would be short mini-missions involving you stealing an artifact from the time period you wanted to go to in the present as a sort of intermission between chapters
The thing that sunk this game for me was the uncomfortable sexist overtones I got while playing it. Firstly because of the needlessly sexualized redesigns of the female characters (while the returning male characters were basically unchanged). Then there's the fact that they couldn't be bothered to include any female ancestors (Bob was a character Sanzaru made up. Why couldn't they make him a beefy cave woman instead?). Then there's the fact that the only non-sexualized female character (Miss Decibel) is constantly subjected to jokes about how fat and unappealing she is to the man she fancies.
The Penelope twist was awful for a multitude of reasons. But it was especially bad because nobody in the gang shows a shred of concern for her until five minutes before The Twist happens. The twist would have had a bigger impact if you saw Bentley and the others worry about her and show distress about her being missing throughout the game. But they're having a great time without her until Sly awkwardly reminds us that she's missing right before the Black Knight shows up. And then the story frames Bentley going all Oscar Pistorious on his girlfriend as an empowering moment for him?? As if he was lacking in confidence before engaging in a little domestic violence and knocking his ex unconscious?? WTF?
And then there's Bentley's speech about how Penelope (the ONLY female member of the Cooper Gang and Bentleys intellectual equal) was actually a moron the whole time. And only succeeded in the last game because she was aided by her much smarter boyfriend. Why would Sanzaru write her like this if we're supposed to take her seriously as a villain? Why would she choose to be some jerk's lapdog when she has the funds and criminal experience to be a crime boss in her own right? Why would a pilot/engineer suddenly want to be a weapon designer so badly that she'd throw away everything she has in order to do it?
Oh, and don't even get me started on how gross that belly dance mini-game was. Carmelita is supposed to be the love of Sly's life. And he doesn't slap the sh!t out of Bentley for degrading her like that!? I'm supposed to root for him to get the girl when he treats her like trash!? Ugh!
TL;DR Playing Thieves In Time as a female fan of this series was painful. It honestly felt like the game was actively telling me, "The Sly series is just for immature boys now! Go away!" the entire time I was playing it. I don't know what the hell Sanzaru was thinking when they made it that way
And also, why couldn't they have explored the Seven Seas with Henriette (an already established female Cooper) and her crew, and take down a new threat at Blood Bath Bay? And also, they should've used the mole as the villain of "Of Mice and Mechs" (in my fanfiction universe, he's another Dutch robotics expert named Wimhof, who attended the Netherlands' famous international school of robotics and was expelled one day, becoming a notorious criminal who didn't care who he hurt or how much he hurt them unlike Penelope who's still noble at her core and values her friends).
Never saw it like that but ya Sly 4 was Trash. Why Bob was even in the game when there were a plethora of ancestors to choose from was mind boggling. Could've easily put Harriet (pirate) in. Garbage game.
God damn cry about it cuck
Penelope should never have been written as a villain and yea, the way female characters get treated in this one is just awful. Carmelita's redesign feels like Sanzaru was just going for the whole "sexy Latina" while ignoring how Carmelita was this strong-headed cop committed fully to enforcing the law and catching criminals.
At this point, Sucker Punch should be the ones handling this game. They got better narration and story telling as shown with their recent Ghost of Tsushima. They also made every character so unique and well crafted. Sanzaru on the other just did a really poor job of continuing the story that doesn’t really need a continuation. Gameplay and art style overhaul is nice and all, but the execution of plot was so poorly thought out. It feels like Sucker Punch should’ve done this game more justice as I’m seeing with a lot of folks. To top it off, I discussed this with my buds while ago that it feels like they should’ve just start with a new generation of the cooper gang, a brand new adventure, and a brand new story.
Also, that belly dance mini game is a nightmare to beat for the trophy like it was dragging too long and I wanted to move on to the next part of the mission. Plus you also be dealing with input lag due to framerate dropping on cloud.
What I always loved about the Sly franchise was the boss fight curve balls. I wasn't expecting a mech suit fight
Yeah they've always had pretty unique boss fights
Well, there's always fanfiction.
