Thieves In Time Redux Boss Fights

Are Penelope's parents still alive and if so, do they approve of Bentley?

Her parents have not met him yet.

One of my favorite things about Sly Cooper is how much personality is in the environments! The level design is full of so much character and storytelling.

A Sucker Punch artist said in an interview that they almost always came up with the boss’s personality first. Then, they would design the level to reflect the  personality of the character who owned it.

“The bosses and all that stuff is usually done really early on, like before anyone even starts. … because that establishes how each level is going to feel from a directional standpoint.”

Check out this concept art for Sly 1 by Karin Madan, showing how the characters’ basic designs/personalities were basically nailed down by the time they began doing explorations of what their levels would look like.

And that shows in the final games!

It really shows that the characters were created first, and then the levels were designed afterwards, to reflect the characters’ unique personalities and backstories.

It shows in how… in how none of the levels feel generic. Every level feels extremely specific to the character who owns them. 

Like– there is no way you could create a level like Dmitiri’s level without Dmitiri. That level is his!  You can feel Dmitri’s personality in every part of the design, from the music to the tiny details on the signs.

 Dmitri is a nightclub owner, so the entire map revolves around his nightclub. He is dramatic and Extra™— so his nightclub is the BIGGEST and FLASHIEST building on the map. The blue and violet aesthetic reflects Dmitri’s own color scheme. The artsy, ritzy Paris setting reflects Dmitri’s past as an artist and nightclub owner. 

The giant peacock sign at the front of the nightclub- and the peacock imagery throughout the entire level, like in Dmitri’s lounges and on his boat– reflects how gaudy and vain Dmitri is. 

His flashlight guard is designed to look like a bouncer, Because Nightclub Owner.  The little guards are designed to look like a mime (because France) and and a French frog (also because France.)

Dmitri cares a LOT about the Aesthetic™ of things.Getting “that kinetic aesthetic” is EXTREMELY important to Dmitri. 

 So his level is full of heavily curated and landscaped scenery like gardens, statues, ponds, courtyards, and water fountains. Violet flowers are growing everywhere, and placed in flowerpots all around. 

 There are posters on all the walls advertising a big Show that’s going to happen at Dmtiri’s club.  The level is full of art and paintings (that we know from Dmitri’s intro are all counterfeit.) There are Sophisticated Golden Chandeliers, and stone statues, which help emphasize Dmitri’s Artsy™ and Aesthetic-Obsessed personality.  

 Signs on the buildings advertise tourist-y things like hotels and cafes, which helps convey the idea that we’re in a very wealthy and fun area of Paris.

Dmitri’s symbol, his tail in a spiral shape, shows up everywherE throughout his nightclub– the most obvious places being his coins and the center of the disco dance floor.

And the disco music reflects Dmitri’s wild, over the top personality.

Like???? There are wine bottles all around the level, because Paris, because artsy, and because Nightclub. But look closely at those wine bottles! Even the tiny details on the bottles are very specific to Dmitri and reflect his personality:

They’re bright comedy/tragedy masks with confetti on them, a smaller version of the posters you see around the level advertising the shows at Dmitri’s club. This isn’t just a wine bottle, it’s a DMITRI-BRAND WINE BOTTLE.

And we could go on and on and ON, and talk about every single teeny-tiny detail in the level, and how it’s related to Dmitri’s personality. Because Dmitri’s level iS his personality! Everything about his map is designed to reflect who he is as a character! You really can’t separate the level design from the character who inspired it.

A level as unique as Dmitri’s Paris can only happen when it’s being built with a specific character/story in mind. 

And that’s true for every level in the trilogy. Whenever you explore them, you can feel the personality of the character who owns them dripping from even the tiniest details. This makes each level feel special– not like a generic Video Game Level™, but like a specific place owned by a specific character with a specific personality. 

This gives the villains a sense of total Presence in the story even when they’re not actually onscreen for very long. And it makes you feel like you really are a thief, trespassing in a place that’s clearly owned by someone else.

Thieves In Time Redux Meme #11

You knew he'd try again...

And maybe zoom out to reveal Sly and Murray also not amused...

Don’t touch da babies.

musical ramblings #5

a legal necessity before i get back into single handed things.

p.s. i have never religion'd in my life.

soldier, poet, king ; the oh hellos

the whole gang is here :]

this analysis isn't gonna be below a cut because it's really just me assigning these idiots their lines.

There will come a solider, who carries a mighty sword He will tear your city down, oh lei, oh lai, oh lord.

starting with the soldiers - Murray & Penelope

though my b team & cooper brother parallel brain wants to make pk the soldier to match murray, i simply think that king works better for the, yknow, panda king. and though penelope seems to be a poet at first glance, i think she's much more down to physically fight someone rather than verbally so.

...she's also the only one who actually has a sword.

