#and we have this area in headspace called The Cabin its where everyone kinda lives and hangs out

[nexus-nebulae]

weird thing I've just noticed- if I'm in a large open room with a high ceiling i get freaked out bc agoraphobia, but like. if the room is in a basement I'm fine with it??? like you could have a giant cave basement and as long as it's underground it doesn't scare me??? maybe I'm just scared of big buildings

[inspector-montoya-fox]

#13 - Menace from the North, eh!

Setting part 1: i mean......... whatever, right? at this point, India got 2 levels and Prague got 2 levels so i’m like ok, let’s get this over with. and i genuinely believe this and Anatomy for Disaster are the game’s two weakest episodes, despite the great conclusion. look, SP... they fucking delivered. they served absolute excellence with episodes 2-4, but it’s getting redundant and Menace from the North, eh! is just Menace from the North, meh? (please forgive me Lord). the game takes a weird environmentalist turn, which i fully appreciate but am ultimately confused by, seeing as He Who Tames The Iron Horse had absolutely nothing to do with Jean Bison’s pollution aspect. it feels weird to return to a Canadian outing after the gang had such a successful run in the previous episode, which felt like a conclusion even with the absence of a bossfight. like, SP could have easily inserted a Bison bossfight at the end of He Who Tames The Iron Horse in order to add another Klaww Gang member for an extra episode or maybe replace Menace from the North, eh! with the lost Monaco episode. it sounds like i’m bitching a lot, and i actually am. what really takes me aback every single time i play this game is that after you complete the Rajan/Contessa saga, it all becomes so anticlimactic. and i can’t comprehend why. by the end of this episode, the stakes are so high but the drive just isn’t there. and it’s not because the gang is demotivated. Sly has been having so much fun throughout the game, even with Neyla’s backstab being a huge obstacle. so getting down, dirty and serious is a much needed mood change. but i feel like i speak for all of us when i say that episodes 5-7 are overshadowed by episodes 2-4. with a few alterations to the order of the episodes and some changes to the script, i really think we could have had an awesome Contessa vs Clock-La final showdown episode and have Bison come right after Dimitri. because, honestly, Canada feels like ‘second episode’ material.

Setting part 2: i’m splitting it up because i don’t want my rant above to spoil the actual writing. the gang sticks around for another Canadian caper after some kooky stuff goes down with the environment and, mainly, the Northern Lights, which as we’ll soon find out, play a rather unexpectedly significant role in the grand scheme of things. and we’re treated to a log-chopping area, an off-the-maps secretive camp which really ups the ante, because Jean Bison is being such a jerk to nature. we’ve got deforestation, we’ve got melting ice, exploitation of wild animals, and Bison getting a raging red boner by literally destroying the environment in order to flex in the Lumberjack Games..... both the player and the gang have had enough of this dude, and i think SP used the fact that his only traits are being an angry idiot and a bigot to their advantage. instead of providing the necessary character development as they did with the Contessa and Rajan, Bison and his actions (especially his communication with the mYsTeRiOuS Arpeggio) are used as a prelude to Anatomy for Disaster. there’s not really a lot of dialogue apart from the final mission and bossfight, because the overall Klaww Gang plot begins to unravel, and particularly so by the time we find out about the lighthouse and its technological contents. in fact, if you think about it, Anatomy for Disaster starts with Clock-La’s shitshow and an info-dump at the beginning, which, if you’ve been paying enough attention to the details (i know that until i turned 12 and replayed the game as a young teen i hadn’t been paying attention to shit so it was all gasp!), is just the connecting of the dots. Menace from the North, eh! is essentially the last piece of the puzzle, before it’s all given to us in full detail by Arpeggio. i mean, apart from Dimitri serving dishes with drugs in them (i still can’t get over that at the age of 21), the rest is all things the player could pick up. and that’s this episode’s main focus. trying to prevent the inevitable under countdown, before Arpeggio’s blimp arrives to collect the Northern Lights energy. so it feels very anticlimactic and strange to put in all this effort without purpose. if you’ve played it before, you know it’s all for nothing since all the parts will be gone by the end of the episode. and it’s even more anticlimactic (although hilarious in tonal shift) to see how the gang scrambles under the pressure of preventing the Klaww Gang’s doomsday by hacking boats and having all these grandiose plans involving the lighthouse, just to then resort to taking part in the Lumberjack Games, without even a clever scheme but actually just cheating, and finally have Bison, an idiot, foil their plans by finding out where they’ve been hiding. and the bossfight is fine, but again, meh... i mean, woohoo Bentley! or whatever the fuck.

