Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus/Script

This page comprises the full verbal transcript of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus.

Notes
 * Jobs are ordered based on their accessibility in-game; they do not have to be done in the order listed.
 * Lines might not be copied verbatim from subtitles, as subtitles often have errors in capitalization, punctuation or spelling. Instead, they are transcribed according to the rules of standard American English. This should have no effect on the meaning of the lines.

Police Headquarters
Bentley (binocucom): Sly, come in! Sly, do you read me?!

Sly Cooper: Yeah. I read you. Loud and... very loud.

Bentley (binocucom): Sorry, I'm a little nervous. Trying to break into Police Headquarters does that.

Sly Cooper: Get over it, Bentley. You're safe in the van. I'm the thief here. I've got to steal that file from Inspector Carmelita Fox.

Bentley (binocucom): Well, count on me to be your eyes and ears, buddy. Got their security system totally scoped. To get inside, you're gonna have to go through that air vent.

Sly Cooper: Alright, I'm going in.

Murray (binocucom): And don't forget you've got me at the wheel, Sly. All you gotta do is grab the file and get back to the van. We'll do the rest.

Sly Cooper: Just keep that engine running, Murray. I'll be down in no time.

(Upon spotting blue lights.)

Sly Cooper: Hey, Bentley, I think I'm seeing things. Must be vertigo or something. Can you see those crazy blue lights?

Bentley (binocucom): Really? I've read about this. Master raccoon thieves are able to sense thieving opportunities, which manifest themselves as unexplainable blue auras. According to my research, all you have to do is get near them and hold down, and you should perform a super sneaky master thief move.

Sly Cooper: Hold down near blue auras. I'm on it.

(If the player stalls a moment before smashing the vent.) Bentley (binocucom): Try hitting to break things.

(After entering the building through the air vent.)

Bentley (binocucom): Be extra careful here, Sly. Break one of those laser beams, and you'll set off the alarms — not to mention you'll be fried to a crisp.

(If the alarm is triggered.) Bentley (binocucom): Quick, Sly! Smash the siren. That'll kill the alarm and power down security.

(Upon exiting the elevator shaft.)

Bentley (binocucom): Nice job. You're in. Inspector Carmelita Fox's office is behind the red door.

(Upon reaching said door and waiting a brief second.) Bentley (binocucom): That door must be super-reinforced, Sly. Maybe there's a way to get around it.

(Upon reaching the vault.)

Bentley (binocucom): Way to go, Sly. This is where Inspector Carmelita Fox stashes all her important files. I hacked into the police security mainframe and discovered this vault's combo. Try dialing in 9-3-7.

(Upon opening the safe.)

Murray (binocucom): Nice job — you got it! If you come down through the fire escape and head through the parking lot, we'll be waiting in the getaway van.

(After stepping onto the fire escape.)

Carmelita Fox: Criminal!

Carmelita Fox: You foolish raccoon! I've caught you red-handed!

Sly Cooper: Ahh... Carmelita. I haven't seen you since I gave you the slip in Bombay.

Carmelita Fox: Which reminds me — you need to return the Fire Stone of India to its rightful owners.

Sly Cooper: Aw, and I was going to give it to you as a little token of my... Hey, you know that bazooka really brings out the color of your eyes. Very fetching!

Carmelita Fox: You think? This pistol packs a paralyzing punch. You ought to try it. Might snap you out of your crime spree.

Sly Cooper: And give up our little rendezvous?

Carmelita Fox: Plenty of time for that once you're safely behind bars.

Sly Cooper: Love to stick around and chat, but I just dropped by to pick up this case file. I think you've had it long enough.

(After Sly escapes.)

Carmelita Fox: You can't escape me, raccoon!

The Secret Police File (Opening)
Sly Cooper (narrating): Once again, my gang and I had given Inspector Carmelita Fox the slip. I was surprised to see how well she took it.

Sly Cooper (narrating): Finally, the secret police file I'd been searching for all these years. With this, I could avenge my family and regain possession of our most valued treasure.

Sly Cooper (narrating): It all began when I was just a kid, bouncing on my father's knee. You see, I come from a long line of master thieves, who kept all their secrets of sneaking and stealing in an ancient book: the Thievius Raccoonus. Anyone who read it learned to be especially sneaky, which is why we specialize in stealing from criminals. After all, there's no honor, no challenge, no fun stealing from ordinary people. You rip off a master criminal, and you know you're a master thief.

Sly Cooper (narrating): Well, on the night I was supposed to inherit the book, five visitors came unannounced to our door. My father fought to protect us, but the gang of villains known as the Fiendish Five overpowered him and ransacked our house until they found... the Thievius Raccoonus! Our family's manual of thieving greatness fell into their filthy hands. They tore the book into five pieces and split it up, each villain disappearing to the farthest corners of the world to commit dastardly crimes.

Sly Cooper (narrating): Broke and alone, I was dumped at the town orphanage. There, I met two guys who became my lifelong buddies and trusted crew. Bentley, techno-genius and strategist supreme, and Murray, part-time driver and full-time burden. Together, we pledged to track down the Fiendish Five, avenge my father and steal back the Thievius Raccoonus. I knew I was about to face the toughest test of my life. On this mission, I would either become a master thief like my ancestors before me, or fail and allow my family name to bite the dust.

