Here's yet another plot hole in the Penelope issue... She says Sly was stealing Bentley's potential. But Sly was completely out of Bentley's life at that point. The Cooper Gang had disbanded and retired! The only reason Sly and Bentley met up again was because of La Paradox screwing with the past & Bentley being worried when Penelope suddenly disappeared. How can she say that Sly held him back when Bentley and Sly had already gone their separate ways?
The best I can do is because Sly's retirement is what motivated Bentley to follow suit and Penelope wanted to get him back into the thieving business, but even then that just completely contradicts Penelope's character. Him and Penelope settling down was one of the biggest segways to Sly wanting to make things work with Carmelita. This isn't even really a defense BTW, I'm really just grasping at straws because this was THAT stupid.
So in other words, Penelope's motivation doesn't exist without her evil plan, but her evil plan doesn't exist without her motivation. I desperately want to know who wrote this game, because it's looking more and more like someone's first writing gig.
It would’ve been more interesting if she had been coerced to turn heel OR retconned that she was never “good” to begin with. That last point being that she infiltrated the gang to get something out of it. Like maybe motivate Bentley to make a Time Machine. Maybe use said Time Machine in the service of, say, a father figure who may or may not also be mechanically inclined. Maybe a father who groomed Penelope into a life of crime while simultaneously controlling every aspect of her life. Maybe Penelope genuinely developed feelings for Bentley but could not escape her father’s influence. Maybe her father is an animal closely associated with mice, which is what Penelope is. Maybe that father is an owl, a mouse’s natural predator. Maybe his name starts with “Clock” and ends with “Werk.” And maybe this “Clock-Werk” is, I don’t know, “immortal.” And, I don’t know, in a game about time travel, you’d think maybe that’d be something worth going into.
@@TheMeditorEditor I don't think retreading the second Sly Cooper game would be a good idea... But maybe this could be one of the factors of it. Let's say that when gang manages to defeat her, she says she wants to bring Clockwerk back because he raised her (let's say it's like Legato and Knives relationship), but in reality, all Penny really wanted is to just erase Bentley's injury. Nobody really trusts her so she can't say anything word wise, which leaves the girl with nothing, and all of the grief finally pushes Penny over the edge. A mistake made out of love for someone and subsequent descent into madness, hell, if we went another route and say that Bentley listened to her and decided to believe her, there's another way we can take it: Bentley and Penelope having a heart to heart, with him saying that he doesn't blame anyone for the injury, making peace with it, and saying that maybe, if he hadn't expirienced it, they would never meet, and her saying that SHE can't get over it, feeling that it was unfair, and that he deserved better, and she took the chance because for once in her life, it wasn't a decision that came from the mind, but from her heart, and that it was fine if he hated her for it, but he doesn't and asks her to start over, giving the chance to rebuild, and this is the scene where the waterworks start. This scene can also be a chance to develop Carmelita's character as well, since she might overhear this and consider giving Sly some break.
Plus I think having Penelope be the catalyst behind it seems dumb and could have been better if someone forced her to confess or explain the time travel plans and someone else was the Black Knight while keeping her hostage like that
Another problem I have with Carmelita in Sly 4 is that she crushes on Sly’s descendants for no reason but to have forced drama. She’s so shallow. Also yeah, Sly is not Sonic. Both are cool characters that I looked up to as a kid, but for different reasons.
I know complaining about Dimitri might NOT seem like a big deal, but considering his involvement in the early advertising of the game, I think it's worth mentioning why he does nothing. And let's not forget that the team COULD have streamlined the time travel elements by having Dimitri contact them on what pages of the book are being replaced. Instead of the time travel logic they use.
Yep. Even if it was a small role. Would have been better to not use him in advertizing and have a throw away line about him "retiring" to not be obligated to use him if he simply did not fit.
Sony should have Sucker Punch make another Sly game after all these years while ignoring 4's existence and maybe have Sly's kids as playable characters because Sly's story if pretty much done.
Penelope definitely suffered the worst thanks to sanzaru’s Sly 4. Even though the story was incomplete and evidence suggesting that she and Bentley still have feelings for each other despite the betrayal, everyone else just gave up on her.
It's also stupid of the Sanzaru writers to just pick her as the "Main villains" of Thieves in Time, especially since the original member of Le Paradox's gang was a Mole. But I guess "Shock Value" is something the writers wanted to add...Must've been inspired by Ian Flynn's poor story telling skills... *coughRoboSallycough*! Also, A.D. forgot to mention that not only was Carmelita captured twice in two different games, she was also rescued by Sly twice. The third time she wasn't captured, more like possessed by a mask. Let's not forget that this is the SAME Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox that took down MUGGSHOT and GENERAL TSAO with her trusty SHOCK PISTOL! AND a giant robotic dragon! *AND* a chimera-Frankenstein looking monster of Dr.M's! Are you telling me that the ONLY bad guys that subdued Carmelita were a giant mechanical owl AND a skunk that's shorter than her height-wise?! Yeah, wonder how THAT idea came to be! "So here's an idea for Inspector Fox: We degrade her by making her dress up as an Arabian belly dancer and do the belly dance to distract the guards! Then when the climax of that level comes, we'll pull a plot twist and have Carmelita captured by Le Paradox! How? We dunno, just use your imaginations. It's PERFECT!" My @$$ it's "PeRfEcT"! This is why we see fetish art of independent, strong and capable female characters captured and hog-tied like a bull at a rodeo! At least Carmelita got her clothes back near the end of the game, albeit mysteriously! And her design! It's not only her outfit that makes her look like a prostitute, her overall body type makes her look like an ANOREXIC SUPER MODEL! I dunno about the rest of you, but the last time I've seen Carmelita in the trilogy games, she had an average body type with maybe some muscle, not looking so thin and skeletal, that she can climb up the building by going through the rain pipes! I dunno what's worse, using Bentley's love interest as an antagonist for stupid reasons, or a police inspector used as a sexualized object AND be captured as the "Damsel in Distress" for the fourth time in the row... I'll come out and say it: It's BOTH!
@@CooperGal24 I think Sanzaru thought Bentley & Penelope's relationship would be more fun if they added drama to it. Because they couldn’t figure out how to write a happy, functional couple. Or they just didn't want Bentley to be attached anymore because they didn't think he'd be relatable to their target audience if he had a steady girlfriend or (GOD FORBID) a wife.
@@CooperGal24 Same here-they should've used the mole as the villain of the chapter (maybe he brainwashed Penelope to serve Le Paradox), and maybe Penelope could have been rendered unplayable for a few missions after that because of her crushing regret for her mistake (and Bentley to reassure her it wasn't her fault). Then during the final boss battle, Penelope might hijack another Black Knight suit to fight the mole in his. And by the end, everyone forgives Penelope and they go on as the mole is arrested.
I wonder if Sanzaru Games didn't understand Penelope's character or they simply didn't like Penelope at all and wanted her to break up with Bentley and become villain in the dumbest ways possible. Both could be possible.
@@CooperGal24 Lmao, i finished the trilogy at least 10 times and i never noticed that sly rescued Carmelita in each of them… really tells how well the stories were scripted and that it really felt natural and not made just so
@@raven3067the sly fans left are diehards I’m one of them but I’m surprised there’s a lot more content even in the last few years then I would expect for a franchise ten plus years since last release. Even if I had to pay double for a new sly I would as long as it’s good
It's pretty weird nobody checked the script and was like "well, considering the lineage of the cooper legacy is being erased, do we need to have sly get an itch to return to theiving?" Think that'd be something they'd catch, instead of using it as an excuse to pull the twos relationship apart, smash it together, and bring it back to what had been built over three games. Be much more impactful if we saw Carmelita open a note from sly saying he's been forced to leave the humble life for the sake of their love and his friends to exist. But no, gotta have her flirt with the ancestors for jealousy?
I always figured the "old itch coming back" was more that Sly missed his old life which tbh isn't unreasonable. Being in a family a thieves I figured it's only natural he'd want to relive that a bit. Though I ultimately do agree that is was poorly conceived for not only the reasons aforementioned (the Sly/Carmelita drama is a whole other problem that made Carmelita out to be in the wrong even though Sly lied to her AND left her in the dark), but because Sly generally only targeted other criminals because he specifically said stealing from ordinary people is boring. I don't think he'd just want to get back into Thieving just because. Though the one who suffered the worst was definitely Penelope. I find it really odd that Penelope would be written as Beyond Redemption while the Panda King who terrorized numerous villages and murdered Sly's parents would be redeemable. If the gang was willing to give him another shot, there's really zero reason for them to do the same with Penelope.
Sly 3: being about to be crushed makes me realize i want to confess to carmelita... And rethink my Life choices Sly 4: what did i say in sly 3? Never mind back to thieving without even giving any memo to Carmelita It's not like she Will be pissed or anything
There was literally a good reason for Sly to return to thieving baked into the plot of the game. Cooper history was being erased and you need items from that time period to travel to that time. Sly made a conscious decision to not only retire, but to give up his family inheritance in order to settle down with Carmelita. He deemed that to be more worthwhile than his family legacy, which he spent 3 games reclaiming. It makes no sense for him to return over an "itch."
That's one of the many points of the game's plot/character choices I could never understand. It would make much more sense if Sly only took the job to protect his family and himself but wanted to keep Carmelita out of it. Then maybe he got stuck or trapped in a situation where Bentley/Murray decided they needed backup, and got Carmelita, who then stays for the rest of the game because she wants to help Sly and catch who was stealing all this stuff. The way she was brought into the story was extremely contrived and ruined any suspense of Le Paradox, as well as the whole situation being a boring retread of their dynamic where Sly is against the law but Carmelita is the law. As if they shouldn't have any development that stuck. Actually while I'm at it, just thought of this (not saying I'm a professional): Penelope should've been the one to "stay behind" for the time travellers since she actually knew how it all worked, not Dmitri. It could have easily been that she and Bentley helped Le Paradox in-between the games, not knowing of his beef with the Cooper family and ultimately he lied to them about his intentions/ stole their technology to enact his plan of erasing the Cooper legacy. Ugh, I shouldn't have started, there's so many things that could have been changed to great improvement.
Yes, and Carmelita was also handled very poorly, I do not believe that she would be fooled by his claim of amnesia for long if she was ever genuinely fooled at all, besides that she would have had to pull quite a few strings and abuse her authority at Interpol severely in order to justify him becoming an Interpol agent after she had been on his case for so many years. If anyone should have a guilty conscience about this it is Carmelita, she selfishly lied to him in order to pursue a relationship and if he really had amnesia then that would only make her more guilty. That all being said I think Carmelita did right by Sly considering their mutual attraction, but it is ridiculous that she would be angry at him for lying about losing his memory when it was her who decided to fabricate his new identity, not to mention it isn't in Carmelita's nature to hold a grudge even when Sly has left her handcuffed over an active volcano after stealing a kiss at the end of the Thievious Racoonus, or stole her bottle of wine and jumped out of a helicopter after he fake surrendered in Sly 2, she recovered from that immediately. It's also completely insane and out of character for Carmelita to be flirting with Sly's ancestors, they really made her into "the ex-girlfriend" in this game and nothing else. If this were the original Carmelita then I could respect the belly dancing scene as being for laughs as it is out of place for such a serious tough character to go along with, but for the new slutty bitchy Carmelita they have created it just makes me more uncomfortable, I just want her to suggest, "why don't I just beat them up? It's just 3 guards!"
The weirdest thing about Sly's motivation is that... They already have a good one written in the game? Like I'm pretty sure that Sly would gladly jump into thievery if he learns about what's going on with the Thievious Raccoonus, no need for him to just go "yeah time to thief again"
Coming from a legit furry here: I had a *major* crush on Carmelita (and Sly too, lol) growing up. She was confident, determined and adventurous and would do anything it took to capture the ring tailed thief. She also was quite the looker too in that uniform! But her design/character traits in Sly 4 made me feel DEAD INSIDE. The moment the belly dancing mini-game started I set down the controller, got into my bathtub and sobbed for a solid hour or two. My darling fox cop, reduced to wank fodder!
As someone who isn't a furry, you can make a character look "sexy" without reducing them to hooker status. She was still wearing a crop top and had boobs in the first 3 games but apparently that wasn't enough for them. They had to make her lose 50lbs as well for some reason.
not to sound like a coomer but honestly Carmelita looked much hotter in the three previous games compared to Sly 4 in sly 4 they made Carmelita so horrendously skinny that it was kind of gross also her outfit was just strange for a cop to wear, like her outfit in the previous games was a stretch but at least they made sense as most of her outfit was at least made for moving around in a lot
The way the creators treated Carmelita in this game makes me think they were just really, really aroused by her and didn't get her character. Like you said, she's independent and really loyal to the law, but she was also handled in a tasteful way in the old games. She was attractive, yes, and her outfit wasn't the best for a cop, but it was more realistic and suitable for her role than what she had for Sly 4.