Characters: let’s talk about Jean Bison and his mistreatment as a character. we first meet him at Rajan’s ball, where Bentley introduces him as a Canadian shipping baron and says that he owns half the trains in Canada. later on, during the introductory cutscene for He Who Tames The Iron Horse, we get his backstory and how he’s risen from being practically dead, frozen since his time, and back with a vengeance against the environment. in my previous #episodeproject entry i said: SP plays up Bison’s savagery and gruesome nature by spotlighting how his plans affect the environment and even going so far as to call his house ‘the lair of the beast’. this is all true but is never put into practice. like, Jean Bison is all tell and no show, y’know? even the cutscene that plays when Sly gets caught in Bison’s cabin during He Who Tames The Iron Horse’s first mission shows Bison getting angry, but hunty, that’s about it. apart from the Lumberjack Games and his bossfight, it’s all oh Bison will get angry and oh Bison will kill us with the talons. well, where is it? where’s the fucking Canadian shipping baron with a vengeance against the environment? my baby heart was legit quivering when we had to steal Rajan’s blueprints as Bentley, and the Contessa was such a grand sleazebag of a woman, like what a douchebag - and you see that, although i’m often flamboyant in my writing (!!!), the way i describe these moments with these villains is both effective and relatable, because they showed up and lived up to their descriptions. Bison was written to be a ferocious beast of a villain but never showed that. and that’s on SP. whatever... let’s talk about the gang. now, despite the gang looking seriously badass in the opening cutscene for this episode (image below), they’re actually in a pretty good headspace. they’re only missing the talons and whatever Clockwerk parts Arpeggio had before collecting all of them. so it’s only natural for them to feel a bit cocky, and that’s actually gonna be their demise. before that, i just wanna mention that almost all the missions here (as with He Who Tames The Iron Horse) are group missions: Sly and Murray infiltrate the moose club in RC Combat Club, all three of them work together in Lighthouse Break-In, Boat Hack, and Old Grizzle Face. what really stood out to me every time i played this episode, is how, at the end when they take down Bison and they rush to the battery, each member has a different way of entering it, which is a small detail but important nonetheless. this further reinforces how united the gang has become since the Contessa levels and how their bond has strengthened. now, lemme circle back to how they’re cocky. i mean, apart from Jean Bison, Menace from the North, eh! doesn’t present any immediate danger or like trouble, seeing as both Neyla and Carmelita are absent. without any interference, the gang had lots of breathing space to plan ahead, even under countdown before Arpeggio’s blimp arrived. and they kinda wasted the opportunity because, as i’ve already mentioned, the operation was an absolute train-wreck. there’s no plan b, or like something clever or whatever. and usually, the operations tend to get disrupted by third parties, such as Carmelita or Neyla, but here, it failed because it was never smart. and it’s only natural for them to fall hard (by losing all the Clockwerk parts) after feeling all cocky (maybe i’m being too harsh). and all this directly leads to some more Bentley character development.... again. look, i’m all for character development, but the turtle already faced his demons when he busted Sly and Murray out of jail. i know we got Murray vs Rajan, but i don’t know, Murray was always kinda just there throughout the game. the hippo had his ups and downs (face-off with Rajan, imprisonment, losing the van), but not a fully realised story arc. that’s why, when Sly 3 starts off with his enlightenment and return, that story arc is instantly so iconic. i could go on about how Bentley gains self-confidence after defeating Bison, but um, we’ve already done that sis.

Themes: He Who Tames The Iron Horse and Menace from the North, eh! should have been one episode and i truly believe that. they could have shared the same themes. for the former, i said there’s the speed theme, and that applies here too because the gang are under pressure. the countdown lights a fire under their asses and it’s all very destructive. again, there’s an antithesis between the calm Canadian atmosphere and the chaotic energy of the missions. but it’s not just speed theme anymore, it’s more like theme of ferocity. everyone’s kinda on edge??? Old Grizzle Face is a motherfucker and we get up close and personal with the eagles, lasers destroy huge ice pieces, there’s a mammoth, the destroyed oil manes create fiery air drafts... chaos. and it all results in the disastrous events and outcome of the Lumberjack Games, which make Menace from the North, eh! the straightest episode in the game. yuck. it only makes sense for the missions to become less sneaky and more destructive as the stakes get higher and the gang is in a hurry, and that kinda embodies the pollution motif/ environment motif. it’s less of a theme and more of a motif because it’s so story-centric, but that’s the other things the comes into contrast with the calm environment. saws, the buzzing, chopped-up logs flowing down the river, tree stumps spread across: these embody the pollution and the harm Jean Bison has been doing even though it’s a forced storyline in my opinion. and finally, size theme. it’s not major, but it feels like everything’s bigger in Canada... Sly feels so puny in this episode, like especially when climbing the lighthouse. the wild animals are huge, the structures are huge, Jean Bison’s house is huge. it’s just lots and lots of nothingness. if you took absolutely nothing and enlarged it by 10 times, you’d have this episode’s hub. and this is also seen in the bossfight when tiny Bentley takes on Jean Bison. so yea.

What I Like: gliding off the lighthouse and throwing fish onto already stinky guards before Old Grizzle Face rips them to shreds. also, those cute lil catfish-lookin viruses in Bentley’s hacking! they’re so adorable.

What I Don’t Like: erm... it’s not that i don’t like this episode, but i find it kinda boring? apart from interacting with the wild animals, the missions are meh. and i hate the Lumberjack Games...

Quote: Get too close and old Grizzle Face will be eating barbecued raccoon for dinner.