What Happened To Sly Cooper?

What Happened to Sly Cooper?

Welcome to MojoPlays, and today, we’re investigating a break-in! Someone has cracked open Sony’s vault, and we’re suddenly missing one of the brand’s most valuable IP. Now, we have to ask ourselves…whatever happened to Sly Cooper?

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Prior to Sly’s debut, Sucker Punch Productions didn’t have much going for itself. The studio’s only game was a 3D platformer on the Nintendo 64 called “Rocket: Robot On Wheels”. Though the game itself was merely serviceable, “Rocket” succeeded in demonstrating Sucker Punch’s technical prowess not just in visuals, but in physics as well. The way objects would bend and react to the player’s interactions were unlike anything the industry had seen at the time. “Rocket: Robot On Wheels” would be a critical success, but ultimately, it was a commercial failure.

Sucker Punch Productions began work on their next game: another 3D platformer, but starring a raccoon sporting a thief mask instead of a one-wheeled robot. In their efforts to secure funding as soon as possible, they approached Sony Interactive Entertainment, who had previously declined to publish “Rocket: Robot On Wheels” during Sucker Punch’s infancy. However, the early concepts of Sly Cooper were enough for Sony to give them the greenlight despite Sucker Punch still being an unproven studio.

“Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus” launched in North America on September 24, 2002, and it was met with wide critical acclaim. While the story and voice acting was hit-or-miss with some players and the camera was a bit of a hassle to deal with in some levels, the cel-shaded visuals and stealth-focused gameplay helped it stand out from the 3D platformer market. Sly Cooper himself was also quickly being identified as a new face of PlayStation despite the PlayStation 2 only being just a couple years old at this point. “Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus” would be frequently awarded accolades by various outlets at the time between “Best PS2 Game” and “Best Platformer”. Sales-wise, the game alone would sell more than eight hundred thousand copies before the end of 2006.

It wasn’t long before we saw the release of “Sly 2: Band of Thieves” in 2004 with “Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves” the following year. Both titles received even more praise for their open world formats as well as the inclusion of different playable characters like Bentley and Murray, who had minor supporting roles in the first game. Unfortunately, this would be the last time Sucker Punch Productions worked on anything related to Sly Cooper.

Things started looking rocky when Sony hired Sanzaru Games to remaster all three “Sly” games for the PlayStation 3. Prior to this, Sanzaru’s only experiencing in porting or remastering a game in any capacity was the PS2 version of “Secret Agent Clank”, a game many “Ratchet & Clank” fans deem as the worst in the franchise. Though Sanzaru did a decent job overall, “The Sly Collection” drew the ire of some fans. Many assets remained untouched, making the games look weird with the new 16:9 aspect ratio (the original games were made with 4:3 in mind only). On top of that, rhythm-based sections such as the boss fight against Mz. Ruby were out of sync with their music, making them much more difficult than they were before. Even with these mistakes, some fans stuck around long enough and uncovered a secret announcement within “The Sly Collection”: Sanzaru was making a fourth “Sly” game!

“Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time” launched in North America on February 5, 2013, and unbeknownst to anyone, this would be the final time we would ever see Sly and the gang as the game would become a critical and commercial failure. But was “Thieves in Time” truly the culprit in bringing the entire IP down? Or has the resentment towards it simply been a case of “bad word of mouth”? To properly answer this question, we actually played through “Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time” in its entirety.

Upon starting the game, one can already see the frustration die-hard fans might have had just from the game’s existence. “Sly 3” had already closed things off rather beautifully with the Thievius Raccoonus being safe for good and the gang having gone their separate ways to finally chase their own dreams and ambitions. This alone would indicate that there is no reason to continue the story without getting surreal, and that’s how “Thieves in Time” starts off on the wrong foot. “Thieves in Time” explains that after the events of “Sly 3”, the Thievius Raccoonus had suddenly started seeing its pages vanish, prompting Bentley to track down Sly and Murray. Bentley then reveals he already has a plan in figuring out who is causing this, and it involves…time travel.