Going from the original trilogy to Sly 4 is like going from Teen Titans to Teen Titans Go From a light hearted series with some pretty mature undertones (Sly saw his parents murdered right in front of him and Rajan was a fucking DRUG LORD for gods sake) to a game that's both tonally and stylistically way too kiddish compared to what came before
You would think with how Murray was able to talk some sense into Bentley at the end of 3, we'd see more of that side to him in 4. Like perhaps we could've had him giving his own two cents regarding Sly and Carmelita's relationship and trying to help them reconcile. Even if it just blows up in his face, it'd at least be funny and endearing to see him try. Plus it would add to the whole "heart of the gang" aspect you mentioned.
Bentley could've just told Sly the names of the book are disappearing and that's enough motivation to go back to thieving. Don't evern have to lie to Carmelita
Yes, THIS is exactly WHY Sly: Thieves in Time (I will NOT call it Sly 4, because it doesn't deserve the "Fourth Game" title in my book!) is a poorly written game! I'll give Sanzaru this though: The graphics were awesome, the gameplays were very well done, the music and animation were spot on, the cutscenes were great as well... It's just the story-telling and the characters... If I made a list about what was wrong with the story-telling and characters in this game, I'd make a book about as long as two chapters of the first Harry Potter book, BUT I won't since I've pretty much ranted about it on another comment. (But not long.) I'll give a short list of how each of the characters were poorly written. Sly: Sly pretty much didn't try his hardest when it came to relationship with Carmelita. Yes, he lied to her to be by her side technically. BUT he was trying his hardest to at least try and talk things out with her in the Western Era level. I guess the only flaw Sly has was that he didn't stand up for himself against Carmelita. Things may have turned out fine near the end of the game, but Sly looked like he was being treated like a "Bad guy" by someone he called a "Girlfriend". Bentley: Pretty much acted like a "Poor me" victim when he found out what Penelope did against him, but he also beat Penelope up in a robot mech! Like I get it, he wanted vengence after what "Penenlope" did, but to have him commit VIOLENCE on her?! What were the writer's thinking...? Murray: Murray was in a slump about "Not being able to climb like Sly and Bob Cooper". HASN'T Murray ALREADY proven himself, in Sly 2, that he was JUST as capable of doing things like Sly and Bentley in his OWN way? Sly's the leader and the thief, Bentley's the brains and tech genius, Murray's the brawn, driver, mechanic, he upgraded the Cooper Van in Sly 1 after Sly had gotten Otto Von Cooper's blueprints from the Theivious Raccoonous... A couple of things that the trio can't do isn't exactly a bad thing. It just shows that they can use their other strengths to solve a problem. Also, Murray somehow was capable of swimming in the Mice and Mechs level, but only that one level. Carmelita: Carmelita's reaction to Sly lying about his amnesia was kinda immature and just plan bad, like "Entitled Teen Girl didn't get her Prom Queen tiara" bad! I get that Sly lied to her, but THAT was so he could has a relationship with her, WITHOUT the whole Cop/Robber problems. Even Carmelita suspected that Sly was lying to her. BUT instead of taking the time to think about WHY, said Inspector blew up at Sly, acting like he cheated on her with another girl. And I was like "WHOA, calm down there, Carmelita! You're a cop, be mature about this!" And instead of talking things out WITH Sly, she basically played the "Petty Card", refused to talk things out between her and Sly and was being flirty with his ancestors. SLY'S ANCESTORS! Again, WHAT were the writer's thinking!? Penelope: Now this is the point that ticked me off! They turned a completely great character with potential as a playable character, and made her the "Bad Guy"! And for WHAT reason? "Bentley was ALWAYS too busy with Sly and this whole "Honor" shtick!" Are you kidding me? First, we don't know how long it was for the gang to actually SEE each other again. And this is since Sly 3! So no exact year was mentioned in TiT. Second, Penelope and Bentley were working on their projects together ever since the events of Sly 3, in which they used their share of the Cooper Vault Treasure. Third, Penelope's excuses for being the bad guy are forever stupid. It's like the Wife's excuse for trying to destroy the PowerPuff Girls in one episode is "YOU RUINED MY DINNER!". And to make weapons for money for the military? I doubt Penny would want anything to do with that, but here we are! Again....Do I really need to say it? Dimitri: He wasn't even in the game, just stayed behind as the "Guy who kept tabs and relaid what's going on to the heroes". THIS I can understand. The voice actor who played Dimitri in another country passed away, before the game was even created. So Dimitri not being in the game is kinda understandable, BUT it wasn't the same without him. The voice actor bit makes sense when you take in the fact that the original voice actor for Phil (From Disney's Hercules) in the Japanese dub passed away. So as a sign of respect, Square Enix decided not to have a replacement voice actor when it came to Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Olympus world level. Dimitri's the reason why Sly 2 and 3 were enjoyable to play, because you have fun characters like him! Overall, I think the next Sly game should be a MUCH decent Sly 4, while TiT isn't considered a "Proper 4th Sequel". Much like how Crash 4 is actually a direct sequel to the Crash Bandicoot trilogy and not the one with Crunch Bandicoot (Even though he's a cool character on Crash's team).
56:26 No it wouldn't, the OG Suckerpunch Penelope from Sly 3 would NEVER do or think this! She knows Sly is honorable, she use to have a crush on him, she got to know him, of how selfless he is, Sly saved her from General Tso's giant temple dragon from nearly crushing her to death in the climax of Sly 3 Chapter 4 "A Cold Allience", showing to her that Sly never leaves one of his own behind and he always looks out for his teammates! Even Sly said that he sees his new expanded gang in Sly 3 as more than just a pack of misfits, he sees them as a family which is why he gave all his friends his fortune.
She even calls Sly as "My Hero!" during that mission. How could she possibly consider murdering her former crush and expect Bentley(her boyfriend, whose been like brother to Sly ever since they were kids) to be okay with it, is beyond me. Also, writers can f**k off with Penelope's "I want to RULE THE WORLD!" BS.
Yeah sanzaru did made a mess with Penelope, but not one that can’t be fixed. Especially with sly being trap in the past providing a justifiable reason the cooper gang to team up with her since she knows all the technical aspects of the blimp that sent him to Egypt. Which could provide them the chance to make amends with one another and possibly rekindle her relationship with Bentley.
@@TylerTheShepherd It would take quite a lot personally in order for her to redeem herself. Sly 4 made a huge mess on her to make her fully out of character the moment she said "Cooper's honorable thievery nonsense". I couldn't believe it when i heard her say it, making me think she was brainwashed or something.
@@teriosshadow17 actually it would be as easy and simple as making a fiendish five member a member of the cooper gang. Once you get over the shock and paid attention to what has been said previously you’ll find Penelope wasn’t as evil as people are making her out to be.
The Caemelita stuff is veryy strange looking back at it. She did wear more "sexy" looking clothing in the originals theres no doubt about that...but putting jiggle physics on her breasts making her wear even less clothes and having her twerk for a bunch of horny gorillas really has you questioning who made these decisions. Theres a different between being a powerful female character that has sex appeal and basically making her a sex toy who happens to be Sly's sassy latina girlfriend. Listen Im not a prude or anything she is very sexy in this game, but its still a childrens game after all right? This is going too far imo
Man Penelope really got the shaft and her evil turn came completely out of nowhere. I mean if they wanted Penelope to be an enemy they could have had Miss Decibel hynoptize her and made her a servant and then Bentley and the others would have to free her.
I definitely agree. I also had an interesting idea that would have fit her more in the plot where what if instead of her just wanting to be a genocider for no reason, why not have it that Bentley and her have an argument and split for a bit, and have a conflict. But eventually it gets solved and they end up stronger in their relationship than before. It’s just so sad the creators didn’t use their brains when writing her.
It's really sad when you think about it. Sly 4's plot on paper sounds really good, it was the execution was bad, especially what was done with the characters. The characters are supposed to be the ones driving the plot if the characters were the same from the previous games then the game would have been much better. Here it feels like every character has digressed. What they did to Penelope was a real crime that makes no sense. It was just cheap shot at drama with no real thought put into it.
7:17 but look alone at how sucker punch writes its characters. They give them LEGIT minor background details, that are irrelevant for the games, just for Making them REAL & GROUNDED. That alone says Everything compared to most other games companies. And it also shows what a bad fan-fiction sly 4 is. Sure, the Time machine part is an interesting idea from sly 3, but the EXECUTION of it in sly 4 is blaspemyous. But the REAL Problem is the Character & dialouge writing in sly 4. If you compare it with The canon sly trillogy, you will See a significant difference in overall Quality. The strongest part of the canon trillogy is the grounded Character & Dialouge writing, what Sly 4 completely lacks.
It would have made sense for Sly to go back to thieveing because of the whole erasing family line thing. All they need to do was take out the whole "the old itch" thing and it would have been a reasonable excuse for going back to theiveing.
Honestly, I never though the idea of the "itch," was that bad. The main problem with it being he chose it OVER Carmelita, which he never would have done. Now, if he did it, to give an example off the top of my head, to help Carmelita on a case since he WAS her partner (Constable Cooper) that would have been FAR better.
Another point about the 'Honorable Thief Nonsense' with Penelope is like-- she was very honorable as a character to begin with in Sly 3! She had a code that she'd adhered to. Like the Black Baron was a real stickler for the rules and hated the concept of cheating because she wanted everyone to win fair and square. In fact the only reason she helps initially in that mission was because Muggshot and the other teams were trying to sabotage our planes as well. Like-- she wasn't ever a villain in the true sense of the word. And like-- none of the people in the Cooper Gang were bad people morally speaking. There could be an argument for Dmitri but he was essentially reformed by the end of Sly 3! The Cooper Gang's whole thing was that they stole from Criminals!
The worst thing about Sly "itch"? Is that, other than what has been said in this video, is that is completely unnecessary. Sly didn't had to feel said itch to go back at being a thief. He has his family history on the line, that should be more than enough for him. Sad thing is that this isn't the first time when writers use this "itch" thing to their works. Usually that is a bad sign that means "I have no clue of how to explain said character wanting to go back a certain path".
The made sly like sonic because the devs ONLY Made sonic games TLDR they don't know how to right charters outside of sonic they still suck for ruining a S+ tier franchise
Bentley is my absolute favorite Sly Cooper character because of the fact that we both are visually impaired and as a girl who wasn't supposed to live past the age of two years old with hydrocephalus and LMC as well as multiple sclerosis it just hits home for me and you can see why Bentley is easily my favorite hands down as well as Penelope
Thieves in Time ruined my will to live. (I'm joking ofc but yeah, it's bad, and your video does an excellent job explaining the character assassination at work in this game.) Also adding onto your complaints about Carmelita's design, can I just say that they not only ruined her outfit, but her body as well? Look at her from the original games. She's got a realistically thin body that almost makes her look stocky compared to other female characters during her time. Sure it's not big to the level of Murray, but you can still tell that Carmelita's quite built, which makes sense with her profession as a cop. But in Thieves in Time... they basically made her a stick. Maybe this would work in a more cartoony art style, but given that this game has a more detailed style, and they bothered to make her ribcage look visible, it just looks unhealthy. It's like they starved the poor woman.
You can tell Sanzaru isn’t awful at characters since the ancestors are all great, entertaining, and fun! As well as SOME of the villains… So, what!? You write all the new people perfectly but can only make ONE of the original characters accurate… Wow. (Also, from what I’ve heard Matt Olsen helped with writing… probably the only reason Bentley is in character…) And one of my biggest things is that PENELOPE HAD A CRUSH ON SLY!!! And now she’s over here acting like he’s the biggest pest ever… Girl, you used to swoon over him before Bentley! Btw, At least with Carmelita’s belly dancing, Carmelita clearly didn’t want to do it in the first place. Props to Sanzaru for THAT…
Whorst part with Penelope is the plan: She's going to kill sly ancestors . And as Cell once said and this universe follows: "Multiverse theory is a b1tch." Now what happens when you kill your grandpa, you aren't born so you never existed. What would happen if Sly didn't exist? I'l tell what won't happen Murray and Bentley won't ever become thieves and the Cooper vault won't exist so there is no reason for the gang that doesn't exist to get more members for a treasure that doesn't exist. So Penelope would never meet Bentley making her entire arch motivation, life and objective S@icide!! How can you be so bad to the point of making your character perform arachiri by your own universe rules?! HOW?!?! Penelope is dumber than Sly, he knows what happens. SHE'S DUMBER THAN THE MURRAY FROM THIS GAME!!!
