Continuing on in our Sly Cooper Retrospective series, we have the third instalment in the franchise: Sly Cooper Honor Among Thieves. Released in September of 2005, this was the most highly anticipated game in the series. Following the events of Sly 2 there was a lot of uncertainty over the gang’s future. Sly 3 picks up about a year after the last games events where Bentley is now wheelchair ridden, and Murray has stepped away from the gang to explore the spiritual world studying under a guru. Between titles Sly is informed by an old member of his fathers gang about the mysterious “Cooper Vault” which is said to be home to all of the riches that have been stolen and stored by Sly’s bloodline throughout the years. This kicks off the plot for the game of Sly attempting to assemble a gang that has the tools to break into the Cooper Vault. The playable game starts similar to the previous two with a prologue of Sly sneaking through the island security defences to the Vault. As he approaches the Vault he is caught and works to make a quick escape before being captured by a large monster defending the island. It is here where Sly’s life flashes before his eyes and we the player transition to the main game of Sly reliving the events of the game. It is also shown that the owner of the island and this game’s antagonist is a genius baboon by the name of “Dr. M”
We’ll get to Dr. M later though.
With Sly and Bentley now being the only remaining members of the gang they set out to rebuild themselves starting with getting Murray back. Narrowing down their old friend’s location to somewhere in Italy, the duo sets out to bring him home, only when they arrive there they come to find out there is a mob boss poisoning the city. In the first mission Sly breaks into a police station to try and dig up information on Murrays whereabouts when he runs into an old foe in Dimitri from Sly 2.
This becomes a bit of a theme,
Dimitri and Sly agree on a deal where Dimitri is broken free in exchange for getting in contact with Murray. When they eventually find their old friend, he appears as an entirely new person and a student of the mystic arts. This is a major contrast from “The Murray” that we got to grow with and love. He explains that he’s there on a task from his guru to unpoison the city of Venice and so the gang agrees to help in hopes of being able to recruit him back into the gang. At the climax of the first episode the mob boss Don Octavio hits Bentley which enrages Murray who comes to the defence of his friend and subsequently bring back his former ego.After cleansing Venice and reuniting, the gang travels to the outback of Australia where Murray intends to inform the guru of his reunion with the gang only to find that minors have captured the guru and have torn apart what they once called home. This episode focuses on freeing the guru and ridding the outback of the minors and in turn recruiting the guru to the gang in lieu of the big heist. As the story continues the gang now looks for a remote vehicle expert which they find in Penelope. She makes a deal with the gang that if they can beat her boss: the Black Baron in a dogfight competition, she’ll leave and join the gang for the Cooper vault job. In a shocking twist she was the Black Baron all along as Sly defeats her while simultaneously recruiting her for the gang. The gang’s next stop is China where once again they run into an enemy of the past, this time the Panda King, former member of the Fiendish Five who killed Sly’s father. After entering a shared meditation state with the Panda King where they relive their showdown from Sly 1, Sly convinces the Panda King to leave the past in the past and join forces for the Cooper vault job in exchange for the freeing of his daughter from tyrant General Tsao. The gang’s final stop before the big heist is Blood Bath Bay, a lawless town that carries on the pirate ways of their ancestors. This is to help Dimitri find his fathers old priceless scuba gear that was buried with hidden treasure, when Captain LeFwee beats them to it and kidnaps Penelope their goal shifts. Ultimately Bentley comes to her rescue and gains a new girlfriend out of it while the gang recovers the gear and is set to start the job.
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The heist picks up where the prologue left off, Sly in the clutches of a ginormous monster mutation. Luckily Carmelita who’s never far behind the Cooper gang’s trail, shows up with boats of mercenaries as they attack the monster that’s controlled by Dr. M. Sly is tossed by the monster causing him a concussion while the gang scrambles to retrieve his cane which was lost in the battle and acts as the key to the Cooper Vault. After retrieving the cane, Sly comes to and devises a plan with Murray and Bentley to make it up to the vault. As the best friends enter the gang they don’t get far before realizing Sly will be the only one capable of moving forward through the vault and so Bentley and Murray are left to fend off any tails Sly might have. While moving through the vault Sly learns about his ancestors with each obstacle course of the vault being designed by them with little tidbits of information. Something the player never got a whole lot of throughout the series to this point. This is until Sly reaches the final area made by his father where his photo is scratched off leaving the player still guessing as to what Sly’s father looked like. Meanwhile in the vault’s lobby Bentley and Murray have a tense faceoff with Dr. M who reveals he was the third member of Sly’s fathers gang and was the brains of his team. He tries to sway Bentley saying the two are overlooked and that their gangs would be nothing without him. This was to no effect as Bentley, not letting himself be manipulated, fights the antagonist off before he eventually escapes down the trail after Sly. The game comes to an end with a final battle between Sly and Dr. M which is interrupted by the arrival of Carmelita. When Dr. M goes to attack Carmelita, Sly jumps in front of the attack being flung across the room and knocked unconscious. Inspector Fox defeats Dr. M and when she goes to check on Sly he pretends to have lost his memory asking who she is as well as himself. Carmelita, seeing her opportunity, tells him that he’s her partner “Constable Cooper” and the two escape the vault as the roof caves in. Sly leaves behind his cane for the gang to find and after weeks turning to months of no contact from Sly, the gang go their own ways. The game ends with Bentley finding Sly with Carmelita embracing on a balcony in Paris when Sly turns his head to Bentley’s direction giving a wink to let him know that he is faking the whole thing.
https://x.com/nocontextsly/status/1871166900744732743
Now that we’ve recapped the story, what is it that made this game so good? Well it’s exactly that, the story. The story of this game was so good for how anticipated it was with a perfect prologue that left the player on a cliffhanger all game waiting to see what happens next. The shocking returns of villains from prior games like the Panda King and Dimitri joining the Cooper gang along with the twist of Dr. M being a part of Sly’s fathers gang was a surprise that left the player on the edge of their seats. Mechanically this game was almost a carbon copy of Sly 2, but the story has much more layers to it. Even with the start of the game having the gang be without Murray gave Sly and Bentley a new dynamic we hadn’t seen before. It felt obvious that something was missing in their interactions. The final heist was one of the most fun missions in the entire series, getting to play as almost every member of the gang and doing their part for the job.
Overall Sly 3 although similar to Sly 2 in so many ways, felt like a shorter, but more layered version of the second. The character development was done to a tee, the underlying romance of Sly and Carmelita was showcased to perfection and the villain’s motives were understandable and relatable while still keeping him as the antagonist. Sly 3 is a game that only gets better with time and the more it’s replayed and is a perfect example of what made the Sly series as popular as it is.