Now, let’s pause here and acknowledge that, in Sanzaru’s defense, this is not the most absurd thing we have seen in the franchise. We spent two games fending off a giant robot bird whose heart is fueled by a deep hatred for a family. We spent a whole other game fighting a mad scientist who hated Sly’s family just because Connor Cooper didn’t treat him as good of a friend as he thought he was. And we even fought a fat alligator lady that could shoot out PlayStation’s own sacred symbols. In terms of concept, time travel is beyond the most absurd thing we’ve seen here.

In a narrative sense, though, it does make “Thieves in Time” seem like an excuse to try and milk cash from fans one last time. Time travel has often been the first sign of any movie, TV show, book, or game “jumping the shark”. The story is out of ideas to keep itself engaging, but we don’t want it to end. How do we justify the continuation? Easy - we defy all laws of time and space and just go nuts even if it makes no sense to the story anymore. That said, if you are someone who plays video games like “Sly” primarily for story and lore, the intro alone might be off-putting.

At the end of the day, though, “Thieves in Time” is a video game. So, can the game pick itself up in gameplay to make up for the ludicrous premise? Well, it all depends on which of the previous “Sly” games you prefer.

While there is a case to be made for “Sly 3” being the better game, many regard “Sly 2” the best in the franchise for a few reasons. For starters, every region you visited featured unique landmarks and paths that could serve as potential escape routes in certain missions. There was a bit of emergent gameplay in how players could form speedy pathways with rails and powerlines to grind across, awnings to bounce off of, and hiding spots to crawl under. On top of that, you had more free-form activities to take on between missions. Want a break from the main mission? Well, there are some special treasures hiding in the area that could net you some extra cash. You could also spend some time hunting for all of the clue bottles and unlock special abilities to make jobs easier. And this all goes without mentioning the varied mission structure, which gave players the opportunity to take control of Murray and Bentley for more combat- or puzzle-heavy jobs. “Sly 2” was essentially a game that had a litany of creative ideas and executed them rather well.

This is where gameplay-centric players might be confused about the intense hatred “Thieves in Time” receives. Whereas “Sly 3” removed aspects like the message bottles and got a little too crazy with the multiple playable characters, “Thieves in Time” reels it in with the same scope as “Sly 2” and integrates ideas from both sequels. Even though most of your time is spent playing Sly, you still have jobs that will require you to play as Murray, Bentley, and even Carmelita Fox. Some jobs even give you control over one of Sly’s ancestors! “Thieves in Time” also brings back bottles to encourage thorough exploration between missions.

Speaking of exploration, “Thieves in Time” boasts a diverse roster of locations from across various time periods. This was one feature that, for some reason, was enough for some folks to dismiss “Thieves in Time” as “Sony copying ‘Assassin’s Creed’”. (Guess who went to Japan first?) Even if that was the case, the visuals and level design for places like Japan, Arabia, and the American Frontier made these locations feel like new despite them being frequently used and reused across other gaming franchises.

Going back to gameplay, there was one noticeable strength in “Thieves in Time” that the game simply does not get enough credit for: the boss battles. In previous “Sly” games, bosses were often fairly easy or way too simple to be engaging. They weren’t awful necessarily, but they weren’t super impressive either. “Sly 1” had bosses akin to “Crash Bandicoot”. “Sly 2” took things a step further with bigger rooms and more direct confrontation with bosses. “Sly 3” further expanded upon them by making them multi-phased fights that mixed in minigames every now and then. “Thieves in Time”, on the other hand, fits the bill in how people seem to strive for challenging games over the last several years. It isn’t enough to just smack El Jefe a few times; you have to watch his attacks while traversing to the next phase of the fight. It’s a blend of combat abilities and platforming prowess, which is a lot trickier to perform when parts of the stage are collapsing or if you’re trying to dodge waves of projectiles.

All that said, as a video game, there is a lot of love, passion, and creativity on display in “Thieves in Time”. So, is the concept of time travel really so abhorrent that it single-handedly destroys any ounce of imagination in this game? Well, there is one part of this game that really frustrated fans, that being the ending.