As it is, there's an interactive that I add to - kinda centered around Carmelita Fox, it could be set at any point in the franchise's history, even creating alternative timelines where the Inspector actually joins the gang as early as Sly 1, or during Sly 2 or 3 (not to mention a cute section where a young Sly and his friends get adopted by Carmelita's parents, around the time of the cookie heist). There's even a Post 3 thing where Carmelita gets amnesia, and believes that *she's* the thief. Then there's all the crossovers - Bad Guys, Zootopia, Kung Fu Panda, Puss in Boots, and more. Likewise, an explanation on what Penelope's deal is - kidnapped by Evil Twin Sister. Then there's the different dimensions Carmelita ends up in, like one where that Sly (and his family) is involved in Law Enforcement, and that Carmelita (whose family is a long line of thieves) is in charge of the Gang, and more crossovers - Monsters Versus Aliens, Biker Mice From Mars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.....
I love the Sly Cooper franchise, it's faint because I remember watching videos of the games back in 2008 when I was little and if Sly Cooper 5 comes out, I definitely would want to play it for the high-quality graphics and game mechanics.
Even though they made this game. They didn't deserve the fate of Facebook buying them for VR games. And proceed to not have them make any games
True
Video idea: Take the main 3 PS2 boys, Sly, Ratchet and Jak and give a quick review on each of their main PS2 trilogies then rank them all.
Each entry would have like a 3-4 minute quick review and you just go one after another, then ends with a ranking of the 9 games worst to best
I have actually thought about that! I've got some other ideas for videos in the meantime but maybe a couple years from now that's something I could do!
Sly Cooper should comeback as a reboot or a remake of the trilogy
That could be cool I just don't see it happening unfortunately
Personally I didn't mind Penelope being evil since she did shady stuff as the Black Baron.
But you're right. Sly left her the Cooper Vault with a damn pirate ship. That aint billions. Also her motivation was weak.
Like maybe she had the itch to be something similar to the Black Baron
The only thing that was a mistake was not giving us a sequel after ending the game on a cliffhanger. Or at least make the ending a nice conclusive ending.
Yeah that's the biggest thing, it'd be forgivable if they actually followed up on the ending
One good thing fos Sly 4: The worlds (hub worlds) are colorful and the music fits them like a
"fist in the eye" (a Finnish saying)
PS: Grizz has become a meme in Finns Sly community. At least some Finns think so.
PSPS: Grizz's (English) voice actor voicing him makes Grizz really sound like a gangster.
The hubs are visually fantastic no doubt about it, and I love the Grizz idgaf he's the best
definitely the only sly cooper video essay series i’ve ever enjoyed. really awesome work here dude, you pretty much nailed it when it comes to what brings the game up and down. for the sake of discussion, the villains kill me more than anything else really. as good as the interactions can be at times, it just sucks how much they don’t really matter. at the core of the series is the constant feeling of being in hostile, unfamiliar territory. every past villain has been inseparable from their environment; the area can’t exist without them and vice versa. the tension is constant because just walking thru the level gives the villain a sense of grandeur and power, something to be feared. in thieves in time, the whole point of each villain is that they Literally are not supposed to be there. at it’s core it’s meant to break your immersion. and not only do the really gorgeous hub worlds not really reflect this strong outside influence wreaking havoc (almost entirely period-appropriate guards, minimal traces of LeParadox forces) but the characters devolve into madlibs. they can be anyone from anywhere doing anything for any reason. all we get is a small brief at the start on the who and what and why, but we’re given really nothing to care about. whoever this villain is, they’re kinda just some chump on leparadox’s payroll. and since the writing already doesn’t do much justice here … you get the point. would’ve loved to play as kid cooper against like, a fucking wild west carmelita type sheriff or something more period accurate
That's a great point you bring up about how the connection the villains have with each area differs in this game from the previous ones, it also doesn't help that yeah they don't seem to be taken very seriously. Also like you said each time period has guards appropriate to their time period, with England being kinda the only exception with those mechanical wolves walking around.
Thank you for your comment and I'm happy you enjoyed the videos!
1 waifu=20,000 more sales
3:57 Sanzaru didn't make Secret Agent Clank, only ported it to PS2.
This game would have been 100% fixed if at the beginning Bently reached out to sly about the book, and sly decided to go for broke and just confess to Carmelita about the amnesia and to ask for help saving his family's history. And then we could have had the amazing moment of Carmelita immediately agreeing to help because she cares about sly, and a comedic bit of her already knowing he'd been lying the whole time. Because ofc she would, she's a detective and sly is a dumbass lol
Also could have even salvaged the Penelope twist by instead of having her just randomly turn evil, she could be motivated by resentment towards Bently out of miscommunication and insecurity. The parallel to Carmelita and sly making it work by being honest, and Bently and Penelope not being able to because they're not able to be honest to eachother would have been actually really nice in a tragic sort of way
Plot wise it's rather hard to accept how a certain former party member becomes a rat. Despite having tons of fortune as a well known champion. My take, and in an ironic way, she had a fleet of airships, planes and even a small army. Sounds familiar, instead of being a edgy bird She controls a mech and lives. But as it is, i hope Penelope just gotten convinced like Ms. Decibel.