Tide of Terror (The Setup)
Sly Cooper (narrating): The road trip gave me the time I needed to study up on Sir Raleigh the frog. As a young man, this hot-tempered frog grew bored of his life of luxury and privilege. On a whim, he tried his hand at a bit of piracy and found it to his liking. Raleigh, who quickly became addicted to crime, was brought into the Fiendish Five as chief machinist, where his evil tinkering genius rose to new heights. The last reported sighting of this mad machinist was off the southern coast of the Isle of Wrath, a small island uncomfortably situated in the middle of the perilous Welsh Triangle.

A Stealthy Approach
(After passing through the cave.)

Bentley (binocucom): Hey, Sly! I just spotted something that's going to complicate the mission. See that nasty looking gate? It blocks the only road leading into Raleigh's hideout.

Sly Cooper: No problem. I'll just use my climb move.

Bentley (binocucom): Okay, but remember, you can only climb on certain objects. Like pipes and ropes...

Sly Cooper: Yeah sure, and like that ladder there?

Bentley (binocucom): That is correct, but do not forget, Sly. You have to get close...

Sly Cooper: ...then to grab it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Relax, Bentley, I live for this stuff!

Bentley (binocucom): Yeah, and that's what worries me.

(Upon collecting a clue bottle for the first time.) Bentley (binocucom): Now this is very interesting. The message you just found appears to be some sort of clue! I'll decipher it here in the van. In the meantime, see if you can find any more clues. The more I have, the easier it'll be to crack the code.

(After climbing past Raleigh's gate.) Bentley (binocucom): Hold on, Sly. See those searchlights? One careless step, and you'll be subjected to acute combustion.

Sly Cooper: Are you done whining? Let's go!

Bentley (binocucom): I'm just trying to keep you alive, partner. Fortunately for you, I've launched these signal repeaters throughout Raleigh's fortress. Get close to one, and I can checkpoint your progress.

Sly Cooper: Nice.

(After passing the first signal repeater.)

Bentley (binocucom): According to my Amphibio-Positioning System, that big blimp is where Raleigh is hiding out.

Sly Cooper: You know, that blimp looks more like a machine than a hideout.

Bentley (binocucom): You're right, Sly. That is a storm machine! It's the reason why it never stops raining around here.

Sly Cooper: That explains all the wrecked ships.

Bentley (binocucom): But why would Raleigh want bad weather at his own hideout, 24/7?

Sly Cooper: Beats me, but rain or shine, I'm going to steal my family's book back. And if Raleigh gets in my way... it's on.

(Upon reaching a gate.)

Bentley (binocucom): Nice job so far, Sly. To get over the next gate, you'll need to grab onto this hook using your cane. Just jump and hit.

Sly Cooper: Got it. Jump and hit to grab onto hooks.

(When approaching the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): That large vault has got to be somehow related to those clues-in-bottles you've been collecting. If you can locate all the clues in this area, I should be able to crack the code and get you inside it.

(After collecting all the clue bottles.) Bentley (binocucom): You found it, Sly! That's the final clue to crack the code! Now find that vault, and I'll give you the instructions to open it.

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): The clues have led me to believe that the code for this vault is 7-9-2.

Prowling the Grounds
Sly Cooper: That blimp looks like the most secured location on this boat. If Raleigh's really as smart as his police file suggests, then that's where I'll find him.

Bentley (binocucom): Wonderful idea, but your plan is flawed.

Sly Cooper: Why?

Bentley (binocucom): Because it's impossible get near him. To access Raleigh's blimp, you would have to sneak through that high-voltage power tube. To do that without getting electrocuted, you'd have to destroy that power generator, and to do that, you need two more of Raleigh's treasure keys, which are heavily guarded.

Sly Cooper: Interesting. So when are you going to get to the impossible part?

Bentley (binocucom): Fine, but I warned you! I've marked the areas you need to hit with holographic markers. Follow them to your objectives.

Sly Cooper: Thanks!

Bentley (binocucom): Don't mention it — it's your funeral.

(Upon collecting the first encountered lucky charm.) Bentley (binocucom): Wow! You found a lucky charm. That'll protect you when you take any damage.

(Upon climbing onto the ship.) Raleigh (intercom): I say chaps, my heartiest congratulations to you all! The storm machine has sunk its fiftieth ship last night, and the loot has already been unloaded. Our operation is moving along splendidly, with the possible exception being the grounds negligence displayed below decks. And, I demand the boilers stay at full pressure at all times! If you lazy, low-brow, technically incompetent pack of guttersnipes did your jobs right, we'd have sunk 100 ships by now! But of course, fifty boats is a fine, fine achievement. Carry on, my boys, carry on.

(When attempting to unlock the generator with one treasure key.) Bentley (binocucom): Two keys left to go.

(When attempting to unlock the generator with two treasure keys.) Bentley (binocucom): Okay, all you gotta do is find that last key and we're in!

(After destroying the generator and accessing the second area.) Bentley (binocucom): Astonishing! All my calculations led me to believe you would fail to knock out that generator!

Sly Cooper: Never was good at math.

Bentley (binocucom): Well, here's a real test for you... I've found a way up to Raleigh's hideout, but unfortunately, it is doomed to failure.

Sly Cooper: You're not going to tell me I have to shoot myself out of that cannon?

Bentley (binocucom): I'm afraid that's the only way.

Sly Cooper: Now your talking!

Bentley (binocucom): You're really scaring me, man. Anyway, to get inside that thing, you have to steal all seven of Raleigh's treasure keys.

Sly Cooper: So what are we waiting for? You show me those "holo-whats-its"...

Bentley (binocucom): You mean my holographic markers?

Sly Cooper: Yeah, yeah. And I'll swipe whatever it takes to get shot out of that cannon and steal back my family's Thievius Raccoonus.

