Of course, we may have had to brave the obstacles of the Cooper vault fair and square, but there was no way that Dr. M was going to be held back for long. Not when he’s spent so much time lusting over this fortune.
It’s only natural that he’s our final obstacle.
The strangest part of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves is how its themes and moral message ended up playing out for the franchise on a meta-level. On the whole, this is a game about being willing to let go of the past, even if one values and appreciates it, because holding onto it deprives one of the chances to move on to bigger and better things. As the antagonist, Dr. M clings to the Cooper fortune despite all reason and dies as a direct result. Meanwhile, our gang, including Sly, by putting it all behind them, are all able to move on to new pursuits.
This is intentional because while the team Sucker Punch loved (and still loves) the franchise and the time spent creating it, they were itching to move on to new horizons. They would go on to create two amazing new franchises with inFamous on the PS3 and PS4, and Ghosts of Tsushima on the PS4 and PS5. Both of them would go on to receive huge critical and commercial acclaim due to their individual strengths. And while they did, Sly may not have gotten any new games or media, but people held a fondness for him and his friends.
And yet, it didn’t end there. After porting the PS2 entries over to PS3, Sunzaru Games developed the fourth game in the Sly Cooper franchise: Thieves in Time. Rather than letting the franchise’s finale stand, on such a high note at that, a new official Sly Cooper game was in the pipe, with all of the original cast for Sly, Bentley, and Murray making a return. In hindsight, it’s not a bad game by any stretch, but it is easily the weakest entry in the series, with some plot twists and reveals that fans are unhappy with to this day.
It’s almost poetic how the original trilogy ended with the theme of needing to move on but failed to fully commit to that same message in real life. As a result, it created a middling game that fans regularly contest. While it’s not impossible to revive an old franchise with a new development team and fresh ideas, as Crash 4 can readily attest, it’s extremely difficult to do so. Sunzaru sadly couldn’t quite pull it together.
We’re done with the main game, and we have one episode left. Next time, we’ll take a bit about the extras that we’re included for those of us who achieved 100% of the optional objectives.
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