Man I can't get over how weird Carmelita looks in this game
She looks fine to me
@@e.j5813 that's great 👍🏽
Honestly im happy to blissfully say this game isnt canon because WHY
This is my least favorite Sly game. Not to mention, Penelope's betrayal came completely out of nowhere.
EDIT: Or have Le Paradox threaten Bentley and the rest of the Cooper Gang if she didn't cooperate. That would've been a better explanation of WHY Penelope betrayed the gang than what the game gave us!
I can definitely see why, and yeah Penelope's betrayal was very poorly executed IMO
@@MrJarheadTV you don’t suspect Ms. Decibel having a hand with Penelope’s betrayal? That hypnotist was practically wrapped around LeParadox’s fingers. Plus early development designs showed that not that Penelope was never meant to be a villain but Ms. Decibel was never meant to be a hypnotist, she was meant to a scholarly forger.
Maybe it was a thought at one point but I don't believe anything alludes to that in the actual game unfortunately
@@MrJarheadTV But there also wasn’t anything disproving it either. It’s a old story development trick creators use. I think that’s because sanzaru wanted to see how fans react to their Penelope and threw in Ms decibel as a plan B alternative way to fix her and their mistake in case they can’t come up with anything else. Think of it like an escape clause. Because sanzaru mentioned that if they couldn’t do a sequel they would do a DLC instead.
Personally I feel like if that were the case, using Ms. Decibel as a copout is still just bad writing, it's like hoping for the fans to make connections to fix the plot rather than actually writing a good one. I just feel like that's a lazy way of asking the fans to write their own story, rather than leaving things up to interpretation and letting people make their own connections based off of things the writers clued in, because as I said I don't feel there was anything actually in the story at all that alluded to that. As I said in the video, she wasn't mentioned once after the England episode (besides the credits but even then that had nothing to do with Decibel).
Also penelope fell in LOVE with sly in an a cold Alliance but when she fell in love with bentley after she still had feelings and ALSO SLY SAVED HER LIFE FROM A BIG DRAGON IN SLY 3 ALSO and after all that...hates sly!??!?!?!?! WHY
The thing i hate about this game is how they ruined Penelope I mean it wouldn't be as bad if she actually got a redemption moment like i spent the entire game thinking she was gonna show up and help during the final fight but no. they just ruined her for no reason making everything that happened with her during sly 3 pointless
Great video! What I really don't understand is why so many people on places like reddit try as hard as they do to rationalize this game's writing and design decisions. Like Carmelita's new getup and personality, Sly in Egypt, and especially the Penelope betrayal.
They treat any criticism of the game's story either as childish whining or a refusal to give Sanzaru Games a chance. Sanzaru is hyped by them as just a poor victim of Sony and the fanbase. "They were just passionate fans of the series with the noblest of intentions. With all the right ideas and brilliant observant minds who paid close attention to the trilogy were going to make this awesome trilogy/story saga of their own. But you ungrateful fans and Sony's executive meddling ruined any chance of the series continuing."
"So shame on you for spitting on poor, poor Sanzaru. How dare you criticize and be upset by cliffhanger endings, cringe dialogue, lame villains, forced nonsensical betrayals, and character assassination. They just needed more money and time to let the game cook, and it would've been a masterpiece. You're just idiots who don't get the big picture, like I do."
I see sanzarus main goal of sly 4, a crazy update in the gameplay for the next generation of playstaition. They still focused on the story but had the crazy coincidences to reach there goals of time travel and the cooper ancestors gameplay. To be honest, playing sly 4 is fun because of the visual appeal and gameplay. Not so much the storyline.
This review is insanely saturated with wrestling references and memes
I absolutely love it and the Its Me Austin part was genuine comedy gold
I always love when somebody can specifically appreciate the wrestling references lol
I remember ages ago when I first finished this game. The person I was talking to said “oh that kinda makes sense for Sly to go to Egypt. To become SLYtunkhamen”. Made sense to me at the time but I dunno now.
35:13
The writer for Bentley really didn’t like the way on what the game did to Penelope
Whoa, what's the story there?