Into the Machine
Bentley (binocucom): Eureka! We're in the engine room! My analysis tells me that if you trace the spinning crankshaft all the way back to its source, you'll find Raleigh's treasure key, and sabotage his machine while you're at it.

Bentley (binocucom): You can't jump up onto this furnace, Sly. You better go back and find an alternate route.

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): I can't believe I pieced this one together. Try 2-2-7.

High Class Heist
Bentley (binocucom): Jackpot, Sly! Look at all this stuff! Must be worth millions! And you know what that means... tighter security. You're going to have to be extra sneaky to get the treasure key here.

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): Whoever thought this code up knew what they were doing. Dial in 4-3-6.

The Fire Down Below
Bentley (binocucom): Temperature's reading way off the charts in here. This must be the power source for the storm machine!

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): I'm unbeatable! No code can stand before me! It's got to be 5-7-9!

A Cunning Disguise
(When Sly approaches the first booby-trapped rug.)

Sly Cooper: Those rats got pegged.

Bentley (binocucom): Raleigh appears to have booby-trapped this entire place.

Sly Cooper: I'm going to enjoy this.

Bentley (binocucom): Don't you get it, Sly? If you step on that rug... forget about becoming a master thief. You'll be a master dartboard.

Sly Cooper: Wait a second. What if I jumped into that barrel for protection?

Bentley (binocucom): I don't know. It looks pretty risky. And very unsanitary.

Sly Cooper: Only one way to find out!

(Upon reaching an area patrolled by a squid guard.) Bentley (binocucom): So far, so good. I bet if you stayed still inside the barrel, the guard won't be able to see you, even if he shines his flashlight on you.

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): With the help of a straightedge and compass, the answer was simple. Dial in 2-4-2.

The Gunboat Graveyard
(Once Sly enters the ship graveyard)

Raleigh (intercom): Ahoy, dock hands! Capital job unloading that cargo last night. You're the crown jewel of my operation. Do me the service of proving your worth yet again by protecting the treasure key that I have stored down there. It appears there's a prowler on the premises. And if any of you let him get his hands on that key, I'll personally flog the lot of you for an entire fortnight!

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): This one was cake. Input 7-1-9.

Treasure in the Depths
Bentley (binocucom): You found it, Sly! This is where Raleigh's gang of crabs stashes his sunken treasure. Use your sub to blast 'em! The left controls the sub. Give it a try.

(When moving the sub.) Bentley (binocucom): Great!

Bentley (binocucom): Use the right to fire its gun.

(When firing the gun.) Bentley (binocucom): Uh huh, that's it!

Bentley (binocucom): Remember, you can always drive the sub in one direction while firing in another. To earn a treasure key, you'll need to collect all 40 chests. Do not let a crab take one into a tube!

(Upon failing the mission.) Bentley (binocucom): Uhm... better luck next time?

(Upon completing the mission.) Bentley (binocucom): Congratulations! You did it!

The Eye of the Storm
(Once Sly confronts Raleigh)

Raleigh: How delightful. We have a guest. The only thing is... I hate unexpected guests!

Sly Cooper: Listen, Raleigh. Wipe out my family and steal what's mine, you better expect company.

Raleigh: Ohhhhhh, I'm ever so sorry. How sloppy of me not to finish the job. Obviously, we should have snuffed you out as well. So, without further ado, let me make amends by, what... bloating to gargantuan size, and squashing you like the insignificant bug that you are!!!!

Sly Cooper: Bring it on.

(After defeating Raleigh.) Raleigh: Blast it all! You've beaten me! Well, gloat all you want, Sly Cooper. You're no match for Muggshot, my villainous cohort in Utah. You will see, Mesa City is so well-guarded a snake couldn't slither in without setting off alarms. (drowns) Uahahaha.

Raleigh Hung Out to Dry (The Getaway)
Sly Cooper (narrating): Raleigh's section of the Thievius Raccoonus held detailed instructions on how to perform my ancestor Rioichi Cooper's Ninja Spire Jump, a technique he developed while sneaking into the thickly fortified castles of Feudal Japan.

Sly Cooper (narrating): Finding a way off Raleigh's boat got a little tricky with the untimely arrival of Inspector Fox, who, failing to find me, busted Raleigh and his crew.

Sly Cooper (narrating): With the storm machine out of commission, boats found their way back onto the ocean, and the mystery of the Welsh Triangle faded from memory. My gang and I loped around England for a while, enjoying the pleasant weather, and then headed back home, excited for our next heist.

Sunset Snake Eyes (The Setup)
Sly Cooper (narrating): It had been a while since I'd been back in the U.S. Next up, the notorious Muggshot, ruthless muscle of the Fiendish Five. What he lacked in brains, he definitely made up for in brawn. Turns out he wasn't always that way. He grew up as the runt of the litter, the neighborhood weakling. The only friends he could turn to were usually found on the big screen. It was there that he spotted his first gangster, and he knew instantly that's what he wanted to be. He spent the rest of his youth working real hard to get there, fueled on his dreams of great power and respect. With enough perspiration, he realized that dream. He'd become a hard-boiled, street brawling, tough-as-nails gangster, ensuring that he'd never be picked on or pushed around again. So he's holed up in Mesa City, huh? I've always wanted to go to that thriving American boomtown.

A Rocky Start
Bentley (binocucom): Hey, Sly! I thought you said Mesa City was going to be loud and busy. This looks more like a ghost town!

Sly Cooper: Something's happened. Where is everyone?

Bentley (binocucom): I don't know, but it's starting to give me the creeps. What do you say we take off?

