#the remnants of The Episode Project are somewhere echoing in the background

[inspector-montoya-fox]

so... why did Honor Among Thieves disappoint?

and i’m talking about the episode, not the game. as usual, i’m popping off on something based on my opinion, because i’m aware a lot of you like that episode. but i feel like conclusion levels aren’t SP’s forte ? let’s take a look:

Setting: if you’re gonna base an entire game on breaking into an island fortress, you better let us play in that island fortress. and that’s not the case. the setup was perfect: an evil island citadel, kinda paying homage to Clockwerk’s lair, heavily guarded by mutated animal hybrids, but inside, the entire Cooper legacy. so why did it end up being a pool of acid? and why do most preparatory missions take place around the island instead of on it? circling back to the Clockwerk level similarities, i really like the linear structure for final episodes, i think it ups the ante and the tension. the sense of choice and safety granted by optional mission order or the safehouse is stripped and with each level we get closer to the main baddie. but here, the missions feel detached because of the gang being all over the place. Sly first loses his cane and is unconscious and then the original gang disbands before entering the vault. i didn’t appreciate SP’s choice to sacrifice platforming for other modes of gameplay. i know that when game devs introduce new gameplay, they’re usually really proud of it (Arkham Knight’s over-dependence on the batmobile...) but giving us a single platforming mission in the entire final level was kinda sacrilegious, imo. i’ll touch upon the reason behind this in the next section, but this was supposed to be Sly’s level, maybe even the gang’s. but, until we get to the vault, there’s Carmelita shooting, Penelope RC, Guru brainwashing, Dimitri diving, plane fight, Murray brawling and Bentley grapple cam. i think that simply diluted the importance of this episode, and made it lacklustre. i’d rather play as Sly breaking into the island 100%. if you follow me, you probably know how i feel about TiT, but i want to reference the Feudal Japan map here: it really conveyed the sense of a palace fortress. yeah, it was a village, but throughout its circumference there were imperial structures to remind us that we were actually surrounded by the stronghold. i think it would be much more effective to have Kaine Island be some kind of military base or evil tech lab instead of a vat of acid. the game’s tutorial mission was loads of fun and very intriguing because we got to enter the island and look at its interior. that should have been maintained for the final episode. and even if SP didn’t have this vision for the island, dumping neon green liquid mass everywhere seemed lazy. if they wanted it to be desolate, they should have emulated Clockwer’s volcano exterior which was full of lava but had clear characteristics.

Themes: the reason behind the various modes of gameplay was probably to express the theme of camaraderie and show that even if this is Sly’s legacy, all thieves are honourable. everyone gets to help out in some way, and that help is elevated further when Sly, the gang’s supposedly best asset, is benched. i really admire this, i think it’s a nice concluding message to a game which focuses on teamwork and how everyone is a unique individual, despite belonging on a team. that being said, the gameplay came across as repetitive, like Penelope and the Guru’s sections, or abysmal, like the underwater bossfight. i feel like they could have showed that message in a better way, one which wouldn’t require an entire gameplay section. although it was quite “silly”, having the Panda King transport the RC car and the van was an efficient way to show how he helped out without having us endure more firework gameplay. this way, there’d be more room for, again, platforming, which is much needed in this episode. at least the theme is explored well this way, like no one would doubt that the team cares for each other now. the other major theme is, obviously, legacy. unlike the camaraderie theme, this was explicitly presented. you literally go through your dead ancestors belongings. the mission is pretty cool too, i don’t have many complaints. i like how Sly has to channel each ancestor and their signature move in order to get through the obstacles they’ve set. and when the time came to go through Conner’s section, and Sly asked him what to do because he genuinely didn’t know... i lowkey kinda felt so emotional. the theme shows how Sly has come full circle, despite his minimal character development. we start off the series by collecting Thievius Racconus entries from ancestors he only heard about when he was a child, to coursing through what they left behind for us specifically. it’s really nice, and i think it’s what prevents this episode from being a complete disaster, like it’s the highlight of the whole thing.

Plot: my main beef with this episode was Bentley and Murray not entering the vault, despite SP putting in so much some work to portray them as equals. i’ve said time and time again that i absolutely love the Bentley x Dr Matt conversation because it hinted at an older version of the gang, and that Watchmen dynamic is so powerful, especially when the predecessor reaches out to their successor in a messiah kind of way (long sentence, sorry if i’m not making any sense). point is: why would they have this conversation if Bentley and Murray ultimately ended up staying behind? i get that Bentley inherits the Thievius Raccoonus at the end, but that’s a whole different discussions. like, they should have gone into the vault to show how they are as much a part of the Cooper legacy as Sly. i’m not sure how the gameplay would be, like maybe they’d get separated and meet up at the end, but i seriously wish they had followed Sly. but anyway, they didn’t, and then the amnesia thing happens... the perfect way to describe that is ‘bittersweet’. on the one hand, the entire vault and legacy come crushing down; on the other hand, Sly gets with Carmelita. this is perhaps the most development he gets throughout the course of three games. the Coopers are obviously obsessed with maintaining traditions and the lineage (which is weird when you consider all of them dropped like flies at the sight of Clockwerk, like you’d think after a few generations the fuckers would have some sort of back-up) so it’s interesting to think that Sly is the anomaly. he doesn’t have his own cane, he’s in love with a cop, he never introduced his own move to the book, and he ultimately decided he didn’t want to upkeep the Cooper legacy but reinvent it and start anew. so yeah, like that was a nice touch but everything happens so quickly and it’s a lot to take in

i don’t want to say that Honor Among Thieves is a bad case, but i think it doesn’t live up to the build-up of the entire game. one of the reasons why Sly 2′s ending was better was because the game went out of its way to establish a specific course the events would supposedly follow by telling us ‘here are the villains’ at Rajan’s ball. and then, as a direct result, Arpeggio’s death and ClockLa’s genesis came as such a big surprise. but here, we were promised a vault so difficult to get in that we needed to recruit outcasts from all over the globe, and at the end there wasn’t a twist. that’s just literally what happened. holy hell that was blunt.