#neopedia

I love heist stories for the same reason I love solving puzzles. Watching intricate moving parts all falling into place perfectly tickles my brain. Are they often unrealistic? Yeah, but I am always willing to suspend my disbelief if the result is fun and engaging. So when I found this Neopedia article about a master thief feared all across Neopia, needless to say, I was excited. 

Until I read it. 

Uzarro is the best safe-cracker in Neopia, with an attention to detail so great that she has never left a clue behind. Her description paints an image of a clever, sophisticated thief, who can outsmart her adversaries at every move. The type of villain that is always three steps ahead. Imagine my surprise when Uzarro’s methods turned out to be the embodiment of brute forcing your way through a problem. 

She spends eleven months gathering intel at the bank three times a week. That might seem a little excessive, sure, but worry not. She uncovers a piece of information so obscure it makes nearly a year of effort worth it: The boss arrives 20 minutes before the rest of the employees. That’s it. That’s what her whole plan hinges on. Bless her keen observational skills. 

Next, is opening the vault. This falls right under the wheelhouse of a master safe-cracker, right? Surely now we’ll get to see her expertise in action, right? She uses bombs. Just bombs. She doesn’t even think to bring extra bombs, not even as a precaution. So, when she’s surprised by a second safe within the vault (a fact she failed to learn in her eleven months of preparation), she’s forced to attempt to crack the safe with no practice, no backup plan, and barely any time left. Where is the detail-oriented queen I was promised?? 

To her credit, she does manage to open the safe just in time to escape, bolting through a tunnel she dug underneath the bank. Suddenly, the eleven months of preparation make a lot more sense. She wasted all that time digging an freaking tunnel! Uzarro, I think there are more efficient ways to do this.

Every day it feels like there is less and less we can control about our lives or the world we live in. The feeling of powerlessness is increasingly overwhelming. We read stories about master thieves to watch someone beat the odds through impossible feats of planning and cunning. If I wanted to see a gal taking too long to come up with one simple plan, fumbling it regardless, and then having to fix things last minute in a panic, any day of my own life would have done.