I never played any of the Sly games but honestly, the whole "itch coming back" basically threw all of that "settling down and retiring" out the window. The comments here have a great point in saying that a good reason for him to get back into theiving is to save his family legacy, and yet they went with that instead. And I don't even wanna talk about Penelope, they should've just made a new villain to fill her role. If I were to put this game's story in a headcanon or something I would change a lot of things, especially some of these characters
Yo, me again. Just wanna say that I don't hate the game and the devs who made it, because honestly the concept is pretty good. Traveling back in time to save the family legacy, the graphics and I guess the gameplay looks really great. The only thing I don't like is the writing for the story and the characters, they really effed up some of the characters especially Penelope.
I heard that the voice actor of Bentley was involved in the scenario of Sly 4, that he had a heartbreak at that moment and that he wanted to duplicate what he was going through by making Penelope mean… Honestly I don't know how to take this information
Big big flaw in her logic, Bently would have never met Penelope of it weren’t for sly. He met her on one of the thieves excursions. It didn’t happen between games, it happened in game. If sly wasn’t around, Bently and Penelope would have never met
Sly 4 flanderized fanfiction that somehow got allowed to be made into a game. Also, Penelope wants money from weapon design but has the cooper vault riches already
I know this is kinda late lol, but now that you mention it, i hate that if ANYTHING they could've at least let Bentley and Penelope have a real conversation, where bentley agrees that after saving sly's ENTIRE BLOODLINE that they can stop thieving and just settle down together. ...too much to ask for?
I would've actually liked the game story if they just made it that a villain came and took away Penelope and made Bentley sad and also blackmailed Bentley into losing the treasure he and Penelope stored at the end of Sly 3 and Murray finds Bentley Depressed and calls Sly and a big character growth for Bentley and they get back into stealing due to this and free Penelope and get the treasure in the end! I frickin made it up rn and its better than the main plot ngl
It's a good thing this time travel runs on parellel universe logic, least she erase herself from history (since clockwork would die before sly's father, meaning he'd never get murdered, meaning sly never makes the Cooper gang, and she'd still be the black barren in Holland).
Well the thing about Dimitri is that I did read somewhere he was originally going to be a playable character in the game. Using his cane as a weapon as well as the trailers for the game especially the first one showing him talking with the gang and stuff. Even posters showed him with the rest of crew in a fighting pose almost like he was going to be a character you could play as. But I guess they didn't have the time or budget to really put him in or they changed their minds which sucks. We know from Sly 2 that Dimitri can fight and it would have been cool to play as him. I even thought of cool gadgets as upgrades for him like give him an upgrade to shoot beams from his rings like in Sly 2 or have his cane shoot out a laser and for a costume give him a cross between a Michael Jackson suit and a super hero costume.
You basically nailed on majority of issues i had with this game on this video. Great job! 👏👏👍👍 As for Sly's characterization and motivation in Thieves in Time. I can sort of understand Sly missing what he used to do in past life, but the way they had Sly return to thievery and abandon Carmelita, felt so forced and contrived. Also i fully i agree that his personality in this game feels too akin to Sonic(Which is not Sly's character)and it hurts to see it, which is funny because Sanzaru Games after this game went to work Sonic Boom games, so that can't be total coincidence, can it? 🤷♂️ I also agree with Murray being flanderized into fat food joke and that Geisha scene was just cringe, maybe it looked good on paper, i dunno Carmelita, hoo boy she got the 2nd worst treatment in this game, but also don't like her flirting with Sly's ancestors. It feels really forced and bad. You basically said everything i hate about her portrayal in this game. Penelope, possibly one of the worst character assassinations i've seen in media as many have said. Not only her motives make no damn sense, but her design is also off and doesn't suit her cute and nerdy look from 3rd game. I guess you could say they "sexed her up" now that she is playing the villainess in the story. Also like you said her motives make no sense. She fawner over Sly before hooking up with Bentley, but now she is ready to murder him?! Either Sanzaru games didn't understand Penelope or someone at Sanzaru hated her character in 3. Both could be possible.
3 was the perfect ending for the gang. Instead of time travel they could have just made spinoffs the other Coopers. In my opinion its would have been the best way to keep the franchise going and innovative.
I think Suckerpunch or some other developer only has to reboot the 4th game to make it better. The series as a whole is still good, just redo the 4th game and go from there.
Its hilarious that Penelope comes up with a convoluted murder plot using time travel to wipe out the entire history of the cooper familys legacy when she couldve just like poisoned slys food or something
When it comes to Murray being madam geisha, I don't mind it in itself. But it seems arbitrary that he'd have to learn dancing for guards assigned to protect her CLOTHES while she was gone on Vacation. Guards that el jefe HAD to have assigned to the role considering he's so intimit with her. Not to mention she's a rhino and Murray's a hippo.
Oh yeah exactly. I’m not against him being in a geisha outfit, but the fact that he’s just…COOL with a bunch of dudes ogling him is where I had an issue especially
I'm sorry, but the fourth game was just terrible and something tells me that the ones who made Sly 4 probably didn't play all three Sly Cooper games and started screwing everything up. They really messed up the characters as well as the ancestors and that infuriates me.
sly 3 had best character development, someone made a sick analysis. Although the plot twist of 2 hits hard, characters were at their peak in 3. Don't know why the writers gave up in 4
I think you should make a follow up video where you analyze and discuss the villains from Thieves in Time. One key thing you could do is explain how the reveal with Penelope being the Black Baron in Honor Among Thieves was a clever twist that makes sense, where the reveal of her being the Black Knight in Thieves in Time fails.
From what I heard some really bad things went down during the games development, to the point we're I think most of the team were really disappointed in the product they had to ship because of a deadline
Figured I'd check out your video since you mentioned we both released the same ones on the same day basically lol, I'm enjoying it so far! You've got a nice style! I don't have time to watch it all right now unfortunately but I'll be checking out more when I can
@@assertivedolphin I really enjoyed the video! You've got a good sense of humor that's my kinda thing, and as you said on my video we made lots of similar points, especially about Penelope, though overall you definitely expanded more on things and in a better way than I did! My only real critique would be to get the video quality to 1080p or higher, or 720p at the least, though at the same time the quality of this was also nostalgic, reminded me of the older days of CZcams in a charming way lol Nonetheless great work! You've got a good mind for comedy in my opinion, and whatever you wanna improve whether it be video quality, editing, etc., will get better the more you do it, and you'll learn more as you go along! I look forward to seeing how your content evolves!
@@MrJarheadTV thank you so much! I really appreciate that! And yeah I tried making it 1080 by 720 p but for some odd reason my Adobe premier just wasn’t having it and I have no idea why I even watched a ton of tutorials on why it wasn’t working but no answer 😩 lol And thank you again, I’m glad you liked it! Your comedy was hilarious too, had me dying 😂
I honestly think that the Penelope thing was sanzaru’s first idea and they just rolled with it, noticed it had plot holes halfway through making the game and realized there was no turning back lol
being extremely honest here, while we other characters have their own personality, lacking a more appealing design or being too sarcastic and less professional, it is not a big problem that completely destroys the character and does not respect his creation, although he has this problem, I'm not a long-time fan of the series and I didn't play the games as a child and I discovered the series when I was older, but even so I had the time to get to know and appreciate its story, narrative and characters. Now to be straight, Penelope went from a cute, adventurous character and expert with vehicles to a fucking maniac full of empty hate with a thought that doesn't even have logic and doesn't take anything into account since she was introduced," bentley suffered a Cooperian brainwashing even though I JOINED THE GANG, OFFERING MY KNOWLEDGE WITH PLEASURE TO HELP AND ON TOP OF ALL I risk dueling with the most intelligent man in the seven tides for the gang and for my boyfriend who now I hate him because he was manipulated to be a doormat, even though Penelope had barely joined the gang and had already done important things for her, in the end it was Bentley who was brainwashed by that Pateticus Cooperius. to revolt, a completely good character went to a being of just pure hatred in just nothing, for nothing, and to revolt even those who are not fans of the series and even more so due to a completely weak script in this part of the story, which in reality is not It wasn't even supposed to be Penelope here, well if you're reading this don't know, during the development of the game instead of Penelope it was supposed to be a mole but in the end they ended up discarding this idea, so you're even more revolted by this information I saw a video from two channels that made a collab to tell the content cut from Sly Cooper's games and what I said appears in part 2, both parts are very good and they brought a lot of interesting stuff, I recommend it. Well, to close once and for all, I wanted to say that we are in 2023 and Sly Cooper 4 was released in 2013 more than 10 years ago, and it's sad that the franchise is on hiatus but remember that Crash Bandicoot was in the same situation in 2018 If I'm not mistaken, your return has been confirmed and today it is here, so don't let it get me down, these things unfortunately happen and one day your return will be announced with the 5th game or a remake of the classic triology, if Sony stops being a complete asshole and of course but it's just time and the fans.
I absolutely hate Sly 4 I always pretend it doesn’t exist. I hate it’s art style. I love the style of the older games with their sharp, thick lines full of character.
On the Penelope point with Bentley's potential didn't he already have that arc in Sly 3 with Dr.M , being they played the same role to the Cooper Gang. Him struggling to not see the points Dr.M gave that he obviously related to but Murray being able to assisting to realize Sly isn't their boss but he is their best friend their adoptive brother or orphan brother they have siblings since kids. Like you brought up with them doing the same Arc with Murray in Sly 4 that they did in Sly 2 ,they tried to do it twice with Bentley. I also hate how Bentley not being able to do what Sly does not coming from a family line of master Thieves but being a big part of the history, him making his own way. Him losing his legs but not losing himself and still finding love I hate that they took away from Bentley.
I don’t know if anyone else has brought this up but if Penelope actually succeeded would she and Bentley have actually met. Think about it the only reason the two met was because of the cooper vault and the gang needing a better rc pilot. If the cooper family is gone then there would be no cooper vault, meaning Bentley and her may never have even met. So the whole situation is just even dumber if thats the case. I hope that makes sense
the worst part for me when it comes to Sly getting back in the game as it were is that they HAD a much better motivation IN THE SAME CUTSCENE!!! Bentley approaching Sly away from Carmelita and revealing that someone is going back in time and erasing his ancestors from history and that they need to go back and stop it by using artifacts from that time period is a so much better reason for Sly going back to the thieves life! But nope his reason is basically just cause!
While I like HD models of stuff.... Gonna say, I really don't like the art style and character design. It... It doesn't look like the western comic style the original trilogy had. In fact, they don't even look like they do in the cutscenes. They look like 3D models from furaffinity. O.o
You know I do think the idea of say the character in this game look bad is pretty very stupid as hell and I really don’t get why? tho I do think it just opinion
@@realathenightmaren4393 It really isn't though. It's just basic character design rules. There's several reasons why these characters in the 4th game look unappealing to the majority of fans. Putting the blame on just personal preference or opinion when the person explains what they found unappealing or bad about the design, is just a laxy excuse.
Sly Cooper Thieves in Times is one of those unnecessary games to a franchise that ended on such a high note, like Jak and Daxter Lost Frontier, Mass Effect Andromeda and Final Fantasy X-2. The problems include…. 1. Character assassination. (Sly going back to his old habits, Bentley being the one responsible for this whole mess, Murray being the fat one, Carmelita flirting with Sly’s ancestors and Penelope hating Sly and wanting to sell weapons for the highest bidder) 2. The villains are really bad, especially Toothpick, Grizz and Le Paradox 3. The game ending on a cliffhanger than never got resolved
le paradox had potential to be a great and interesting villain, the problem is that his precense in the game is nonexcistant and he only appears for 1 hours in the end of the game. we get to know close to nothing about him as a threat other than that he hates the coopers. and hten boom forced backstory of how he was a descendant of another thief family. to me , le paradox didn't feel like the main antagonist. he just felt like a normal goon villain like the grizz or miss decibel. there was close to nothing setting him apart from the others and thats what made him lame imho. and not to mention his boss fight is just one big fucking joke.