Sly 4 was my first Sly game, I tried it when it was free on PS+ on the Vita, and I liked it so much that I 100% it and immediately bought the Sly collection. Of course I loved the older games. Playing the collection made me appreciate the OG games and the progress the devs made from one game to the next. Having 100% every game in the series (screw the Sly 3 challenges!), I dont really think 4 is a bad game. Even if it doesnt hold a candle to the trilogy in character developement and writing (Penelope's plot and Le Paradox's motivation were bad even for someone new to the series), but it still my favorite gameplay of the series, going back to Sly 1 after this made the controls rough for me. Sly 4 was tight and snappy, even better than Sly 3 IMHO.
I can agree with that, for all its faults character and writing wise, I don't think you'll find many people who think Sly 4 isn't fun to actually play.
35:46 Okay, I’m gonna come in here, I like a thing of FanFiction, where she’s not doing it for money, she’s doing it against her will because Le Paradox is holding Bently hostage in a time loop, to explain it, Le Paradox both killed and didn’t kill Bently after a check up on his spine. And has a communicator like Bently gave to Lizard guy, but a bit more primitive which sends just a red dot or blue dot, red was kill and blue was leave.
That’s why I liked the fanfic better than the game when they went over the game for its arc.
42:00 also, during this chapter’s…”finale”, it also allows Penelope to be a part of it.
54:16 I’ll bring up a bit of the ending of the fanfic. Due to Le Paradox’s plan he partially succeeded because his partner in this crime killed the first ancestor from Egypt and they need to find a way to kill the killer and put time back on pace. They kill the killer because if they didn’t all of time would be destroyed, and the reason Sly didn’t instantly disappear was because of divine intervention of the only time god, and in a sad ending, Sly and Carmalita had to give up their first child to put time back on track.
THAT, is why I feel the one fanfic is better than this game. In its entirety.
Sly 4 had great graphics and gameplay too bad the story wasn't as good and that the game didn't sell well at all, honestly the only way I can see Sony make a new game is through a Remake of the Thievous Raccoonus.
The reason I think that is the case instead of a Sly 5 is due to the sales as I mentioned, but as I said that is up to Sony.
Anyways great video!
Thank you! 😁
Gameplay wise it was great, but story wise it didn't make fans happy as characters were flanderized and important elements like how time travel works were not explain, it can be Fixed with a sequel that improve gameplay. Mainly by making Carmelita more of a playable character, give 'The Murray' a more fitting ark of being the main man needed as Sly and Bentley recover from the last chapter. Also maybe fixing Penelope story by getting rid of the money and more focus on her feeling over shadow by Sly and felt like she knew more about Sly then Bentley and getting rid of Sly would give her a dream life where her and Bentley would have everything, making every great invention they can think of.
Other things like a Crime Family/ Mafia that LeParadox was in to explain why he became so big, and to be are new group of villains as they were secretly helping and supplying him with stuff for the Time Travel thief plot well using the time machine Blue Prints to make a smaller one that let them come up with there own rewrite of history so the Mafia can be the one ruling Ancient Egypt during the time of 1 of the 3 Slytunkhamen, and I say do the third one who was the one who made the Cooper Vault.
Just improving on what we have is the best way to get a Sly 5 but a Reboot where we get a new trilogy thats similar but different then Sly 1-3 where events happen differently so each game can flow between each other smoothly would be better at this point.
I heard the reason Sony refused to greenlight the Egypt DLC was because the game sold poorly, which is probably why there isn't (and won't be) a Sly 5
10:28 I... it's been over 10 years since I first played this game... I've finished the story multiple times, and yet I never even realized that the green, blue and pink hacking avatars Bentley uses were meant to represent the main trio. It seriously never even crossed my mind and now that I see it, I can't believe I never noticed myself.
You can also see clockwerk in all of the hubworlds if you look hard enough. And Bentleys binocucom crosses out Penelope’s name after her betrayal. There are a lot of little details you can miss
Sadly The only hope for this franchise making a return is probably in a Remake of the first game.
I could see the whole trilogy maybe getting a remake not just the first game
@@MrJarheadTVthat’s be the dream!
After replaying Sly 3 i can 100% say that penelope's personality doesnt look literally ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE PENELOPE
It’s good to see new Sly related reviews to this day.
To me this game is a nice 4th Title in the series. But yeah I also see the problems it has. But the only thing I really feel doesn't fit is the betreal of penelope. I mean she says she never liked Sly. When in fact she said in Sly3 that she only joined the Group because she had a crush on Sly until it transfered to Bently.