Sly Cooper: And miss all the fun? Besides, I want to try out that new move I got from Raleigh's section of the Thievius Raccoonus.

Bentley (binocucom): You mean the Ninja Spire Jump?

Sly Cooper: Yeah. Do me a favor and read me the instructions again...

Bentley (binocucom): To landeth safely upon diminutive points, leapeth lively and presseth the triggering device with the round geometrical object emblazoned upon it.

Sly Cooper: So "jump and hit to land on narrow spots".

Bentley (binocucom): That's a rough translation.

(Upon reaching a train car with floor lasers.) Sly Cooper: What's with those flashing lights?

Bentley (binocucom): The latest in high-tech security — electronic floor sensors. Step on them and you're a goner.

Sly Cooper: Nice touch.

Bentley (binocucom): They're safe to walk on while flashing, but it also means they're about to switch to a different sector.

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): A little bit of higher mathematics, and voila! Dial in 3-1-4.

Muggshot's Turf
Bentley (binocucom): This Muggshot certainly isn't shy. Okay, so we know he's here somewhere, but how are we supposed to find him? Mesa City is a big place.

Sly Cooper: Given that he's a bulldog... it seems only reasonable to assume he'd choose to live in a giant fire hydrant.

Bentley (binocucom): That's sound some logic, Sly. Now you just need to find a way to break into the building's base.

Sly Cooper: Oh, I'm sure I'll think of something!

(Upon approaching the casino.) Muggshot (intercom): Yo! Hey, yo, yo! It's the boss! You know, I am the first to admit that maybe driving everyone out of town, while necessary to set up shop, might have taken a hit out of the business. So, now I hope you mugs would be obliged to any visitors that come here to lose their money in my casino. But, I got a reliable tip that a cop might be snooping around the operation. So from now on, greet any visitors you see with a hail of lead! Capiche?

(After accessing the second area.) Sly Cooper: Would you look at that ugly mug?

Bentley (binocucom): I am, and I find it infinitely fascinating.

Sly Cooper: Huh?

Bentley (binocucom): My x-ray detection devices reveal that a secret elevator to Muggshot's penthouse is contained within that giant head.

Sly Cooper: So how do we get in?

Bentley (binocucom): Behind this locked wall, there's a lever that summons the elevator, but you need all seven keys to open it up.

Sly Cooper: I'm on it!

Boneyard Casino
(Upon entering the area.) Bentley (binocucom): Nice job getting in, but look out for those guards. Muggshot's got those machine-gun toting dogs hunting like a pack.

(Near the end of the level.) Bentley (binocucom): Sly, this giant roulette wheel is spinning too fast to jump counter-clockwise around it. You'll have to jump in the other direction to try to land on the green section.

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): Man, I'm getting swift with deciphering these codes. Dial 3-3-8.

Murray's Big Gamble
Bentley (binocucom): Murray is in position to make a run for this key.

Sly Cooper: Okay, so what do I do?

Bentley (binocucom): Provide some covering fire for him with that blasting station.

Sly Cooper: Sweet.

Bentley (binocucom): Use to aim and press  to fire.

Sly Cooper: I'll do my best!

At the Dog Track
Sly Cooper: Murray, what's going on down there?

Murray (binocucom): Well, I drove to this hotdog stand for a quick snack and the next thing you know I'm getting challenged to a race by these gangster dogs!

Sly Cooper: Is there a key in it for the winner?

Murray (binocucom): Yeah, three times around the track for a key.

Sly Cooper: It's all you man. Drive the van with the left analog stick, and if you manage to pick up any nitro power-ups, you can get a boost by pressing. Go get 'em!

Murray (binocucom): I'm on it!

(If you lose the race.) Murray (binocucom): Man, those crummy dogs are banging me right and left.

Sly Cooper: Well get back in there and bang them back. We need that key!

(Upon winning the race.) Sly Cooper: Way to go, Murray!

Two to Tango
Bentley (binocucom): Yuck! These rooftops are filthy! Well, they are the only way to get to the key since my locator tells me it's in a jewel case somewhere near Muggshot's penthouse.

(Upon climbing onto a rooftop.) Carmelita Fox: Well, well, well... look who just walked into my crosshairs... Sly Cooper!

Sly Cooper: About time you showed up, Ms. Fox. Was getting worried about you. Thought you took a wrong turn somewhere back in Paris.

Carmelita Fox: The only one making wrong turns is you, Sly. I'd suggest you surrender before I paralyze you with my good friend, the shock pistol.

Sly Cooper: Now see, a girl whose best friend's a firearm's got issues. A little dinner, a little dancing, I think I can help you out.

Carmelita Fox: Mmm. Sounds romantic. As long as you don't mind dining... in jail!

Sly Cooper: Nah, I hear the service is lousy.

Carmelita Fox: Once I catch you, you'll know for yourself!

(After breaking the jewel case holding the treasure key.) Carmelita Fox: I'm going to hunt you down, Cooper, you can't run forever!

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): Good thing I know Navajo code talk. Try 5-3-2.

Back Alley Heist
(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): I could have broken this code in my sleep. The combination is 5-6-5.

Straight to the Top
(When attempting to smash the thick glass with Sly's cane.) Bentley (binocucom): Forget it. Your cane will never smash that thick glass. You'll need something super-heavy... like that big wrecking ball up there.

(When approaching a neon sign.) Bentley (binocucom): See those neon tubes? I know they look like you can't climb on them, but with your thieving skills, I bet you could pull it off!