Murray would absolutely dress in a geisha and dance for other dudes to ogle him, he was planned to be bisexual since game 1-the idea being cut likely due to homophobic culture, additionally they kept him as cross-dressing and the voice actor took into account the bisexuality when performing Murray's voice. However, sanzaru failed to land a single overly forced joke to fruition. They made their version of a Sly Cooper game for a targeted audience even younger than the initial 1st games target audience, so it wasn't that Murray drag queening was bad, it was how sanzaru made the scene bad. Sucker Punch would have rocked it in every way
Have you ever been to sly cooper subreddit or seen the sh*t people there say? The users there now are giant Sanzaru/Sly 4 simps, and don't tolerate any criticism of the game or story, or Sanzaru Games. They say the Penelope twist was good, that its only problem is that the game/story is unfinished because apparently Sanzaru wasn't given enough time/money by Sony.
@@assertivedolphin It really is! I don't know why they're so desperate to defend TiT's story, or Sanzaru. My only guess is that they're either so desperate for a sequel, so deeply contrarian, or so diehard in love with Sly 4 that they'll insult and/or dismiss anyone who criticizes it. Or they're employees of Sanzaru who get salty when people say their story stinks.
@@HylianWindRider Yeah! Like "Krystal joining Star Wolf to spite Fox is valid." Some of the defenses I've seen have been wild too. For example, I saw someone argue "Whoever said Penelope was allowed access to the money inside of the Cooper Vault?". As if Bentley was telling her no, they aren't allowed to withdraw any money from it. As if they have to guard the Cooper legacy for the rest of their lives with no benefit to themselves. Wouldn't that mean Sly 3's ending made Sly burden his teammates rather than reward them for their help?
@3To3dSl0th I guess that's what can happen when a company brings back a series that was meant to end, like if Nintendo brought back Mother. As far as SF Command goes, Krystal wasn't nearly as spiteful in the Japanese original version.
12:10 My Guy, did you forget that Murray dressed up as a lady in the Sly Cooper comic issue #2 and the Sly 3 short "Goodbye My Sweet"? If I wanna be honest, Murray pulled off the dress disguises as beautifully as Bugs Bunny! Also, men actually did dress up as male geishas in the 13th century, so maybe that's a reference to that fact? They were known as Taikomochis by the way.
I do mention in the video that it makes sense how he dressed up as a Geisha. But it doesn’t make sense why he’d start dancing for a bunch of dudes, he can just easily beat up.
@@assertivedolphin (Shrugs) Who knows, but it might've been the old "Bugs Bunny as a Doll to trick the 'Ignoramous'" trick. Ya know, guys dressing up like a woman and fooling the same sex in order to get away or whatever. Murray wouldn't be the first or the last to use this trick though. But that's just a thought.
The twist with Penelope being evil in Thieves in Time is easily the worst part of the game. It's really a lazy stab at drama and ruins a perfectly good character and ship. Sly 3 did a much better twist with Penelope being the Black Baron then her being the Black Knight in 4. Lets compare the differences. The Black Baron has a unique design and a good voice and first time players wouldn't suspect them to be Penelope in disguise. The story and motivation behind the Black Baron disguise is good and makes perfect sense. Penelope was also testing the Cooper Gang with a game of her own to see if they were truly worth joining and she takes defeat gracefully. The Black Knight has a ok design and a bad voice, but you can see it's a mech and thanks to the insignia on the chest you pretty much know what the twist is. The motivation for the Black Knight is also really dumb and makes no sense going against was was established about Penelope in the previous game about her motivation and her character. If she was under some form of mind control or hypnotized then it would make some level of sense, but she isnt. All the writers of Sly 4 did was ruin a good character and ship.
I don't accept this as a sly game, so last sly game to me was 3. Thats how they shoulda stuck with it aswell. Not only is sly 4 bad in terms of character scripts , storywise poorly written with lots of things that don't make sense. But it is also "too modern" graphicwise, shoulda kept that sly 2/sly 3 look and it would have made a huge difference! All in all, the worst in the series, and the least fun gameplaywise aswell!
So I agree with most of your points here, but at the end of the day I still enjoyed this game because this series is gameplay first for me. And since I really didn't like 2's gameplay and was mixed on 3's gameplay, 4 surprisingly enough ended up as my second favorite Sly game and probably the only one I enjoyed other than the original. Now I haven't played 4 in about a decade so my stance on it may very well change in a replay, but outside of the first game I've just become so detached from these characters and storyline that none of these plotholes or character inconsistencies bothered me enough to ruin the game for me.
I clarify in a longer Comment why so many sly trillogy fans are upset about Sly 4. Sly 4 isn't from the Original writers. It's the same case like with Disney star wars, RWBY, borderlands 3, Dragonball super or Boruto: cashgrabs that were made from their Publishers & different writers who don't understand the characters & Worlds of their canon predecessors (the creators of DBZ & naruto helped a bit at the Beginning for their Franchise Sequels, but most of it is from the new writers). Sure, this Person over me can cope & say "it's canon" because it's published by sony, but if this Person over me had an ounce of awareness in herself, she would see the difference of the dialouge & Character Writing between the canon sly trillogy & sly 4. She would also see then the HUGE difference in Quality & that the Main characters acting Off-character most of the time. And here is the catch: One of the KEY aspects of the Sly Trillogy, and why it's loved by many fans, IS its strong character & Dialouge writing, and sly 4 spitted on that, like the new devs never played the trillogy OR never gave the Character writing & character arcs any attention. Sly 4 has decent graphics & new refreshing Gameplay ideas, but it's an insult from a writing standpoint. Therefore: Sly 4 isn't canon storywise, like it or not. It's basically like borderlands 3: A Game with decent Gameplay, but you better play it without Sound, if you're liked its predecessor's Characters, Dialouge, Plot & Lore.
I don’t know who was in charge of characters direction for Thieves in Time, but it’s clear that they played a maximum of 1 hour of all 3 games. Bentley is fine, even if he does talk way more than the other games. Sly is really immature and cringy when he should of been cool like the original trilogy Carmelita is just reduced too just sex appeal because someone in Sanzaru was a furry Murray is reduced to a fat joke when in Sly 2 and 3 he was absolutely made to be a like a Strong Man Penelope betrays the team because Sanzaru remembered she was the Black Baron and decided that Bentley shouldn’t have a love interest and her character is completely assassinated because of incompetence Dimitri barely exists And the developers clearly didn’t get ANY of them I mean it’s fun to play for what it’s worth but I mean they could have at least tried.
By the way, when you discover, that Thieves in Time Carmelita and Kitty Kastwell have the same voice actress it really will tell you a lot about the level of creator's creativity.
You are absolutely right lol 😆 I realized that after editing. Only reason I didn’t change it is because even with 1 more guard, my point still stands haha
Its a fact, sucker punch made greats Personalities on the characters, like in inFAMOUS, sanzaru make brutal diference among the clasics, (if i tipe something wrong is cuz i Brazilian)
There are some stuff i want to know, like in frist trailer to quteo tv tropes From the Outside looking in, it appeared to be Dimitri who was going to initially be the traitor, considering the first teaser for Sly 4 was him disguising himself as Sly to frame him for theft. To this day i Wonder what the plan to make dimitri evil, what there a plan about it. And also i want to know what was the mole Guy again and Why did there scrapped him. And same lizard and male elephant and also a alligator Guy, i only found in concept art.
You had the best description of Penelope in this game. Every other character too but you hit the nail on the head with her. I am glad you saved Penelope for the end!
So, here's I would rewrite Sly 4, for starters, I would think that Penelope would stay on Team Sly and be the one to watch over the Thievius Raccoonus instead of Dimitri (sorry buddy, I love you, but this is for the sake of the story). Also, a little detail is that Bentley will promise that when everything settles down for good, he & Penelope will settle down for go. As for who will be the "Black Knight", I think Mugshot will do. As for Sly's reason to come out of retirement, I think it would've been after Bentley told him about the pages of the Thievius Raccoonus dissappearing in front of his eyes. However, Sly is reluctant at first because he doesn't want to leave Carmelita's side, but in order to save his ancestors he has to return to his thieving adventures one last time. I would also add a DLC story after the events of Sly 4 (in case the developers do not or are just too damn lazy to make a Sly 5). I would have Bentley, Murray, & Carmenlita go back in time, looking for clues for Sly's whereabouts unbenounce to them that there are some remaining Paradox Bosses are in 4-5 more timelines and such. I think the DLC would've include the remaining ancestors, such as: Slaigh MacCooper, Henriette "One Eyed" Cooper, Slytunkhamen (I, II, or III), Otto van Cooper, Thaddeus Winslow Cooper III, & ending with it all, Sly's Mother and/or Father.
Not trying to downplay Carmelita's independent nature, but didn't bently have to hack some stuff in order for her to break out of the Contessa's restraints?
the best excuse i can come up with for Carmelita being dressed like that is that the night everything goes down, she was working as a honey trap in a sting operation, this could be a point of reference for some low effort humor with others commenting on it and Carmelita growing more and more pissed about it over the course of the story. if only this had not been a Sly Cooper game targeted at Kids
I watched the video ,too many memes,too many repeat scenes that add nothing. It's like I was watching Nostalgia critic. Either make it more subtle like Internet historian or just ditch it. Painful to watch,you'll cringe at it in few years time
I appreciate the criticism. I definitely did add too many memes in this vid, i like to make my videos cinematic and try to add parody’s and stuff. But yes I agree I already do cringe as some parts of this video lol. But I keep trying to improve everyday. I do love this video and I’m very proud of it. But if I could, I would change some things in it for sure.
Why does Carmelita's color pallette give more safari vibes in this game? Also, I hate how she runs with the gun trailing behind her like it's too heavy. As if she hasn't been running around with it for 20 years.
Here's yet another plot hole in the Penelope issue...
She says Sly was stealing Bentley's potential. But Sly was completely out of Bentley's life at that point. The Cooper Gang had disbanded and retired! The only reason Sly and Bentley met up again was because of La Paradox screwing with the past & Bentley being worried when Penelope suddenly disappeared. How can she say that Sly held him back when Bentley and Sly had already gone their separate ways?
The best I can do is because Sly's retirement is what motivated Bentley to follow suit and Penelope wanted to get him back into the thieving business, but even then that just completely contradicts Penelope's character. Him and Penelope settling down was one of the biggest segways to Sly wanting to make things work with Carmelita. This isn't even really a defense BTW, I'm really just grasping at straws because this was THAT stupid.
So in other words, Penelope's motivation doesn't exist without her evil plan, but her evil plan doesn't exist without her motivation. I desperately want to know who wrote this game, because it's looking more and more like someone's first writing gig.
It would’ve been more interesting if she had been coerced to turn heel OR retconned that she was never “good” to begin with. That last point being that she infiltrated the gang to get something out of it. Like maybe motivate Bentley to make a Time Machine. Maybe use said Time Machine in the service of, say, a father figure who may or may not also be mechanically inclined. Maybe a father who groomed Penelope into a life of crime while simultaneously controlling every aspect of her life. Maybe Penelope genuinely developed feelings for Bentley but could not escape her father’s influence. Maybe her father is an animal closely associated with mice, which is what Penelope is. Maybe that father is an owl, a mouse’s natural predator. Maybe his name starts with “Clock” and ends with “Werk.” And maybe this “Clock-Werk” is, I don’t know, “immortal.” And, I don’t know, in a game about time travel, you’d think maybe that’d be something worth going into.
@@TheMeditorEditor I don't think retreading the second Sly Cooper game would be a good idea... But maybe this could be one of the factors of it. Let's say that when gang manages to defeat her, she says she wants to bring Clockwerk back because he raised her (let's say it's like Legato and Knives relationship), but in reality, all Penny really wanted is to just erase Bentley's injury. Nobody really trusts her so she can't say anything word wise, which leaves the girl with nothing, and all of the grief finally pushes Penny over the edge. A mistake made out of love for someone and subsequent descent into madness, hell, if we went another route and say that Bentley listened to her and decided to believe her, there's another way we can take it: Bentley and Penelope having a heart to heart, with him saying that he doesn't blame anyone for the injury, making peace with it, and saying that maybe, if he hadn't expirienced it, they would never meet, and her saying that SHE can't get over it, feeling that it was unfair, and that he deserved better, and she took the chance because for once in her life, it wasn't a decision that came from the mind, but from her heart, and that it was fine if he hated her for it, but he doesn't and asks her to start over, giving the chance to rebuild, and this is the scene where the waterworks start. This scene can also be a chance to develop Carmelita's character as well, since she might overhear this and consider giving Sly some break.