Everytime i tried playing this game, i always stop. It just doesn't feel like Sly for me. I will however watch this entire video! The intro is really gripping! - Keep it up! i Love the Sly content! :D
Atleast my content keeps you hooked lol, thank you! 😁
@@MrJarheadTV I paused halfway through, and waited until dinner. So the second part was enjoyed with my DINNER! - Now that is when u know a video is good, when u have to make a FEAST for it :D
@@NillrogWoW Those videos are the best kind of videos and I'm happy to be able to say that I've made one of them
SUCH A GOOD AND WELL THOUGHT OUT VIDEO. captures all my thoughts exactly. I needed this and immediately watch it after seeing the thumbnail. thank you so much for your great work!!
Glad you enjoyed it so much thank you for the kind words!
Anyone notice how the backstories for the villains are carbon copies of some of those from Sucker Punch's trilogy? Like El Jefe is like General Tsao and maybe Sir Raleigh without motivation (like glory or boredom respectively), Toothpick went from loving the Old Western movies as a kid to being a notorious gangster as an adult with no clear connection (unlike Muggshot who was bullied and wanted to put his tormentors in their place, being inspired by the gangsters on the big screen), the Grizz is comparable to Dimitri without the passion and hard work the latter put into developing his kinetic aesthetic style and his motivation to punish the art world for rejecting him (the former's "paleo-graffiti" style just seems to be there as a way for him to get greedy and want more fame and money), the butchered version of a certain robotics expert (whom I like to call Peonlpe after another review's name for that version) was like Neyla without any of the buildup that made her villain twist work, Miss Decibel jumped from "I can't play the trumpet properly" to "I'm going to hypnotize people into committing crimes for me" without a clear reason (except maybe hypnotizing the audience to applaud her, but I still can't really see how she makes the jump from failed trumpeter to notorious criminal) unlike Don Octavio who had connections in the mafia that recruited him and were fans of his opera music after rock music took over the Italians' hearts in the form of bands like the Oscars, and Le Paradox is like a weak Clockwerk who just wanted to eclipse the Cooper line and lacked the owl's mysterious past that made him cool to many players. I hope Sucker Punch can come back to the helm someday and decanonize Sanzaru's additions to the timeline with a real _Sly 4_ game...
I feel like having sly wanting to pull a heist immediately at the start of the game is stupid because they could’ve just had Bentley reach out to sly and tell him the thievous racoonus is disappearing and for them to go back in time, without any character assassination. and LATER ON it shows sly actually enjoying their heists again.
I don’t know, on one hand I love the ending when carmelita says ‘sly…’ and sly goes ‘I know’ but their fallout is just so contrived.
Grizz is ironically and unironically the Best villain in the game.
He's threatening Bob, the first Cooper, something that the Cooper gang wouldn't have had a single clue about if they followed the thievious raccoonus like they had planned.
If it weren't for Murrays neclace and incredible luck, Grizz and Le Paradox would've won.
And besides that, his actual personal plan is probably the best out of the villains.
Make fake cave paintings in prehistory and dig them up in the modern day to gain a shit ton of money.
And something that won't mean anything to most people...
*Hiss finnish voice acting.*
In english his voice is clearly based on afroamerican rap culture.
But in finnish, his performanse is like a funny uncle whose rapping and rhyming lacks style, consistansy and sense.
This isn't a bad thing. The *entire* finnish community of Sly loves this take on the character way more than the original, due to simply being so stupidly funny.
I'll definitely need to look into his Finnish voice actor
@@MrJarheadTV you probably wont understand much, beacuse finnish, but it's definitely a lot different from the "normal" grizz
I was reading the comments, and have really nice ideas of solving the plot issues. I would really like a remake of this games with certain changes:
1. The Plot details
2. Sly's dialogues and "personality"
3. THE MURRAY's personality
4. Penelope don't being bad
5. The coincidence of the artifacts being handed to them
6. And the main villain introduction (it was to early
Aside from that, the gameplay and animations are good, but I would like them to bring back the comic style telling
I'm sorry but I literally lost my shit at this part 10:29. And was laughing uncontrollably for 20 minutes I almost ended up in the Hospital due to lack of Oxygen. So thank you friend. You monster. 👀😲😂.
Poor guy almost ended up in the hospital
L I K E T H E C R I P P L E
Surprised there was no mention of the originally planned PSP Sly game focused on time travel. Some concept art exists, including one some kind of evil shadow Sly (oh late 2000s)
I actually didn't even learn about that til like a month ago
@@MrJarheadTVHonestly feel like a whole video could be made on cut content from the games, especially 1 and 4.