(At some point through the level.) Muggshot (intercom): I got a personal message for the two-bit thief who's making off with all my treasure keys: you're dead, pally! If I get my hands on you, I'm going to fit you with your own pair of cement bunny slippers. You hear me? You're lunchmeat, jerk!

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): You'd need an I.Q. of at least 140 to figure this one out. Dial in 4-6-8.

Last Call
Muggshot: What? My boys have been yapping about some big, mysterious dude running around cracking skulls and, and this is it?! Yer the monkey wrench in my operation? Some scrawny rat with a stick... wait a second... I've seen that stick before.

Sly Cooper: Maybe when my father knocked your block off with it.

Muggshot: Yer father? Wow, yer a Cooper? You know, that Thingus Raccamagoocus had a lot of nice pictures, but way too many big words.

Sly Cooper: So you don't mind just handing it over.

Muggshot: What are you kidding? You break into my place, steal my stuff, trash the joint. I feel transgressed and violated. Let's rock!

(When attempting to hit Muggshot with Sly's cane.) Bentley (binocucom): Muggshot's too strong for your cane. You gonna have to find some other way to stop him.

(After turning all of the mirrors on the first level.) Muggshot: (screams) My beautiful gun is destroyed! Good thing I got a spare upstairs.

(After defeating Muggshot.) Muggshot: This is impossible! A little pipsqueak like you beating a big, strong bruiser like me? It ain't right! You want all of that stupid picture book, you're gonna to have to go down to Haiti and cross paths with Mz. Ruby. And then believe you me, you don't want to be you!

Muggshot Busted (The Getaway)
Sly Cooper (narrating): Muggshot's section of the Thievius Raccoonus contained an entry from my gun-slinging ancestor "Tennessee Kid" Cooper. His specialty was the Rail Walk and Rail Slide, moves perfected through a lifetime of theft in the Old West.

Sly Cooper (narrating): Getting out of town proved to be a little more challenging than getting in. Having just missed us, Inspector Fox went for the next best thing and dragged that canine steroid case off to jail. That was the end of Muggshot's gambling empire, and Mesa City citizens soon returned home, while me and the boys, well, we enjoyed the rest of our stay in America... and then returned to Paris, ready for our next mission.

Vicious Voodoo (The Setup)
Sly Cooper (narrating): The third member of the Fiendish Five was the infamous voodoo priestess, Mz. Ruby. Born into a family of mystics, other children found her... scary, teaching herself to summon the undead, provided what few friends she had. A career in crime allowed an adult Mz. Ruby to punish the world for fearing her as a child. Chief mystic for the Fiendish Five, her powers allowed them to break both the laws of man and nature at the same time. Yet, despite the whirlwind success of her youth, she'd managed to slip into obscurity. Last known sightings claimed she headed out of civilization and deep into the Haitian jungle.

The Dread Swamp Path
Bentley (binocucom): Sorry, Sly, but this is one mission you will have to accomplish without me.

Sly Cooper: You don't believe in ghosts, do you?

Bentley (binocucom): Sure I do. My scanners have picked up verifiable paranormal activity, but that's not the problem. This swamp is oozing with disgusting mold and bacteria.

Sly Cooper: Suck it up, Bentley. We've got work to do.

Bentley (binocucom): Well, alright then. Don't forget to use the new move you learned from Muggshot's section of the Thievius Raccoonus.

Sly Cooper: You mean the Raccoon Rail Walk?

Bentley (binocucom): The roots and vines around here are perfect for that. All you gotta do is...

Sly Cooper: ...Jump and hit.

Bentley (binocucom): Especially where you see the bark has been worn away. And where it's super slick from icky slime and moss, you'll rail slide like a skater grinding pipe.

Sly Cooper: I'm liking it.

(Upon reaching the guard compound.) Bentley (binocucom): That's Mz. Ruby's lair. To get in, you'll need that key on top of a tiki pedestal in the guard compound. There's a bad mojo force field protecting it, so you'll have to destroy all five of the purple candles surrounding it.

Sly Cooper: No problem.

Bentley (binocucom): Don't get cocky, or you'll end up with your head shrunk to the size of a pea. You've got to get past those voodoo guards — and I'm warning you — they're mean, and they work like a team.

Sly Cooper: So do we, buddy!

(After destroying all five candles.) Bentley (binocucom): You've done it! The mojo force field is down, and you can steal the key!

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): If I did my math right, and I always do my math right, then the combination has got to be 5-8-8.

The Swamp's Dark Center
Bentley (binocucom): My paranormal scanner is maxing out on that structure.

Sly Cooper: A reading like that could only be coming off Mz. Ruby herself.

Bentley (binocucom): I think you're right, Sly. If you want a crack at Mz. Ruby, you're going to have to find a way inside that Skull Temple.

(Upon reaching the lair.) '''Mz. Ruby' (intercom''): Wake up, you lazy bags of swamp gas! The voodoo vibe is thick tonight. Let's take advantage of this powerful mojo and step up production. Keep piling those shiny bones into the soup. We'll have an army of ghosts by morning and take over Mexico by the end of the week. Hear that voodoo, children? Our family is about to grow, grow, grow!

(When attempting to unlock the small gate on the right.) Bentley  (binocucom): They seem to have this gate locked up pretty tight. Must be something pretty valuable in here. A couple more treasure keys should give us the answer.

(After accessing the second area.) Bentley (binocucom): Looks like some kind of giant voodoo egg beater to stir up that unsanitary mess.

Sly Cooper: If I can unlock the cauldron's lid, I might be able to thrash their production and build up enough steam pressure to get launched up to Ruby's skull temple.