Plus I think having Penelope be the catalyst behind it seems dumb and could have been better if someone forced her to confess or explain the time travel plans and someone else was the Black Knight while keeping her hostage like that
Another problem I have with Carmelita in Sly 4 is that she crushes on Sly’s descendants for no reason but to have forced drama. She’s so shallow. Also yeah, Sly is not Sonic. Both are cool characters that I looked up to as a kid, but for different reasons.
Heck, Sonic (even the infamous 2010’s Sonic) takes situations more seriously then Sly in Thieves in time.
I think you mean ancestors not descendants
I know complaining about Dimitri might NOT seem like a big deal, but considering his involvement in the early advertising of the game, I think it's worth mentioning why he does nothing.
And let's not forget that the team COULD have streamlined the time travel elements by having Dimitri contact them on what pages of the book are being replaced. Instead of the time travel logic they use.
Exactly!
Yep. Even if it was a small role. Would have been better to not use him in advertizing and have a throw away line about him "retiring" to not be obligated to use him if he simply did not fit.
Calling Sly 4 a crappy fan fiction is an insult to crappy fan fictions.
Sony should have Sucker Punch make another Sly game after all these years while ignoring 4's existence and maybe have Sly's kids as playable characters because Sly's story if pretty much done.
@@Rorschach1998 or better yet why not have a prequel playing as one of his ancestors, or sly's dad?
@@apothisiii5549 Starting in Egypt and making it to modern day playing as Sly's dad.
Yeah that's really great idea.
Sly 4 is a fine game gets hate for no reason
Penelope definitely suffered the worst thanks to sanzaru’s Sly 4. Even though the story was incomplete and evidence suggesting that she and Bentley still have feelings for each other despite the betrayal, everyone else just gave up on her.
It's also stupid of the Sanzaru writers to just pick her as the "Main villains" of Thieves in Time, especially since the original member of Le Paradox's gang was a Mole.
But I guess "Shock Value" is something the writers wanted to add...Must've been inspired by Ian Flynn's poor story telling skills... *coughRoboSallycough*!
Also, A.D. forgot to mention that not only was Carmelita captured twice in two different games, she was also rescued by Sly twice. The third time she wasn't captured, more like possessed by a mask.
Let's not forget that this is the SAME Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox that took down MUGGSHOT and GENERAL TSAO with her trusty SHOCK PISTOL! AND a giant robotic dragon! *AND* a chimera-Frankenstein looking monster of Dr.M's!
Are you telling me that the ONLY bad guys that subdued Carmelita were a giant mechanical owl AND a skunk that's shorter than her height-wise?!
Yeah, wonder how THAT idea came to be!
"So here's an idea for Inspector Fox: We degrade her by making her dress up as an Arabian belly dancer and do the belly dance to distract the guards! Then when the climax of that level comes, we'll pull a plot twist and have Carmelita captured by Le Paradox! How? We dunno, just use your imaginations. It's PERFECT!"
My @$$ it's "PeRfEcT"! This is why we see fetish art of independent, strong and capable female characters captured and hog-tied like a bull at a rodeo!
At least Carmelita got her clothes back near the end of the game, albeit mysteriously!
And her design! It's not only her outfit that makes her look like a prostitute, her overall body type makes her look like an ANOREXIC SUPER MODEL!
I dunno about the rest of you, but the last time I've seen Carmelita in the trilogy games, she had an average body type with maybe some muscle, not looking so thin and skeletal, that she can climb up the building by going through the rain pipes!
I dunno what's worse, using Bentley's love interest as an antagonist for stupid reasons, or a police inspector used as a sexualized object AND be captured as the "Damsel in Distress" for the fourth time in the row...
I'll come out and say it: It's BOTH!
@@CooperGal24
I think Sanzaru thought Bentley & Penelope's relationship would be more fun if they added drama to it. Because they couldn’t figure out how to write a happy, functional couple. Or they just didn't want Bentley to be attached anymore because they didn't think he'd be relatable to their target audience if he had a steady girlfriend or (GOD FORBID) a wife.
@@CooperGal24 Same here-they should've used the mole as the villain of the chapter (maybe he brainwashed Penelope to serve Le Paradox), and maybe Penelope could have been rendered unplayable for a few missions after that because of her crushing regret for her mistake (and Bentley to reassure her it wasn't her fault). Then during the final boss battle, Penelope might hijack another Black Knight suit to fight the mole in his. And by the end, everyone forgives Penelope and they go on as the mole is arrested.
I wonder if Sanzaru Games didn't understand Penelope's character or they simply didn't like Penelope at all and wanted her to break up with Bentley and become villain in the dumbest ways possible. Both could be possible.
@@CooperGal24 Lmao, i finished the trilogy at least 10 times and i never noticed that sly rescued Carmelita in each of them… really tells how well the stories were scripted and that it really felt natural and not made just so
It's really nice to know that people of the Sly Cooper fandom still exist. I thought that I was the only surviving one.
Definitely! I’m going to be making more videos on it in the future :)
@@assertivedolphin Glad to hear. :)
@@raven3067the sly fans left are diehards I’m one of them but I’m surprised there’s a lot more content even in the last few years then I would expect for a franchise ten plus years since last release. Even if I had to pay double for a new sly I would as long as it’s good
It's pretty weird nobody checked the script and was like "well, considering the lineage of the cooper legacy is being erased, do we need to have sly get an itch to return to theiving?" Think that'd be something they'd catch, instead of using it as an excuse to pull the twos relationship apart, smash it together, and bring it back to what had been built over three games.
Be much more impactful if we saw Carmelita open a note from sly saying he's been forced to leave the humble life for the sake of their love and his friends to exist. But no, gotta have her flirt with the ancestors for jealousy?
I always figured the "old itch coming back" was more that Sly missed his old life which tbh isn't unreasonable. Being in a family a thieves I figured it's only natural he'd want to relive that a bit.
Though I ultimately do agree that is was poorly conceived for not only the reasons aforementioned (the Sly/Carmelita drama is a whole other problem that made Carmelita out to be in the wrong even though Sly lied to her AND left her in the dark), but because Sly generally only targeted other criminals because he specifically said stealing from ordinary people is boring. I don't think he'd just want to get back into Thieving just because.
Though the one who suffered the worst was definitely Penelope. I find it really odd that Penelope would be written as Beyond Redemption while the Panda King who terrorized numerous villages and murdered Sly's parents would be redeemable. If the gang was willing to give him another shot, there's really zero reason for them to do the same with Penelope.
Sly 3: being about to be crushed makes me realize i want to confess to carmelita... And rethink my Life choices
Sly 4: what did i say in sly 3? Never mind back to thieving without even giving any memo to Carmelita
It's not like she Will be pissed or anything
There was literally a good reason for Sly to return to thieving baked into the plot of the game. Cooper history was being erased and you need items from that time period to travel to that time.
Sly made a conscious decision to not only retire, but to give up his family inheritance in order to settle down with Carmelita. He deemed that to be more worthwhile than his family legacy, which he spent 3 games reclaiming. It makes no sense for him to return over an "itch."
That's one of the many points of the game's plot/character choices I could never understand. It would make much more sense if Sly only took the job to protect his family and himself but wanted to keep Carmelita out of it. Then maybe he got stuck or trapped in a situation where Bentley/Murray decided they needed backup, and got Carmelita, who then stays for the rest of the game because she wants to help Sly and catch who was stealing all this stuff.
The way she was brought into the story was extremely contrived and ruined any suspense of Le Paradox, as well as the whole situation being a boring retread of their dynamic where Sly is against the law but Carmelita is the law. As if they shouldn't have any development that stuck.
Actually while I'm at it, just thought of this (not saying I'm a professional): Penelope should've been the one to "stay behind" for the time travellers since she actually knew how it all worked, not Dmitri. It could have easily been that she and Bentley helped Le Paradox in-between the games, not knowing of his beef with the Cooper family and ultimately he lied to them about his intentions/ stole their technology to enact his plan of erasing the Cooper legacy.
Ugh, I shouldn't have started, there's so many things that could have been changed to great improvement.
Yes, and Carmelita was also handled very poorly, I do not believe that she would be fooled by his claim of amnesia for long if she was ever genuinely fooled at all, besides that she would have had to pull quite a few strings and abuse her authority at Interpol severely in order to justify him becoming an Interpol agent after she had been on his case for so many years.
If anyone should have a guilty conscience about this it is Carmelita, she selfishly lied to him in order to pursue a relationship and if he really had amnesia then that would only make her more guilty.
That all being said I think Carmelita did right by Sly considering their mutual attraction, but it is ridiculous that she would be angry at him for lying about losing his memory when it was her who decided to fabricate his new identity, not to mention it isn't in Carmelita's nature to hold a grudge even when Sly has left her handcuffed over an active volcano after stealing a kiss at the end of the Thievious Racoonus, or stole her bottle of wine and jumped out of a helicopter after he fake surrendered in Sly 2, she recovered from that immediately.
It's also completely insane and out of character for Carmelita to be flirting with Sly's ancestors, they really made her into "the ex-girlfriend" in this game and nothing else. If this were the original Carmelita then I could respect the belly dancing scene as being for laughs as it is out of place for such a serious tough character to go along with, but for the new slutty bitchy Carmelita they have created it just makes me more uncomfortable, I just want her to suggest, "why don't I just beat them up? It's just 3 guards!"
The weirdest thing about Sly's motivation is that... They already have a good one written in the game? Like I'm pretty sure that Sly would gladly jump into thievery if he learns about what's going on with the Thievious Raccoonus, no need for him to just go "yeah time to thief again"
Coming from a legit furry here: I had a *major* crush on Carmelita (and Sly too, lol) growing up. She was confident, determined and adventurous and would do anything it took to capture the ring tailed thief. She also was quite the looker too in that uniform! But her design/character traits in Sly 4 made me feel DEAD INSIDE. The moment the belly dancing mini-game started I set down the controller, got into my bathtub and sobbed for a solid hour or two. My darling fox cop, reduced to wank fodder!
As someone who isn't a furry, you can make a character look "sexy" without reducing them to hooker status. She was still wearing a crop top and had boobs in the first 3 games but apparently that wasn't enough for them. They had to make her lose 50lbs as well for some reason.
not to sound like a coomer but honestly Carmelita looked much hotter in the three previous games compared to Sly 4
in sly 4 they made Carmelita so horrendously skinny that it was kind of gross also her outfit was just strange for a cop to wear, like her outfit in the previous games was a stretch but at least they made sense as most of her outfit was at least made for moving around in a lot
The way the creators treated Carmelita in this game makes me think they were just really, really aroused by her and didn't get her character. Like you said, she's independent and really loyal to the law, but she was also handled in a tasteful way in the old games. She was attractive, yes, and her outfit wasn't the best for a cop, but it was more realistic and suitable for her role than what she had for Sly 4.
Nobody's mentioning how Penelope, a grown woman, hit puberty as an adult?
She was actually 14 in Sly 3, now you know the real reason why the gang was constantly on the run from the cops.
Going from the original trilogy to Sly 4 is like going from Teen Titans to Teen Titans Go
From a light hearted series with some pretty mature undertones (Sly saw his parents murdered right in front of him and Rajan was a fucking DRUG LORD for gods sake) to a game that's both tonally and stylistically way too kiddish compared to what came before
You would think with how Murray was able to talk some sense into Bentley at the end of 3, we'd see more of that side to him in 4.
Like perhaps we could've had him giving his own two cents regarding Sly and Carmelita's relationship and trying to help them reconcile. Even if it just blows up in his face, it'd at least be funny and endearing to see him try. Plus it would add to the whole "heart of the gang" aspect you mentioned.
Bentley could've just told Sly the names of the book are disappearing and that's enough motivation to go back to thieving.
Don't evern have to lie to Carmelita
Yes, THIS is exactly WHY Sly: Thieves in Time (I will NOT call it Sly 4, because it doesn't deserve the "Fourth Game" title in my book!) is a poorly written game!
I'll give Sanzaru this though: The graphics were awesome, the gameplays were very well done, the music and animation were spot on, the cutscenes were great as well...
It's just the story-telling and the characters...
If I made a list about what was wrong with the story-telling and characters in this game, I'd make a book about as long as two chapters of the first Harry Potter book, BUT I won't since I've pretty much ranted about it on another comment. (But not long.)
I'll give a short list of how each of the characters were poorly written.
Sly: Sly pretty much didn't try his hardest when it came to relationship with Carmelita. Yes, he lied to her to be by her side technically. BUT he was trying his hardest to at least try and talk things out with her in the Western Era level.
