I finished replaying Three and Four! Literally just finished Four moments before writing this. Now that I'm all caught up to the Sly Sauce, some more thoughts below!
Three has such a fun story, and the fact they brought back characters from One and new characters that didn't just feel like story-fodder cemented it as a worthy, amazing continuation of the series. [Panda King my beloved!] The world-specific villains were great too. Though I didn't particularly care for the main villain, in a sense I never felt any kind of emotion towards him, but the confirmation of possibly all previous Coopers having some kind of "Gang" did make me want to concept some fan-ideas for the Cooper Gangs long gone!
Speaking of the historic bunch, I don't know if this is a hot take, but I really love Thieves in Time. Not only is it an incredible visual upgrade, but the story-decisions felt rather natural.
I remember seeing some kind of post [or something of the sort] a couple years ago, where someone explained how they thought Penelope re-becoming a villain wasn't in-character and how it was a bad choice. I passionately disagree with that, even if I understand why people could think that way.
I love Penelope, I'd argue they did her justice by making her a villain. See she might've seemed kinder in Three, but time has passed between games and we don't get to see any interactions or character growth everyone has had in-detail. It's clear, however, that she grew tired of a lifestyle that must've greatly shackled her true passions and big projects- she even says outright she grew exhausted of the "morality" aspect that could've become noise and irritation to her livelihood the more she heard Bentley yammer on about it.
I don't think she's a kind person at all, not in the way Sly, Bentley or Murray are. From my perspective and interpretation, she only cares for the things that interest her, she wants to do, and people she's attached to. She isn't inherently mean by any means, but she's a big and ambitious personality that simply didn't feel at home even with a person she loved anymore.
But again, that's just my thoughts about her. I've discussed her quite a bit, I do want to talk about the Cooper ancestors too. And the Fourth game in general!
Before that I want to mention the one thing I actually don't like about Four. The 2d art. It's not bad, not in any world, but compared to its predecessors it just falls flat in my opinion. It doesn't feel like an evolution, it feels like a side-track. I still think it's okay, but not my cup of tea compared to Sly's other titles.
[Honorable mention to thing I don't like: Carmelita's pants being changed to a miniskirt. Because that just makes no sense for a police officer?? Arguably neither does the bra-top, but at least a logical explanation for it could be the fact she's moving so much she sweats a lot, so she doesn't wear a big top for convenience. For the miniskirt tho? I can think of no logical in-universe explanation that would make it better than the pants.]
Now, for everything else xd
I adore the ancestors we got to see. I have no particular favorite, they're all just so fun!! I am sad we didn't see them interacting with each other more in the end mission, it would've been so cool to see them just bounce off of each other. Oh well, more fan content for me to make!
I do have to say, the weakest story was definitely Bob's. I mean, the literal first Cooper- the inventor of the Cooper Cane! I expected something a little more... adventurous, I guess. Grizz doesn't really feel like an in-character villain for him, so I think that has major damage to the prehistoric section. But, again, just my opinion. I still love that part of the game too!
If this was any other game franchise I'd have loads more complaints, but as a Sly Cooper game it's delightful. It works, makes sense, keeps the characters, upgrades on aspects of gameplay, it's a solid 9/10 game for me. All those complaints I'd have about this game would apply to all the previous games too, but that's the incredible thing about Sly Cooper in my mind- it managed to make this kind of rag-tag nonsensical-kind-of-makes-sense messy story-and-character style work. It's an acid bath of characters and ideas written in rainbow ink on the back of an old gothic horror book in comic sans- kind of thing, but that is the game's thing. At least, to me. I throughoutly enjoy that thing.
It seems the Cooper-lineage is very male-dominated, but we know there have been female Coopers as well. I hope when we get Sly 5 [trust me it's gonna happen trust me I'm so fr it's gonna happen source trust me bro /j /copium] we'll get to see some of Sly's female ancestors in the story. That's just a little wish of mine, since we already about-know what most of his male-ancestors look like.
I actually love the fact Murray seems to canonically enjoy dressing up in all kinds of clothes. He literally insisted to wear the belly dancer outfit in Carmelita's stead, and yeaaah sure you could say; "Oh, but it's for humor!", well it's still in the game. So it's canon! Murray Drag Queen is canon and there is nothing you can do about it >:D
[Below are things solely focused on my own headcanons!]
Not that anyone in the cast is very hetero. Murray is 200% AroAce, Bentley is clearly only attracted to intelligent individuals and Sly is a raging bisexual, no my mind cannot be changed and I will hold this headcanon to my grave!
One of my personal favorite AUs [and by extention, headcanons] I have is that all of Sly's ancestors [including the ones we haven't seen] have parental instincts towards him.
There's this old AU I made where the Cooper ancestors can travel freely through the ages as long as they're back within a certain period of time, so the timeline won't be affected. There's different variations of "spells" they could perform, I think originally I made three variations. Something like a day, three days, and a week. And then they'd have to stay in their own time for that amount of time before they could do it again safely.
I'm reworking this specific AU, as I am an enjoyer of family bonds, and I think it'd just be so funny that the ancestors would all feel sort of protective over each of their younger family members. Which, naturally, would result in everyone poking and prodding at Sly for being the family line's "baby". Not in a belittling way, more as a mutual kind-of teasing thing. Sly then proceeds to old-shame everyone else as revenge /j
These are all just concepts though. I'm excited to be excited about Sly Cooper again. I just hope I can actually create the things I want to make instead of just imagining them to random songs in the car.