Unpopular opinion but I like Thieves in Time. The only thing I didn’t like is the cliffhanger.
If it had a proper ending I'd be able to stomach it way more
That’s exactly how I found out about sly 4. I remember where I was sitting in a hotel room in Minneapolis Minnesota.
it was how badly the characters were written in this game that did me in...when sly "got that itch back"
I have a theory that the reason they made Penelope evil was to try and set her up as the one who built Clockwork’s robot body or something in a sequel or maybe even the Egyptian dlc. In interviews they did say Clockwork was going to be involved it would make since for him to make a final appearance and would also explain why Le Paradox was such a weak main antagonist because it was misdirection or something.
Part 4 of the Sly series was a mistake and the story was all over the place. The villains were complete idiots. The main villain was the worst villain of the Sly Cooper series. Wish the story would have been where the ancestors got pull from the past and into the future and they go on this futuristic adventure. We would also like to have Conner Cooper (Sly's Dad) appear and go on the adventure with his son.
Sly, his friends, Carmelita, the ancestors, and Sly's parents have their own boss battles.
As for Penelope, it would have work if she was kidnapped and hypnotized and had to work with the villains. Had a battle where Bentley was forced to fight a brainwashed Penelope. After the fight, Penelope is freed from control, but has to be taken to hospital. Bentley gets upset and angry and vows to stop the villains. That way Penelope and Bentley's relationship wouldn't have been ruined.
Had it end where Sly's parents and ancestors return to their time. The main villain tries to use the time machine to destroy everything Sly tells Carmelita to shoot the machine to stop it and save everyone. Carmelita shoots the machine; however, the main villain pushes Sly into the time portal before it was destroyed. Carmelita defeats the main villain. Bentley, Murray, the present Cooper gang and Carmelita are upset of losing Sly.
The credits of the villains now in jail, Penelope woke up from her coma and has to escape the hospital with Bentley's help, and the gang are searching for Sly. The twist is that they found Slytunkhamen instead. He's now in the future with the Cooper gang.
It ends with Sly now in a different timeline, he's now in the future. He meets a thief that is a Cooper and the Cooper looks at Sly and said, (these two different ways) first ending would be saying 'Dad?' or a second ending would be saying 'Grandpa?'
Bro you deserve so many freaking subscribers. Your video games you reviewed and the games I grew up playing are so closely intertwined. Sly is my favorite game series of all time and it never gets enough love!
Thank you! Glad you're enjoying the content! 😁
This is the first I'm hearing sly escaping the past was cut content, I always thought it was failed sequel bait
One of the guys at Sanzaru did an interview I think in 2019 where they were asked about Sly 5 and why they ended the game the way they did, and that's when they revealed that whole thing was supposed to be in the game but the Vita had to ruin that lol. It's kinda odd that it took like 5 or 6 years before they clarified what the whole situation around that was but that's apparently it
@@MrJarheadTV saw another theory video, my take away, what is sly is the first ancestor in the theivius racoonus, in a time paradox style story, sly defeated clockwork before he cyborged up and hence why sly beat him both times
That's an interesting theory for sure! I can't say I'd believe that but definitely a fun possibility to think about!
Dude. Spot on. My biggest lament is not that 4 ends on a cliffhanger setting up the next game that won’t be made. My biggest lament is the Penelope “twist”. It’s so damn unfair to Bentley. They really could have leveraged her to a much more heroic position while still providing a disguise twist to make a call back to 3.
Pretty wild. Loved Sly growing up. But I agree with the majority of your thoughts on Sly 4. They did Penelope and Carmelita super dirty. I don't find the game near as charming with the other characters. And it's worse because that's it. The final send off. It's been a decade and people still whisper excitedly about Sly 5 lmao. It's almost as bad as the Bully community about over hyping anything at all to make it look like a sequel is in the works. Alas, we'll never get a true finally like how Sly 3 was set up to be.
Sly already called a previous villain he fought an egomaniac. So WHY did he used that word "ego" twice in the game? It's like combaining that line at 22:10 with Sly's previous critic on The Boss' statuet and you will get " Talk about an overinflated ego.".