I guess the only flaw Sly has was that he didn't stand up for himself against Carmelita. Things may have turned out fine near the end of the game, but Sly looked like he was being treated like a "Bad guy" by someone he called a "Girlfriend".
Bentley: Pretty much acted like a "Poor me" victim when he found out what Penelope did against him, but he also beat Penelope up in a robot mech! Like I get it, he wanted vengence after what "Penenlope" did, but to have him commit VIOLENCE on her?!
What were the writer's thinking...?
Murray: Murray was in a slump about "Not being able to climb like Sly and Bob Cooper". HASN'T Murray ALREADY proven himself, in Sly 2, that he was JUST as capable of doing things like Sly and Bentley in his OWN way?
Sly's the leader and the thief, Bentley's the brains and tech genius, Murray's the brawn, driver, mechanic, he upgraded the Cooper Van in Sly 1 after Sly had gotten Otto Von Cooper's blueprints from the Theivious Raccoonous...
A couple of things that the trio can't do isn't exactly a bad thing. It just shows that they can use their other strengths to solve a problem. Also, Murray somehow was capable of swimming in the Mice and Mechs level, but only that one level.
Carmelita: Carmelita's reaction to Sly lying about his amnesia was kinda immature and just plan bad, like "Entitled Teen Girl didn't get her Prom Queen tiara" bad!
I get that Sly lied to her, but THAT was so he could has a relationship with her, WITHOUT the whole Cop/Robber problems.
Even Carmelita suspected that Sly was lying to her. BUT instead of taking the time to think about WHY, said Inspector blew up at Sly, acting like he cheated on her with another girl.
And I was like "WHOA, calm down there, Carmelita! You're a cop, be mature about this!" And instead of talking things out WITH Sly, she basically played the "Petty Card", refused to talk things out between her and Sly and was being flirty with his ancestors. SLY'S ANCESTORS!
Again, WHAT were the writer's thinking!?
Penelope: Now this is the point that ticked me off! They turned a completely great character with potential as a playable character, and made her the "Bad Guy"!
And for WHAT reason? "Bentley was ALWAYS too busy with Sly and this whole "Honor" shtick!"
Are you kidding me? First, we don't know how long it was for the gang to actually SEE each other again. And this is since Sly 3! So no exact year was mentioned in TiT.
Second, Penelope and Bentley were working on their projects together ever since the events of Sly 3, in which they used their share of the Cooper Vault Treasure.
Third, Penelope's excuses for being the bad guy are forever stupid. It's like the Wife's excuse for trying to destroy the PowerPuff Girls in one episode is "YOU RUINED MY DINNER!".
And to make weapons for money for the military? I doubt Penny would want anything to do with that, but here we are!
Again....Do I really need to say it?
Dimitri: He wasn't even in the game, just stayed behind as the "Guy who kept tabs and relaid what's going on to the heroes". THIS I can understand. The voice actor who played Dimitri in another country passed away, before the game was even created. So Dimitri not being in the game is kinda understandable, BUT it wasn't the same without him.
The voice actor bit makes sense when you take in the fact that the original voice actor for Phil (From Disney's Hercules) in the Japanese dub passed away. So as a sign of respect, Square Enix decided not to have a replacement voice actor when it came to Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Olympus world level.
Dimitri's the reason why Sly 2 and 3 were enjoyable to play, because you have fun characters like him!
Overall, I think the next Sly game should be a MUCH decent Sly 4, while TiT isn't considered a "Proper 4th Sequel". Much like how Crash 4 is actually a direct sequel to the Crash Bandicoot trilogy and not the one with Crunch Bandicoot (Even though he's a cool character on Crash's team).
What horrible takes its the 4th game like it or not
56:26 No it wouldn't, the OG Suckerpunch Penelope from Sly 3 would NEVER do or think this! She knows Sly is honorable, she use to have a crush on him, she got to know him, of how selfless he is, Sly saved her from General Tso's giant temple dragon from nearly crushing her to death in the climax of Sly 3 Chapter 4 "A Cold Allience", showing to her that Sly never leaves one of his own behind and he always looks out for his teammates! Even Sly said that he sees his new expanded gang in Sly 3 as more than just a pack of misfits, he sees them as a family which is why he gave all his friends his fortune.
Pure facts, anyone that defends the Penelope betrayal bullshit is an absolute idiot and I've encountered a few of them already.
She even calls Sly as "My Hero!" during that mission. How could she possibly consider murdering her former crush and expect Bentley(her boyfriend, whose been like brother to Sly ever since they were kids) to be okay with it, is beyond me. Also, writers can f**k off with Penelope's "I want to RULE THE WORLD!" BS.
Yeah sanzaru did made a mess with Penelope, but not one that can’t be fixed. Especially with sly being trap in the past providing a justifiable reason the cooper gang to team up with her since she knows all the technical aspects of the blimp that sent him to Egypt. Which could provide them the chance to make amends with one another and possibly rekindle her relationship with Bentley.
@@TylerTheShepherd It would take quite a lot personally in order for her to redeem herself. Sly 4 made a huge mess on her to make her fully out of character the moment she said "Cooper's honorable thievery nonsense". I couldn't believe it when i heard her say it, making me think she was brainwashed or something.
@@teriosshadow17 actually it would be as easy and simple as making a fiendish five member a member of the cooper gang. Once you get over the shock and paid attention to what has been said previously you’ll find Penelope wasn’t as evil as people are making her out to be.
The Caemelita stuff is veryy strange looking back at it. She did wear more "sexy" looking clothing in the originals theres no doubt about that...but putting jiggle physics on her breasts making her wear even less clothes and having her twerk for a bunch of horny gorillas really has you questioning who made these decisions. Theres a different between being a powerful female character that has sex appeal and basically making her a sex toy who happens to be Sly's sassy latina girlfriend. Listen Im not a prude or anything she is very sexy in this game, but its still a childrens game after all right? This is going too far imo
Man Penelope really got the shaft and her evil turn came completely out of nowhere. I mean if they wanted Penelope to be an enemy they could have had Miss Decibel hynoptize her and made her a servant and then Bentley and the others would have to free her.
I definitely agree. I also had an interesting idea that would have fit her more in the plot where what if instead of her just wanting to be a genocider for no reason, why not have it that Bentley and her have an argument and split for a bit, and have a conflict. But eventually it gets solved and they end up stronger in their relationship than before. It’s just so sad the creators didn’t use their brains when writing her.
@@assertivedolphin Sounds like a good idea. The Writers really dropped the ball when it came to the characters.
@@majormccoy3364 absolutely my dude. It’s sad
It's really sad when you think about it. Sly 4's plot on paper sounds really good, it was the execution was bad, especially what was done with the characters. The characters are supposed to be the ones driving the plot if the characters were the same from the previous games then the game would have been much better. Here it feels like every character has digressed. What they did to Penelope was a real crime that makes no sense. It was just cheap shot at drama with no real thought put into it.
7:17 but look alone at how sucker punch writes its characters. They give them LEGIT minor background details, that are irrelevant for the games, just for Making them REAL & GROUNDED. That alone says Everything compared to most other games companies. And it also shows what a bad fan-fiction sly 4 is. Sure, the Time machine part is an interesting idea from sly 3, but the EXECUTION of it in sly 4 is blaspemyous. But the REAL Problem is the Character & dialouge writing in sly 4. If you compare it with The canon sly trillogy, you will See a significant difference in overall Quality. The strongest part of the canon trillogy is the grounded Character & Dialouge writing, what Sly 4 completely lacks.
It would have made sense for Sly to go back to thieveing because of the whole erasing family line thing.
All they need to do was take out the whole "the old itch" thing and it would have been a reasonable excuse for going back to theiveing.
Honestly, I never though the idea of the "itch," was that bad. The main problem with it being he chose it OVER Carmelita, which he never would have done.
Now, if he did it, to give an example off the top of my head, to help Carmelita on a case since he WAS her partner (Constable Cooper) that would have been FAR better.
Another point about the 'Honorable Thief Nonsense' with Penelope is like-- she was very honorable as a character to begin with in Sly 3! She had a code that she'd adhered to. Like the Black Baron was a real stickler for the rules and hated the concept of cheating because she wanted everyone to win fair and square. In fact the only reason she helps initially in that mission was because Muggshot and the other teams were trying to sabotage our planes as well. Like-- she wasn't ever a villain in the true sense of the word. And like-- none of the people in the Cooper Gang were bad people morally speaking. There could be an argument for Dmitri but he was essentially reformed by the end of Sly 3! The Cooper Gang's whole thing was that they stole from Criminals!
The worst thing about Sly "itch"?
Is that, other than what has been said in this video, is that is completely unnecessary.
Sly didn't had to feel said itch to go back at being a thief. He has his family history on the line, that should be more than enough for him.
Sad thing is that this isn't the first time when writers use this "itch" thing to their works. Usually that is a bad sign that means "I have no clue of how to explain said character wanting to go back a certain path".
The made sly like sonic because the devs ONLY Made sonic games TLDR they don't know how to right charters outside of sonic
they still suck for ruining a S+ tier franchise
Bentley is my absolute favorite Sly Cooper character because of the fact that we both are visually impaired and as a girl who wasn't supposed to live past the age of two years old with hydrocephalus and LMC as well as multiple sclerosis it just hits home for me and you can see why Bentley is easily my favorite hands down as well as Penelope
I don't get what she means with Bentley is wasting his potential and together they could change the world when they literally build a TIME MACHINE
Exactly lol
Thieves in Time ruined my will to live. (I'm joking ofc but yeah, it's bad, and your video does an excellent job explaining the character assassination at work in this game.)
Also adding onto your complaints about Carmelita's design, can I just say that they not only ruined her outfit, but her body as well? Look at her from the original games. She's got a realistically thin body that almost makes her look stocky compared to other female characters during her time. Sure it's not big to the level of Murray, but you can still tell that Carmelita's quite built, which makes sense with her profession as a cop.
But in Thieves in Time... they basically made her a stick. Maybe this would work in a more cartoony art style, but given that this game has a more detailed style, and they bothered to make her ribcage look visible, it just looks unhealthy. It's like they starved the poor woman.
100% it’s a real shame what they’ve done to the franchise.
You can tell Sanzaru isn’t awful at characters since the ancestors are all great, entertaining, and fun! As well as SOME of the villains… So, what!? You write all the new people perfectly but can only make ONE of the original characters accurate… Wow. (Also, from what I’ve heard Matt Olsen helped with writing… probably the only reason Bentley is in character…)
And one of my biggest things is that PENELOPE HAD A CRUSH ON SLY!!! And now she’s over here acting like he’s the biggest pest ever… Girl, you used to swoon over him before Bentley!
Btw, At least with Carmelita’s belly dancing, Carmelita clearly didn’t want to do it in the first place. Props to Sanzaru for THAT…
I'm a man who can forgive many things. But ruining my Sly Cooper as a character is were I draw the line.
They dindt ruin anything
Whorst part with Penelope is the plan: She's going to kill sly ancestors . And as Cell once said and this universe follows: "Multiverse theory is a b1tch." Now what happens when you kill your grandpa, you aren't born so you never existed.
What would happen if Sly didn't exist? I'l tell what won't happen Murray and Bentley won't ever become thieves and the Cooper vault won't exist so there is no reason for the gang that doesn't exist to get more members for a treasure that doesn't exist. So Penelope would never meet Bentley making her entire arch motivation, life and objective S@icide!!
How can you be so bad to the point of making your character perform arachiri by your own universe rules?! HOW?!?! Penelope is dumber than Sly, he knows what happens. SHE'S DUMBER THAN THE MURRAY FROM THIS GAME!!!
The fact that Dimitri had new dialog in the commercial is false advertisement.
They clearly just didn’t want to pay the voice actor
I never played any of the Sly games but honestly, the whole "itch coming back" basically threw all of that "settling down and retiring" out the window. The comments here have a great point in saying that a good reason for him to get back into theiving is to save his family legacy, and yet they went with that instead. And I don't even wanna talk about Penelope, they should've just made a new villain to fill her role. If I were to put this game's story in a headcanon or something I would change a lot of things, especially some of these characters
Yo, me again. Just wanna say that I don't hate the game and the devs who made it, because honestly the concept is pretty good. Traveling back in time to save the family legacy, the graphics and I guess the gameplay looks really great. The only thing I don't like is the writing for the story and the characters, they really effed up some of the characters especially Penelope.