Bentley (binocucom): Okay, sounds like we've got a plan. To get around that thing, try moving in the shadows made by the mask so that the guards won't see you.

The Lair of the Beast
Bentley (binocucom): What's with this industrial-strength voodoo gate? Mz. Ruby must really be trying to keep something out.

Sly Cooper: Or maybe... she's trying to keep something in!

(At some point through the level.) Bentley (binocucom): These walls are making me claustrophobic. Whoa! Did you see those reeds move? There's something huge under there. You better get going!

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): I had to overcome some personal demons to get the answer to this one. Try 4-4-4.

Piranha Lake
Bentley (binocucom): Sly, the only way to open up that voodoo gate is by lighting all 25 tiki torches with the flamethrower on your swamp skiff. Use to steer and press  to fire the flamethrower. Oh, and one more thing... you need fuel for the flamethrower, and the only source of oil are those piranha you see swimming around. Run them down with the boat. One fish fuels one shot. Hurry, you only have two minutes to get all the torches lit!

A Grave Undertaking
Bentley (binocucom): Sly, you'd better be on your guard here. My paranormal scanner shows this place is really haunted!

(Upon destroying the first ghost generator.) Bentley (binocucom): Now that was very interesting. When you smashed that gravestone, the ghosts stopped coming. It must be some kind of ghost generator. Maybe if you smashed them all, you'd be safe.

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): Okay, okay, this is kind of a guess, but try 1-2-8.

Descent Into Danger
Bentley (binocucom): Oh my gawd! A green waterfall overflowing with bones and body parts. I'm telling you, the health department's going to come down bigtime on this dump.

(At some point through the level.) '''Mz. Ruby' (intercom''): Hey there, Sly Cooper! That's right, I know you're here. I've seen it in the stars. It's all over my tea leaves. I'm in your mind, raccoon. I know your game. You better run for it, or me and my voodoo children are going to sign you up for an eternity in zombie servitude!

(Upon reaching a large room with spotlights.) Bentley (binocucom): Look at all the security. This must be the source of all the disgusting green soup!

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): These codes are nothing before my righteous analytical ability! The combination has to be 5-7-1.

A Ghastly Voyage
Bentley (binocucom): That vehicle seems to be outfitted with some sort of high energy cannon. Use the left to move, and aim the right  in the direction you want to shoot. Remember, you can always shoot in one direction while moving in another.

(Upon approaching the second signal repeater.) Bentley (binocucom): According to my paranormal scanner, that flowing soup is really highly charged ectoplasm! It's just got to be the source of power for those headstone generators!

Down Home Cooking
Bentley (binocucom): With all the hay and feathers in here, just looking at this place has got me breaking down in hives, but we've got no choice. That ghost over there contacted me on specter-wave radio, and we've cut a deal. He's promised us a key if you can whack 50 chickens. I guess he needs them to make a big pot of gumbo, but he's scared of the bomb-toting roosters. Be careful, or they'll blow you to bits! Think you can do it?

A Deadly Dance
'''Mz. Ruby''': Mmm, I could feel that Cooper vibe coming. Most distastefully bad juju.

Sly Cooper: Yeah, well you give me the creeps too, lady. Cooking up an army of ghosts isn't a very neighborly pastime.

'''Mz. Ruby': (laughs)'' Oh, Sly, I see your mouth moving, but all I hear is blah, blah, blah. Well, if jaws need to flap, then let them flap. See you in the next world, Sly Cooper.

(After hitting Mz. Ruby for the first time.)

Sly Cooper: Come back here! You can't run away forever!

'''Mz. Ruby''': Quite true, quite true. Why don't I have my servant, Chumley, escort you over here?

Sly Cooper: Alright, what's the catch?

'''Mz. Ruby''': Oh, not much. Just a little game I like to play with all my annoying guests. I want to see how well you pay attention.

Sly Cooper: What do you mean?

'''Mz. Ruby''': Well, I'll unleash my mighty mojo magic upon you. If you repeat what I do, you'll dodge it just fine. If not, you'll get zapped. (laughs)

Sly Cooper: A little voodoo Simon Says, eh? Sounds easy enough.

(After defeating Mz. Ruby.) '''Mz. Ruby''': You've certainly got some rhythm, raccoon, but it won't help none if you're fixing to go after the Panda King. He's tough with a capital T. If you go poking around his stronghold in China, you're likely to get poked back.

Sly Cooper: Yeah, well if he's anything like the rest of you, I think I'll manage.

Mz. Ruby Vexed (The Getaway)
Sly Cooper (narrating): Mz. Ruby's section of the Thievius Raccoonus held notes from my pioneering ancestor, Slytunkhamen. His invisibility technique allowed him to steal from corrupt pharaohs and greedy noblemen.

Sly Cooper (narrating): Right on schedule, Inspector Fox's arrival cued my exit. The production of zombies, made illegal in the World Peace Accord of '71, earned Mz. Ruby a life sentence behind bars. While the gang and I enjoyed a few weeks in the tropical sunshine, working on our tans in preparation for our next caper.

Fire in the Sky (The Setup)
Sly Cooper (narrating): The road trip gave me the time I needed to study up on the Panda King. Born penniless, he was fascinated by the fireworks rich noblemen set off every New Years. He spent a decade learning the art, but when he tried to offer his fireworks to the noblemen, they couldn't see past his shabby clothes and chased him away. Humiliated, the Panda King took revenge on those who shunned him by using the very tools of his art for crime. The Fiendish Five recruited him as their demolitions expert, and from then on, his explosive touch became feared worldwide. He's rumored to be perfecting some new firework technique high in the unstable Kunlun Mountains of western China.