Since the story of the game ended with Handcliffer and making a sequel is almost impossible these days and the characters are completely changed in nature, yes, yes it was a mistake
Not to mention the moments of misfortune in the story that leave a lasting impression
This Whole video is right on the money! Thieves in Time is a good game that should have been a GREAT Game. What keeps it from being so, is exactly what you described. Sly being a dillhole, Carmelita being the stereotypical angry Ex for 85 percent of the game, Murray's flanderization, that damn ending, and worst of all(in my opinion) Penelope's sudden and unexplained heel-turn.
There's a quote from one of my favorite characters that she needs to hear:
"Intelligence is not a privilege, it's a gift. And you use it for the good of mankind."
- Dr. Otto Octavius
That whole section, especially Bentley vs. Penelope was painful to get through and the messed up part is, it REALLY Didn't NEED to happen.
Side note: If the devs REALLY needed The Black Knight to be this big, imposing figure, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense why they had Penelope build a whole dang Mech Suit when Muggshot is RIGHT. FREAKIN. THERE!
But aside from that, this is a really well done video. Your editing is masterful and you had me laughing a good bit. Can't wait to see what else you have in store!🦝💎
Thank you for the marvelous comment MarvelousSuckerPunch Productions
I'm convinced El Jefe is the best written interaction her specifically and only because this boss battle was the teaster/ preview clip they pushed hard before the game came out. Like it was the ONLY thing they released for so so long that of course it had to look good and not be cringe af.
I never really understood why the last fight was a QTE, bc all the other boss fight were fight. But then i leared that apparently they only had the budget for either the section with all the ancester or the final boss fight. WHICH ITS STUPID WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU MAKE A FINAL BOSS A QUICK TIME EVENT
It also just doesn't make sense to me like I feel if you have a budget to work with you'd make sure you put the money you need to be able to develop a fully fledged, proper ending to the game on all accounts _aside_, right? The ending should easily be one of your top priorities. Be smart with the budget so that if it runs low you can atleast do something that might be more lackluster in like the middle of the game, that way hopefully people just forget about it by the end thanks to the game having a strong opening and ending.
Thieves in Time was my introduction to the Sly Cooper series. I was young and played it around 2016 on my dad’s old ps3. For me back then I absolutely loved this game, but after years of sometimes playing the game and playing the HD collection of the original trilogy on ps4 I can see some of the games flaws that I never got as a kid such as story and some of the gameplay. But personally even now I still love this game, even though I haven’t played the game in a while as the ps3 I played it on is buried somewhere in my garage. The last time I played I always remembered enjoying playing as Sly’s ancestors, especially Tennessee. I really like guns and Tennessee just added fuel to that fire when I first played the game when I was like 12. But I’m getting ahead of myself, I don’t know if I’m a bit blinded by nostalgia but I love this game.
(Also I had a massive crush on Carmelita when I was younger before I found out I was gay but that’s not important…)
Sly 4's got a lot of problems but Tennessee is definitely one of the better aspects of it for sure
Do I like the story? Meh
Do I like Sly's design? No.
Do I like the gameplay? Hell yeah!!
COMPLETELY FELT THAT RANT ABOUT SLY BEING JELLY OF CARM
"Shoot. I need more fish!"
While it is nice that Sly got some appreciation on the PS3, I often wonder if it was worth it when the plot we got was covered tons better by years worth of fanfiction from the fandom over the years. Like I'm not even going to call this badly written fanfiction because it's an insult to some of the 'Sly travels back in time' fanfiction that I've read. lol
The way they handled Penelope is just unforgivable. There were just so many other ways they could've tackled her betraying the gang. Somebody brought up the concept of her being hypnotised - which I loved - or she could've been blackmailed/threatened. I would've found it a lot more compelling if she feared for Bentley's safety as opposed to her feeling he was "squandering his genius". It's actually borderline scary how she thinks Bentley doesn't deserve any input in what he wants to do with his life AND that he would murder his best friend for money they didn't need. I could go on for days about how "yikes" her mindset is. Especially when Bentley as a character has struggled with self-worth throughout the whole series.
I also never realised how stupid it was that Carmelita got sent back in time by Le Paradox up until now. How... exactly was that going to solve the issue of her 'knowing too much'? Why not just kill her then and there? Or, better yet, give her some much-needed agency by using his other time machine herself to help out Sly because, despite being mad at him, she still wants to help him? But considering how they handled her character too: that's too much to ask.