I heard that the voice actor of Bentley was involved in the scenario of Sly 4, that he had a heartbreak at that moment and that he wanted to duplicate what he was going through by making Penelope mean… Honestly I don't know how to take this information
Holy shit, what? Seriously? o_o Where did you hear this?
Big big flaw in her logic, Bently would have never met Penelope of it weren’t for sly. He met her on one of the thieves excursions. It didn’t happen between games, it happened in game. If sly wasn’t around, Bently and Penelope would have never met
Something the writers SHOULD’VE take note from Sly 3 and just use somebody else not her
Sly 4 is garbage it ruined one of my favorite game series 😭
Sly 4 is s good game lmao
Sly 4 flanderized fanfiction that somehow got allowed to be made into a game. Also, Penelope wants money from weapon design but has the cooper vault riches already
I know this is kinda late lol, but now that you mention it, i hate that if ANYTHING they could've at least let Bentley and Penelope have a real conversation, where bentley agrees that after saving sly's ENTIRE BLOODLINE that they can stop thieving and just settle down together.
...too much to ask for?
Probably a good thing Dimitri didn’t have any dialogue. His voice actor probably saw the garbage writing for Sly 4, and said nope
Sly 4 had fine writing lmao
@@gamerbeast3616It was awful
His voice actor died.
@@hikeluv that sux ass RIP
I would've actually liked the game story if they just made it that a villain came and took away Penelope and made Bentley sad and also blackmailed Bentley into losing the treasure he and Penelope stored at the end of Sly 3 and Murray finds Bentley Depressed and calls Sly and a big character growth for Bentley and they get back into stealing due to this and free Penelope and get the treasure in the end! I frickin made it up rn and its better than the main plot ngl
I think the writers were very horny high
And sometimes out of ideas for the Penelope thing
Like the star wars sequel trilogy writers
Also the writers were furries
i mean...
i hang myself when i saw penelope character in this game.
And she was my favorite character...
It's a good thing this time travel runs on parellel universe logic, least she erase herself from history (since clockwork would die before sly's father, meaning he'd never get murdered, meaning sly never makes the Cooper gang, and she'd still be the black barren in Holland).
Honestly having Penélope replaced by a robot replica they beat it amd rescue real penelope makes more sense than whatever sly 4 was going for
Well the thing about Dimitri is that I did read somewhere he was originally going to be a playable character in the game. Using his cane as a weapon as well as the trailers for the game especially the first one showing him talking with the gang and stuff. Even posters showed him with the rest of crew in a fighting pose almost like he was going to be a character you could play as. But I guess they didn't have the time or budget to really put him in or they changed their minds which sucks. We know from Sly 2 that Dimitri can fight and it would have been cool to play as him. I even thought of cool gadgets as upgrades for him like give him an upgrade to shoot beams from his rings like in Sly 2 or have his cane shoot out a laser and for a costume give him a cross between a Michael Jackson suit and a super hero costume.
You basically nailed on majority of issues i had with this game on this video. Great job! 👏👏👍👍
As for Sly's characterization and motivation in Thieves in Time. I can sort of understand Sly missing what he used to do in past life, but the way they had Sly return to thievery and abandon Carmelita, felt so forced and contrived. Also i fully i agree that his personality in this game feels too akin to Sonic(Which is not Sly's character)and it hurts to see it, which is funny because Sanzaru Games after this game went to work Sonic Boom games, so that can't be total coincidence, can it? 🤷♂️
I also agree with Murray being flanderized into fat food joke and that Geisha scene was just cringe, maybe it looked good on paper, i dunno
Carmelita, hoo boy she got the 2nd worst treatment in this game, but also don't like her flirting with Sly's ancestors. It feels really forced and bad. You basically said everything i hate about her portrayal in this game.
Penelope, possibly one of the worst character assassinations i've seen in media as many have said. Not only her motives make no damn sense, but her design is also off and doesn't suit her cute and nerdy look from 3rd game. I guess you could say they "sexed her up" now that she is playing the villainess in the story. Also like you said her motives make no sense. She fawner over Sly before hooking up with Bentley, but now she is ready to murder him?! Either Sanzaru games didn't understand Penelope or someone at Sanzaru hated her character in 3. Both could be possible.
Your usage of memes is absolutely hilarious lmao. It cracks me up everytime!!
@@applejones1697 Thank you!! 😁
3 was the perfect ending for the gang. Instead of time travel they could have just made spinoffs the other Coopers. In my opinion its would have been the best way to keep the franchise going and innovative.
The problem is that they hinted at time travel at the end of Sly 3.
So either way, the next game would have something to do with time travel.
Almost 11 years of this subpar entry, Sly needs an amazing reboot to justify ever returning.
I think Suckerpunch or some other developer only has to reboot the 4th game to make it better.
The series as a whole is still good, just redo the 4th game and go from there.
Its hilarious that Penelope comes up with a convoluted murder plot using time travel to wipe out the entire history of the cooper familys legacy when she couldve just like poisoned slys food or something
When it comes to Murray being madam geisha, I don't mind it in itself. But it seems arbitrary that he'd have to learn dancing for guards assigned to protect her CLOTHES while she was gone on Vacation. Guards that el jefe HAD to have assigned to the role considering he's so intimit with her. Not to mention she's a rhino and Murray's a hippo.
Oh yeah exactly. I’m not against him being in a geisha outfit, but the fact that he’s just…COOL with a bunch of dudes ogling him is where I had an issue especially
I'm sorry, but the fourth game was just terrible and something tells me that the ones who made Sly 4 probably didn't play all three Sly Cooper games and started screwing everything up. They really messed up the characters as well as the ancestors and that infuriates me.
sly 3 had best character development, someone made a sick analysis. Although the plot twist of 2 hits hard, characters were at their peak in 3. Don't know why the writers gave up in 4
Because everyone finished its Character arc in sly 3, and it's the ending of sly 🤷♂️
I had never seen that belly dance thing with Camerlita Fox and it took me a moment to process that such a thing exists.
I think you should make a follow up video where you analyze and discuss the villains from Thieves in Time. One key thing you could do is explain how the reveal with Penelope being the Black Baron in Honor Among Thieves was a clever twist that makes sense, where the reveal of her being the Black Knight in Thieves in Time fails.
That’s a great idea! Thank you! I will 100% be making more sly videos
@@assertivedolphin Thanks glad you like it. I feel like it's a good comparison that no one talks about.
From what I heard some really bad things went down during the games development, to the point we're I think most of the team were really disappointed in the product they had to ship because of a deadline
Making sly 4 never should've retconned sly and Carmelita. Should've made it work with them still being together
Figured I'd check out your video since you mentioned we both released the same ones on the same day basically lol, I'm enjoying it so far! You've got a nice style! I don't have time to watch it all right now unfortunately but I'll be checking out more when I can
Thank you so much! I really appreciate that! Please let me know what you think when you get the chance 😄
@@assertivedolphin I really enjoyed the video! You've got a good sense of humor that's my kinda thing, and as you said on my video we made lots of similar points, especially about Penelope, though overall you definitely expanded more on things and in a better way than I did! My only real critique would be to get the video quality to 1080p or higher, or 720p at the least, though at the same time the quality of this was also nostalgic, reminded me of the older days of CZcams in a charming way lol
Nonetheless great work! You've got a good mind for comedy in my opinion, and whatever you wanna improve whether it be video quality, editing, etc., will get better the more you do it, and you'll learn more as you go along! I look forward to seeing how your content evolves!
@@MrJarheadTV thank you so much! I really appreciate that! And yeah I tried making it 1080 by 720 p but for some odd reason my Adobe premier just wasn’t having it and I have no idea why I even watched a ton of tutorials on why it wasn’t working but no answer 😩 lol
And thank you again, I’m glad you liked it! Your comedy was hilarious too, had me dying 😂
I honestly think that the Penelope thing was sanzaru’s first idea and they just rolled with it, noticed it had plot holes halfway through making the game and realized there was no turning back lol
being extremely honest here, while we other characters have their own personality, lacking a more appealing design or being too sarcastic and less professional, it is not a big problem that completely destroys the character and does not respect his creation, although he has this problem, I'm not a long-time fan of the series and I didn't play the games as a child and I discovered the series when I was older, but even so I had the time to get to know and appreciate its story, narrative and characters. Now to be straight, Penelope went from a cute, adventurous character and expert with vehicles to a fucking maniac full of empty hate with a thought that doesn't even have logic and doesn't take anything into account since she was introduced," bentley suffered a Cooperian brainwashing even though I JOINED THE GANG, OFFERING MY KNOWLEDGE WITH PLEASURE TO HELP AND ON TOP OF ALL I risk dueling with the most intelligent man in the seven tides for the gang and for my boyfriend who now I hate him because he was manipulated to be a doormat, even though Penelope had barely joined the gang and had already done important things for her, in the end it was Bentley who was brainwashed by that Pateticus Cooperius. to revolt, a completely good character went to a being of just pure hatred in just nothing, for nothing, and to revolt even those who are not fans of the series and even more so due to a completely weak script in this part of the story, which in reality is not It wasn't even supposed to be Penelope here, well if you're reading this don't know, during the development of the game instead of Penelope it was supposed to be a mole but in the end they ended up discarding this idea, so you're even more revolted by this information I saw a video from two channels that made a collab to tell the content cut from Sly Cooper's games and what I said appears in part 2, both parts are very good and they brought a lot of interesting stuff, I recommend it. Well, to close once and for all, I wanted to say that we are in 2023 and Sly Cooper 4 was released in 2013 more than 10 years ago, and it's sad that the franchise is on hiatus but remember that Crash Bandicoot was in the same situation in 2018 If I'm not mistaken, your return has been confirmed and today it is here, so don't let it get me down, these things unfortunately happen and one day your return will be announced with the 5th game or a remake of the classic triology, if Sony stops being a complete asshole and of course but it's just time and the fans.
I absolutely hate Sly 4 I always pretend it doesn’t exist. I hate it’s art style. I love the style of the older games with their sharp, thick lines full of character.
I think it should be ok to consider a game to be non canon if it was so poorly written.
Sly Cooper 4 is the most ''Kidful'' of the Franchise
On the Penelope point with Bentley's potential didn't he already have that arc in Sly 3 with Dr.M , being they played the same role to the Cooper Gang. Him struggling to not see the points Dr.M gave that he obviously related to but Murray being able to assisting to realize Sly isn't their boss but he is their best friend their adoptive brother or orphan brother they have siblings since kids. Like you brought up with them doing the same Arc with Murray in Sly 4 that they did in Sly 2 ,they tried to do it twice with Bentley. I also hate how Bentley not being able to do what Sly does not coming from a family line of master Thieves but being a big part of the history, him making his own way. Him losing his legs but not losing himself and still finding love I hate that they took away from Bentley.
I don’t know if anyone else has brought this up but if Penelope actually succeeded would she and Bentley have actually met. Think about it the only reason the two met was because of the cooper vault and the gang needing a better rc pilot. If the cooper family is gone then there would be no cooper vault, meaning Bentley and her may never have even met. So the whole situation is just even dumber if thats the case.
I hope that makes sense
the worst part for me when it comes to Sly getting back in the game as it were is that they HAD a much better motivation IN THE SAME CUTSCENE!!!
Bentley approaching Sly away from Carmelita and revealing that someone is going back in time and erasing his ancestors from history and that they need to go back and stop it by using artifacts from that time period is a so much better reason for Sly going back to the thieves life! But nope his reason is basically just cause!
While I like HD models of stuff.... Gonna say, I really don't like the art style and character design. It... It doesn't look like the western comic style the original trilogy had. In fact, they don't even look like they do in the cutscenes. They look like 3D models from furaffinity. O.o
You know I do think the idea of say the character in this game look bad is pretty very stupid as hell and I really don’t get why? tho I do think it just opinion
@@realathenightmaren4393 It really isn't though. It's just basic character design rules. There's several reasons why these characters in the 4th game look unappealing to the majority of fans. Putting the blame on just personal preference or opinion when the person explains what they found unappealing or bad about the design, is just a laxy excuse.
@@JackSilverGamingOcean ok?
Sly Cooper Thieves in Times is one of those unnecessary games to a franchise that ended on such a high note, like Jak and Daxter Lost Frontier, Mass Effect Andromeda and Final Fantasy X-2. The problems include….