A Perilous Ascent
Bentley (binocucom): Would you look at that? A fireworks show!

Bentley (binocucom): Oh my gosh, that's awful! That poor village just got buried in freezing snow!

Sly Cooper: The rocket came from that giant statue, and you can bet the Panda King lit the fuse. I've got to find my way up there and fast before that lunatic squashes another town.

(Upon approaching the locked exit of the level.)

Bentley (binocucom): You can't get through the security gate without one of the Panda King's treasure keys. There's one over there... but it's heavily guarded.

Sly Cooper: One key, coming up!

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): I got a real headache figuring this one out. Input 5-7-8.

Inside the Stronghold
Bentley (binocucom): Nice job breaking into the Panda King's compound. I think I've figured out a way to get to the top of that giant statue, but unfortunately, it's obstructed by this reinforced ceiling hatch.

Sly Cooper: No problem. They seem to have plenty of firepower around here. I'll just have to find a few more treasure keys to get at it.

Panda King (intercom): Attention, valued employee. Sadly, Hinkau village elect not to pay for avalanche protection service, and so I am forced to bury alive under many ton of snow. Please be on guard for any surviving villager that come looking for revenge. Thank you, that is all.

(After accessing the second area.)

Bentley (binocucom): I've calculated the trajectory of these rockets, and I'm 99 percent sure you'll be able to ride them all the way to the top of that statue before they explode.

Sly Cooper: Hmm, what about the other one percent?

Bentley (binocucom): Well, in that case, Sly, you will be blown to bits... but the experience will no doubt be spectacular.

Sly Cooper: Nice.

Bentley (binocucom): Now, to unlock these rockets, you're going to need all 7 of the Panda King's treasure keys.

Sly Cooper: Right on, I'll steal 'em in no time.

(After unlocking the fireworks with seven keys.)

Bentley (binocucom): See that ring on the bundle of fireworks? Hook onto it with your cane to hitch a ride.

Flaming Temple of Flame
Bentley (binocucom): Despite its temple-like facade, this place is really some sort of training ground. Stay on your toes.

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): Lucky for you I'm versed in chaos theory, otherwise, this code would have been unsolvable. Input 9-3-2.

The Unseen Foe
Bentley (binocucom): This looks like a good place to try out your new invisibility move. Hold down to drop out of sight. While invisible nothing can see you — not lasers, not searchlights, not guards. Oh, and if the guards already see you, then the invisibility trick won't work on them.

(Upon entering the pagoda.) Bentley (binocucom): Sly! This pagoda is some kind of huge gunpowder production plant. Judging by the scale, the Panda King must be making tons of explosives.

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): It was a challenge, but this vault's combination has got to be 6-6-7.

The King of the Hill
Bentley (binocucom): Murray's all fired up to make the run for the key. While on the blasting station use the left to aim and the  to fire.

Sly Cooper: Right on, I'll keep him covered.

A Desperate Race
Sly Cooper: Murray! What are you doing down there?

Murray (binocucom): Well, I'm minding my post when I notice this snow-cone stand, and I think to myself, "Hey, Murray, you've got to keep your energy up." So I hurry over here and then all of a sudden, monkeys are everywhere, bugging me to race them three times around this track for a key.

Sly Cooper: We could use the key. Think you can take 'em?

Murray (binocucom): Come on, Sly. They're a pack of monkeys! How can I lose?

Sly Cooper: Alright, remember to steer with the left and press  to use any nitro boosts you collect. Keep clear of those icy patches.

Murray (binocucom): Thanks for the advice, Sly, but trust me. I've got this under control.

(If the race is lost.)

Murray (binocucom): Those stupid monkeys! They got lucky and beat me! I'm just not... used to driving on the wrong side of the road.

Sly Cooper: Wrong side of the...? Just get the key, Murray.

(Upon winning the race.)

Sly Cooper: Nice driving, Murray! Now go get that key!

Rapid Fire Assault
Bentley (binocucom): This vehicle is identical to the one you found in Mz. Ruby's lair. Someone with some serious high-tech skills must be providing these guys with hardware... the fifth member of the Fiendish Five, perhaps? Remember, use the left stick to move and aim the right stick in the direction you want to shoot. You know I bet that cannon is powerful enough to blow down those heavy security doors.

(Upon entering the fireworks facility.) Panda King (intercom): Attention, valued employee. It has come to my attention that a thief is loose somewhere inside the firework production facility. Please do your part to pitch in by killing this intruder on sight. Thank you, that is all.

Duel by the Dragon
Carmelita Fox: Freeze, raccoon!

Sly Cooper: How can I freeze when my heart warms at the very sight of you?

Carmelita Fox: Shut up, ringtail! I don't know what you're doing here in China, but I'm sure it can't be good for whoever owns this place.

Sly Cooper: You must only have eyes for me if you're too blind to see what's going on around here.

Carmelita Fox: All I see is a pathetic thief who's escaped justice for far too long.

Sly Cooper: I'm proud to be a thief, especially when I'm stealing from a vicious extortionist like the Panda King. Open your eyes, "Detective" — these quaint temples are a front for an illegal explosives factory.

Carmelita Fox: Don't try to confuse the issue. You criminals are all the same and none of you can escape justice.

(Upon escaping from Carmelita.) Carmelita Fox: Watch your back, Cooper! When you least expect it, I'll be there!