For those who aren’t aware, “Thieves in Time” ends with one of the most infuriating and unnecessary cliffhangers in video games. That’s no hyperbole either. The introduction of time travel already told fans “we know we don’t need to continue Sly’s story, but we’re going to do it anyways”, which is enough to anger any fanbase satisfied with a story. However, Sanzaru took it a step further and simply ended the game unresolved. Sly is lost to time with his friends left wondering what happened to him. The villain is defeated, and the Thievius Raccoonus is safe once again. But our hero? Why open the book again if you’re just going to leave it unfinished? Well, we all know the answer to that: gotta leave it open for a sequel! And so, despite the improvements in gameplay and the way it blended elements of all three games together, “Thieves in Time” went down as the worst game in the franchise.

This is normally where the story would end, but we beg to differ. See, when it comes to “Thieves in Time” and how it supposedly killed the franchise, no one seems to stop and wonder about potential outside factors. Should we really blame “Thieves in Time” and “Thieves in Time” alone for Sly’s disappearance? Or is it possible the game was more of a victim of circumstance than we, as fans, like to believe?

We need to consider this because, as we mentioned earlier, “Thieves in Time” was released in early 2013, which was an interesting period for Sony. The PlayStation 3 was on the up-and-up after spending several years floundering in sales. Plus, Sony’s first-party games were finally ramping up with unique titles. But the biggest turning point for Sony in 2013 was the soon-to-be-released PlayStation 4 console. While the PS4 wasn’t shown until June of that year at E3, Sony came out right before “Thieves in Time” launched to mention upcoming events regarding “the future of PlayStation”. That kind of talk almost always indicates the announcement of new hardware.

It also indicates to players that you, as a company, are about finished with your product, which is going to lead to low sales for future products made for soon-to-be-discontinued hardware. Customers are going to choose to save up for the next big thing instead of buying a bunch of small pieces of a now-old toy. And “Thieves in Time” was not the only Sony exclusive to see this dip in revenue. “Puppeteer” was another title published by Sony that performed abysmally in sales despite positive reception from players. It’s also worth mentioning that 2013 was a year heavily stacked with big releases, each coming out weeks apart from each other. “The Last of Us”, “BioShock Infinite”, and “Grand Theft Auto V” are just a few of those titles. And for as much as us fans cherish Sly, we have to be honest and say that our raccoon doesn’t stand a chance against a new IP from Naughty Dog, the long-awaited sequel of a Ken Levine game, and GTA. Sure, the “Sly” franchise has sold a few million units, but it's never been as big as we pretend it to be, not even when compared to many other PlayStation IPs like “Ratchet & Clank”, “God of War”, and “Uncharted”. When each game from those IPs is selling more than the total sales of the entire “Sly” franchise, what reason does Sony have in revisiting this IP?

So, perhaps “Thieves in Time” is not the reason why Sly failed? Perhaps the reason we haven’t had a new game since 2013 is because Sony now has different expectations, and those new standards came at really inconvenient times for Sly and for Sanzaru Games.

Speaking of Sanzaru, did the studio really mess up the story? Yes, there are plenty of arguments to be made there. But when you look at the game itself, it really isn’t this horrible monstrosity like some paint it to be. “Thieves in Time” boasts a lot of excellent ideas and expands upon previous ones really well. It’s just a shame that a bad concept, a bad ending, and equally awful release timing led to it being labeled as this humiliating trip-up from PlayStation. Could it have succeeded better as a PS4 launch title? Maybe. It’s a case of shoulda-coulda-woulda-but didn’t.

Since “Thieves in Time”, we’ve seen Sly pop up in rather odd ways, as if Sony really does want the franchise to live on in some way. There was that teaser for an animated movie we saw in 2014, only for it to never be spoken of again. Then, there was the announcement for the animated television series in 2017…only for it to never be spoken of again. But in June 2024, the very first “Sly” game was brought to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, and it was even among the best-selling games on PlayStation Network for a few weeks!

So, could Sly Cooper live on? It’s a possibility, but with Sucker Punch Productions moving on to bigger pastures with “Ghost of Yotei”, the question is who takes the reins? With Sanzaru Games getting acquired by Facebook in 2020, they’re most likely off the table. Really, anything can happen for the ring-tailed thief. We only hope that if Sly ever returns, the new developers don’t repeat the same mistakes made with “Thieves in Time”.