1. Character assassination. (Sly going back to his old habits, Bentley being the one responsible for this whole mess, Murray being the fat one, Carmelita flirting with Sly’s ancestors and Penelope hating Sly and wanting to sell weapons for the highest bidder)
2. The villains are really bad, especially Toothpick, Grizz and Le Paradox
3. The game ending on a cliffhanger than never got resolved
le paradox had potential to be a great and interesting villain, the problem is that his precense in the game is nonexcistant and he only appears for 1 hours in the end of the game. we get to know close to nothing about him as a threat other than that he hates the coopers. and hten boom forced backstory of how he was a descendant of another thief family. to me , le paradox didn't feel like the main antagonist. he just felt like a normal goon villain like the grizz or miss decibel. there was close to nothing setting him apart from the others and thats what made him lame imho. and not to mention his boss fight is just one big fucking joke.
Murray would absolutely dress in a geisha and dance for other dudes to ogle him, he was planned to be bisexual since game 1-the idea being cut likely due to homophobic culture, additionally they kept him as cross-dressing and the voice actor took into account the bisexuality when performing Murray's voice.
However, sanzaru failed to land a single overly forced joke to fruition. They made their version of a Sly Cooper game for a targeted audience even younger than the initial 1st games target audience, so it wasn't that Murray drag queening was bad, it was how sanzaru made the scene bad. Sucker Punch would have rocked it in every way
Bentley and Sly literally didn't have any contact untill..... Penelope worked with le Paradox to make the Cooper history vanish.
I really dislike Penelope’s design/model in this game, it looks so weird
Have you ever been to sly cooper subreddit or seen the sh*t people there say? The users there now are giant Sanzaru/Sly 4 simps, and don't tolerate any criticism of the game or story, or Sanzaru Games. They say the Penelope twist was good, that its only problem is that the game/story is unfinished because apparently Sanzaru wasn't given enough time/money by Sony.
That sounds terrifying ngl
@@assertivedolphin It really is! I don't know why they're so desperate to defend TiT's story, or Sanzaru. My only guess is that they're either so desperate for a sequel, so deeply contrarian, or so diehard in love with Sly 4 that they'll insult and/or dismiss anyone who criticizes it.
Or they're employees of Sanzaru who get salty when people say their story stinks.
That's like if StarFox fans started actively defending Command's English localization story, makes me shudder.
@@HylianWindRider Yeah! Like "Krystal joining Star Wolf to spite Fox is valid."
Some of the defenses I've seen have been wild too. For example, I saw someone argue "Whoever said Penelope was allowed access to the money inside of the Cooper Vault?". As if Bentley was telling her no, they aren't allowed to withdraw any money from it. As if they have to guard the Cooper legacy for the rest of their lives with no benefit to themselves.
Wouldn't that mean Sly 3's ending made Sly burden his teammates rather than reward them for their help?
@3To3dSl0th I guess that's what can happen when a company brings back a series that was meant to end, like if Nintendo brought back Mother. As far as SF Command goes, Krystal wasn't nearly as spiteful in the Japanese original version.
Played Sly 1 on PS5 from the Playstation Store. It was an amazing game. Would you want a sequel or have remasters first before a sequel?
12:10 My Guy, did you forget that Murray dressed up as a lady in the Sly Cooper comic issue #2 and the Sly 3 short "Goodbye My Sweet"?
If I wanna be honest, Murray pulled off the dress disguises as beautifully as Bugs Bunny!
Also, men actually did dress up as male geishas in the 13th century, so maybe that's a reference to that fact?
They were known as Taikomochis by the way.
I do mention in the video that it makes sense how he dressed up as a Geisha. But it doesn’t make sense why he’d start dancing for a bunch of dudes, he can just easily beat up.
@@assertivedolphin (Shrugs) Who knows, but it might've been the old "Bugs Bunny as a Doll to trick the 'Ignoramous'" trick.
Ya know, guys dressing up like a woman and fooling the same sex in order to get away or whatever.
Murray wouldn't be the first or the last to use this trick though. But that's just a thought.
13:40
@@assertivedolphin Sorry for not replying sooner, I forgot to mention that I did see the whole video, and I see what you mean.
Sly's she doesn't sanna marry you is the definition of get off your high Horse villain
The twist with Penelope being evil in Thieves in Time is easily the worst part of the game. It's really a lazy stab at drama and ruins a perfectly good character and ship.
Sly 3 did a much better twist with Penelope being the Black Baron then her being the Black Knight in 4.
Lets compare the differences.
The Black Baron has a unique design and a good voice and first time players wouldn't suspect them to be Penelope in disguise.
The story and motivation behind the Black Baron disguise is good and makes perfect sense. Penelope was also testing the Cooper Gang with a game of her own to see if they were truly worth joining and she takes defeat gracefully.
The Black Knight has a ok design and a bad voice, but you can see it's a mech and thanks to the insignia on the chest you pretty much know what the twist is.
The motivation for the Black Knight is also really dumb and makes no sense going against was was established about Penelope in the previous game about her motivation and her character. If she was under some form of mind control or hypnotized then it would make some level of sense, but she isnt.
All the writers of Sly 4 did was ruin a good character and ship.
"Honorable thief nonsense." HE WAS LIKE THAT WHEN YOU MET HIM! He hasn't changed! What did you like about him in the first place?!
I don't accept this as a sly game, so last sly game to me was 3. Thats how they shoulda stuck with it aswell. Not only is sly 4 bad in terms of character scripts , storywise poorly written with lots of things that don't make sense. But it is also "too modern" graphicwise, shoulda kept that sly 2/sly 3 look and it would have made a huge difference! All in all, the worst in the series, and the least fun gameplaywise aswell!
Well it is a sly game cry about i5
God you just made me imagine “skinny” Murray and idk if I forgive you
So I agree with most of your points here, but at the end of the day I still enjoyed this game because this series is gameplay first for me. And since I really didn't like 2's gameplay and was mixed on 3's gameplay, 4 surprisingly enough ended up as my second favorite Sly game and probably the only one I enjoyed other than the original. Now I haven't played 4 in about a decade so my stance on it may very well change in a replay, but outside of the first game I've just become so detached from these characters and storyline that none of these plotholes or character inconsistencies bothered me enough to ruin the game for me.
Oh boy and to think this is the last official Sly Cooper game from Sony
Very sad 😭
The last official sly Game was sly 3. Everything after that is pure fan-fiction.
@@Delicashilousnot really lmao sly 4 is canon like it or not
I clarify in a longer Comment why so many sly trillogy fans are upset about Sly 4. Sly 4 isn't from the Original writers. It's the same case like with Disney star wars, RWBY, borderlands 3, Dragonball super or Boruto: cashgrabs that were made from their Publishers & different writers who don't understand the characters & Worlds of their canon predecessors (the creators of DBZ & naruto helped a bit at the Beginning for their Franchise Sequels, but most of it is from the new writers). Sure, this Person over me can cope & say "it's canon" because it's published by sony, but if this Person over me had an ounce of awareness in herself, she would see the difference of the dialouge & Character Writing between the canon sly trillogy & sly 4. She would also see then the HUGE difference in Quality & that the Main characters acting Off-character most of the time. And here is the catch: One of the KEY aspects of the Sly Trillogy, and why it's loved by many fans, IS its strong character & Dialouge writing, and sly 4 spitted on that, like the new devs never played the trillogy OR never gave the Character writing & character arcs any attention. Sly 4 has decent graphics & new refreshing Gameplay ideas, but it's an insult from a writing standpoint. Therefore: Sly 4 isn't canon storywise, like it or not. It's basically like borderlands 3: A Game with decent Gameplay, but you better play it without Sound, if you're liked its predecessor's Characters, Dialouge, Plot & Lore.
I don’t know who was in charge of characters direction for Thieves in Time, but it’s clear that they played a maximum of 1 hour of all 3 games.
Bentley is fine, even if he does talk way more than the other games.
Sly is really immature and cringy when he should of been cool like the original trilogy
Carmelita is just reduced too just sex appeal because someone in Sanzaru was a furry
Murray is reduced to a fat joke when in Sly 2 and 3 he was absolutely made to be a like a Strong Man
Penelope betrays the team because Sanzaru remembered she was the Black Baron and decided that Bentley shouldn’t have a love interest and her character is completely assassinated because of incompetence
Dimitri barely exists
And the developers clearly didn’t get ANY of them
I mean it’s fun to play for what it’s worth but I mean they could have at least tried.
By the way, when you discover, that Thieves in Time Carmelita and Kitty Kastwell have the same voice actress it really will tell you a lot about the level of creator's creativity.
And yeah, you forgot to mention, that El Jefe occasionally did the Geisha Murray and Salim Al Kupar performed a stuffing with a freaking cake.
Shoulda made Sly dress as a belly dancer to distract the guards so we can play as Carmelita
Now, that’s a scene I’d be fine with
I'll admit Sly Cooper 4 Was Unnecessary.
3:44 actually lost my shit at the dialogue and delivery Dimitri is SO GOOD!!!
Um dolphin in the carmelita belly dance part there were actually 3 guards one of them was just not in the cutscene.
You are absolutely right lol 😆 I realized that after editing. Only reason I didn’t change it is because even with 1 more guard, my point still stands haha
Its a fact, sucker punch made greats Personalities on the characters, like in inFAMOUS, sanzaru make brutal diference among the clasics, (if i tipe something wrong is cuz i Brazilian)
You never have to apologize for bad english. Being bilingual is pretty awesome dude
@@theace8502 thx very much, i never see a person saying this.
video quality improved always does by the uploadd good job
Thank you so much!
There are some stuff i want to know, like in frist trailer to quteo tv tropes
From the Outside looking in, it appeared to be Dimitri who was going to initially be the traitor, considering the first teaser for Sly 4 was him disguising himself as Sly to frame him for theft.
To this day i Wonder what the plan to make dimitri evil, what there a plan about it.
And also i want to know what was the mole Guy again and Why did there scrapped him. And same lizard and male elephant and also a alligator Guy, i only found in concept art.
You had the best description of Penelope in this game. Every other character too but you hit the nail on the head with her. I am glad you saved Penelope for the end!
Thank you very much!
Timestamps
2:58 - Dimitri
7:40 - Murray
15:49 - Carmelita Fox
26:50 - Sly Cooper
39:59 - Penelope
So, here's I would rewrite Sly 4, for starters, I would think that Penelope would stay on Team Sly and be the one to watch over the Thievius Raccoonus instead of Dimitri (sorry buddy, I love you, but this is for the sake of the story). Also, a little detail is that Bentley will promise that when everything settles down for good, he & Penelope will settle down for go. As for who will be the "Black Knight", I think Mugshot will do. As for Sly's reason to come out of retirement, I think it would've been after Bentley told him about the pages of the Thievius Raccoonus dissappearing in front of his eyes. However, Sly is reluctant at first because he doesn't want to leave Carmelita's side, but in order to save his ancestors he has to return to his thieving adventures one last time.
I would also add a DLC story after the events of Sly 4 (in case the developers do not or are just too damn lazy to make a Sly 5). I would have Bentley, Murray, & Carmenlita go back in time, looking for clues for Sly's whereabouts unbenounce to them that there are some remaining Paradox Bosses are in 4-5 more timelines and such. I think the DLC would've include the remaining ancestors, such as: Slaigh MacCooper, Henriette "One Eyed" Cooper, Slytunkhamen (I, II, or III), Otto van Cooper, Thaddeus Winslow Cooper III, & ending with it all, Sly's Mother and/or Father.
Not trying to downplay Carmelita's independent nature, but didn't bently have to hack some stuff in order for her to break out of the Contessa's restraints?
the best excuse i can come up with for Carmelita being dressed like that is that the night everything goes down, she was working as a honey trap in a sting operation, this could be a point of reference for some low effort humor with others commenting on it and Carmelita growing more and more pissed about it over the course of the story. if only this had not been a Sly Cooper game targeted at Kids
I watched the video ,too many memes,too many repeat scenes that add nothing. It's like I was watching Nostalgia critic. Either make it more subtle like Internet historian or just ditch it. Painful to watch,you'll cringe at it in few years time
I appreciate the criticism. I definitely did add too many memes in this vid, i like to make my videos cinematic and try to add parody’s and stuff. But yes I agree I already do cringe as some parts of this video lol. But I keep trying to improve everyday. I do love this video and I’m very proud of it. But if I could, I would change some things in it for sure.
@@assertivedolphinReally?! 😅 Becuz I like all of it. I watched this video too many times.
Why does Carmelita's color pallette give more safari vibes in this game? Also, I hate how she runs with the gun trailing behind her like it's too heavy. As if she hasn't been running around with it for 20 years.