There will come a poet, whose weapon is his word He will slay you with his tongue, oh lei, oh lai, oh lord.

the poets - Sly & Dimitri

hey, at least these two match up! bentley and penelope may appear the poets at first glance, being the smart ones and the wordy ones, but i think sly & dimitri are the only two who would really use their words as weapons. er, by the third game, anyway. thievius raccoonus is a different story.

There will come a ruler, whose brow is laid in thorn Smeared with oil like David's boy, oh lei, oh lai, oh lord.

and finally, the kings - Bentley & the Panda King

bentley is the leader of their team, regardless of what Sly says, and therefore the ruler. he's also not gonna slay you with his tongue he's gonna use bombs. despite my lack of knowledge, i gotta admit, the Panda King certainly does seem pretty laid in thorns. dunno what that means but the guy's got it.

Well, this was a wild election year. Please excuse me while I continue onward with rewriting Thieves In Time...

'Dynamic Duo' is a decent mission in an otherwise lacklustre episode, but what i really love about it is how much it develops Penelope's character. from giving her a cutie health metre (and by extent establishing lavender purple as her signature colour. iconic) to having the targets look like pieces of cheese because y'know she's a mouse

Real Talk

Props to Bentley for driving from all the way from the jungles of the Bengal region of India to Prague in Sly 2, that is an insane drive. That is crossing through 8 countries, 4 time-zones, two continents and over 8,500 km. Non-stop, it would’ve taken him almost 5 days.

And he did that all without knowing at first how to drive stick.

Like look at how far that is. I know that’s only up to Lahore but I couldn’t get a drive route that’d go into India and I assume that has to due with the nature of driving through the Indian-Pakistani border. That’s also passing through some rugged terrain and some unforgiving weather conditions too.

Sly 3 Screencap re-draw

I just dug up one of my first attempts at humanizing the Sly Cooper cast because it fits in with the current “Re-Draw a screen cap” trend.

Basically, I wanted to see how well my humanized versions worked within the context of an actual scene from the game. I also tweeked it to focus more on the characters than the background (that’s why the drawing cuts off the vault and shows Bentley & Penelope’s faces)

Writing Notes: Types of Characters

You may recall from your literature classes that characters can be “flat” or “round,” and likewise, “minor” or “major.”

A character also may be a protagonist or antagonist.

Look at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby for examples of character types.

Note that the characters in the novel are more complex than what is stated here, and that Gatsby faces other antagonists—such as class, bourgeois snobbery, and the progression of time itself.

Protagonist: the main or central character, the hero (Gatsby)

Antagonist: opponent or enemy of the protagonist (Tom Buchanan)

Flat/Minor: a character(s) who helps readers better understand another character, usually the protagonist. Also, “a static and undeveloped character of two dimensions” (Knorr and Schell 165). (Nick Carraway)

While Gatsby is our protagonist, the one who we want to succeed, his success would mean ousting his beloved Daisy’s husband, Tom Buchanan.

An idea can also function as an antagonist: Gatsby is also fighting against the bourgeois prejudice of elite 1920s New York City, where “old money”—such as the Buchanans—is worth more than new money, as exemplified by the divide between East Egg and West Egg.

Usually, the protagonist is also a Round character, “a developing three-dimensional character” (Knorr and Schell 165).

In other words, the protagonist must be a character that grows and changes during the story; it is the progress of this change that keeps the reader interested and cheering for the character.

Archetypes

Part of why The Great Gatsby has endured in American literature is because the characters are complex, rather than being simple archetypes.

You are already aware of many archetypes; you can recognize them in the movies you watch, such as the Reluctant Hero (Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games series).

Using an archetype is a kind of shorthand; if you put in a character like The Lonely Old Lady With A Dog, the reader recognizes the character and knows what to expect from them.

This may be helpful when populating your world with minor/flat characters, because it is reassuring and comforting to your reader; your reader knows these archetypal characters already.

Unfortunately, that also means that archetypal characters may be clichéd. Once you put your character down into their world, they can react in various ways to the setting and reality of their lives.

In Mooring Against the Tide: Writing Fiction and Poetry, Knorr and Schell write:

…your characters may react to the world in one of four ways. They may see this society and its values and assimilate by adopting those values as their own; they may accommodate in that they do not like those values but will adopt them anyway if only to get along; they may rebel against those values in any number of ways; or, they may take flight from that society and, as did Huck Finn, head out to the new territories.

In other words, just as our choices in life determine where we go, the plot of your story is determined by the nature of your characters.

These four choices might not seem to offer many different plot options, but in reality, they can play out in an infinite number of ways. Think about your favorite novel or short story—it’s likely that the main character is faced with a choice and has to pick one of the four routes described above.

Otherwise, there may not be much conflict in your story.

Source Writing References: Worldbuilding ⚜ Plot ⚜ Character