I get that a lot of Sly fans appreciate this game for "it's better than nothing" reasons but I personally just wouldn't be sorry if it never existed. The original trilogy was great and ended perfectly. The only real thing I (sorta) liked about this game was Le Paradox and the idea of him belonging to a rival gang of thieves struggling to make ends meet because they're skunks and they're hardly as sneaky or subtle as raccoons for obvious reasons. It's just a shame it's hardly explored and he just comes across as a Clockwerk expy as a result.
You may as well have had a Clockwerk descendent in his place because that at least would've made any background unnecessary because we already know the lore of Clockwerk from previous games already.
When I was younger and still had issues with the game I was still really glad it existed cause like you said it was one of those "better than nothing" situations. When you're younger you're just greedy lol and you want more and more, but yeah as you get older I'm just like yeah probably should've just let things lay as they were, no need to bring Sly back for this.
@@MrJarheadTV Oh yes, absolutely. I felt the same way back when this game came out but the longer I've gone without playing it and replaying the original trilogy over and over: I think that's a sign that something is majorly lacking for me, so what's the point of it exactly? I just didn't get the same enjoyment out of it as I did with the original trilogy.
Also, that ending. Fuck the ending. I completely ignore it and say Sly got off the blimp somehow when it comes to fan content because I can. haha
This video was very enjoyable and covered the game very well. Appreciated your humour a lot of the time too. And kudos to you for looking at the game on a technical level and pointing out the good parts that the awful writing prevented me from realising. I do think the developers had an appreciation and love for the franchise but that can only get you so far sometimes.
Thank you so much! 😁
After literally just finishing thieves in time again I have to say that I agree with most of what was said in this video. The game itself might come close to being my favourite Sly experience, but there's too many grievances for me to ignore. The story completely falls off after the ice age chapter: Penelope got her character assassinated, Ms. Decibel doesn't leave much of an impression at all and le paradox is just a moron. I think that there's also not enough time for the other members of the gang to shine aside from Sly and Bentley because of the mission structure. Murray only gets two full missions to himself and you barely play as him outside of one minute segments besides that, and you play as Carmelita a grand total of three times, two of those being in the same episode. Oh and as a final note I have to say that Sly's "you won't get away with this, I'll find you" line is the funniest piece of dialogue in the entire game, which is incredible because it wasn't supposed to even be funny
That line never fails to make me laugh
Penelope being a traitor is one of the most egregious things about Sly 4. Poor Bentley. :(
Also a nitpick but Gallath and Salim shouldn't know how to ninja spire.
J.R.’s Classic “ahh son of a bitch” caught me off guard and made me cry
Secret Agent Clank was made by High Impact Games, not Sanzaru.
I wish Bentley would have just gone back in time to around the time period of sly 3/2 to recruit sly rather than destroying his character by giving up on Carmelita so haphazardly. I think going back to play as the ancestors is a great idea but just executed poorly. And idk why people have a problem with some fan service with Carmelita, she was a babe and almost turned my 15 year old mind into a furry, thankfully I escaped with my life lol
I hated that stuff with Carmelita even as like a 13 year old, just ain't for me I guess lmao
I think if the game sold well we would of had sly coope 5 by now and it woulda somehow gotten sly back to the current timeline
Yeah I think so too
Your videos are such quality content, with in depth reviews and fantastic editing to compliment it. I've just binged all the R&C videos and now here I am on the last Sly video! You deserve so many more subs!
That's awesome to hear! Thank you I'm happy you've been enjoying them!
Ah yes, never finished this game, had it on the psp, but it was fun no doubt as you said, and had one of the most unfortunate endings, ever. (Oh wait, think this is on PS now, sweet)
Going from the trilogy to Sly 4 is like going from Teen Titans to Teen Titans Go
One was a series that while still light hearted and fun, had some pretty mature themes and subjects for a kid's game, like one of the main plot points of 2 was _drugs_
While the other made the series way too overly childish in both tone and style, which is kind of weird to say given Carmelita's redesign
It's a shame since the game could've explored some pretty interesting topics and continued on the themes of legacy from the original games with things like how you never truly know everything about a person or a _never meet your heroes_ type chapter
On the point about Murray's personality, he didn't quite have that strength or bellowy voice he used to have. He just kinda sounds like a normal dude. And on top of the overuse of eating jokes, they found any and all times they could to have him refer to himself as "The Murray." Its like Sanzaru was like "You guys like that? 'The Murray'? Well here you fucking go" and made that precede every line of dialogue he has. He doesn't even say it the same anymore as I mentioned. It got really lame really fast, and even replaying all of the original trilogy like a year ago, it never once felt like that before. Subtlety was extremely lacking in this installment.