(Before opening the vault.) Bentley (binocucom): Multiple blood vessels burst in my brain while figuring this out. The code had better be... 2-3-1.

Flame Fu!
Panda King: I see you carry the cane of the notorious Cooper thief clan. Have you come here for revenge? To steal back the Thievius Raccoonus?

Sly Cooper: That was my plan at first, but now I'm more interested in putting an end to your avalanche extortion racket.

Panda King: Why should you care if I bury a few worthless village in snow? You are a thief, just like me.

Sly Cooper: No, that's only half right. I am a thief, from a long line of master thieves. While you... you're just a frustrated firework artist turned homicidal pyromaniac.

Panda King: Insolent child! You shall pay dearly for your disrespect. Still, to honor your Cooper ancestry, I will send you to your doom with the beauty of my new firework technique... Flame-Fu!

(During the fight, the Panda King will call out his three attacks as he uses them.)

Panda King
 * Fiery Wheel!
 * Palms of Thunder!
 * Booming Chop!

(After defeating the Panda King)

Panda King: Your skill with that cane is unparalleled. (coughs) Aaahhh!

Bentley (binocucom): Sly, I did a cross-analysis of the metal used in that high tech blasting vehicle and it turns out it can only be found in one place — the Krakarov Volcano in Russia. That's got to be where we'll find the fifth member of the Fiendish Five. So get what you came for and let's get out here!

The Panda King on Ice (The Getaway)
Sly Cooper (narrating): Retrieving the Panda King's section of the Thievius Raccoonus gave me a chance to learn about my technically-minded ancestor Otto van Cooper. Not known for his physical dexterity, Otto relied on vehicles to aid him in his criminal endeavors. Armed with his designs, I was sure Murray would be able to make some cool modifications to the team van.

Sly Cooper (narrating): A frustrated Inspector Fox, having missed me coming down the mountain, threw the Panda King in jail, thus putting an end to his avalanche protection services and ensuring the safety of mountain villages throughout China. My gang and I took a little time off and did some shopping in Hong Kong. Thoroughly relaxed, we headed home to plan our next move.

The Cold Heart of Hate (The Setup)
Sly Cooper (narrating): We were on our way to the Krakarov Volcano in Russia. While looking over what little information I had on the final member of the Fiendish Five, I began to notice something. In the four parts of the Thievius Raccoonus recovered so far, several of the pictures depict a shadowy owl-like figure, which looks very similar to the police images of the mysterious Clockwerk. Is this a strange coincidence or is there something I'm missing?

A Hazardous Path
Murray (binocucom): Hey, Sly, the road to Clockwerk's fortress is blocked. Do me a favor and shoot out that lock for me, would ya pal?

(After passing through Clockwerk's security door.)

Murray (binocucom): Whoa! Check out all those mines! Think you can blow them away and clear a safe path for us?

Bentley (binocucom): Bingo! My scanners indicate that Clockwerk is holed up in that owl-shaped tower!

Murray (binocucom): First things first! We've got hostile robo-falcons at twelve o'clock, Sly!

Bentley (binocucom): That's no tower, it's a giant death ray! Sly, take out those rocks, or we're in trouble.

Murray (binocucom): Heads up! The robo-falcons are back!

Murray (binocucom): We're getting swarmed!

(After destroying the final swarm of robo-falcons.)

Murray (binocucom): Nice shooting, Sly! Looks like we're in the clear.

Sly Cooper: Uh, Murray? That cave doesn't look tall enough for the turret to make it all the way through!

Burning Rubber
Bentley (binocucom): We've got to get through that security door on the far side of the cavern. The only way to unlock it is to analyze at least 60 of those hanging computers.

Sly Cooper: Would have been easy to get at them if Murray hadn't thrashed our new turret!

Bentley (binocucom): It won't be a problem. I can hack the computer's connection couplings so they'll fall to the ground. Then Murray will have to run over them with the van.

Sly Cooper: Okay — and Murray, remember to use our new battering ram by hitting if anyone tries to keep you from those computers.

Bentley (binocucom): Murray, there are only 119 computers up there and these fire slugs seem intent on getting to them before us. The first one to 60 computers wins!

(If you lose the computers)

Bentley (binocucom): Too slow, Murray. Those Fire Slugs are beating you to the computers. You'll never get to them all at this rate. Remember - use the battering ram to knock the Fire Slugs back into the lava.

(After collecting 60 computers.)

Bentley (binocucom): Nice driving, Murray! Now we have enough data to open the security doors. Just past them is the control room to Clockwerk's death ray tower... I think it's time for some Cooper thieving and sabotage, don't ya think, Sly?

A Daring Rescue
Bentley (binocucom): Careful, Sly — those tiles are booby-trapped. You better get out of there.

Sly Cooper: Hold on! That's Carmelita! She looks trapped.

Bentley (binocucom): Serves that cop right. She's been dogging us from the start.

Sly Cooper: It's just a misunderstanding. We've got to free her.

Bentley (binocucom): Are you crazy, Sly? Clockwerk probably stuck her there to trap you!

Sly Cooper: But if I don't do anything, Carmelita is doomed. Besides, stealing just won't be any fun without her.

Bentley (binocucom): Sly, your ridiculous raccoon logic sends shivers up my shell, but if you're determined to go through with this, that barrel will undoubtedly help — though I have no idea how you'll get up there.

Sly Cooper: Dude, a spire jump here, a rail slide there — I've done this a million times.

(After reaching Carmelita.)

Carmelita Fox: Sly Cooper! I should have known you were behind this.

Sly Cooper: You got me wrong, Ms. Fox. I'm here to rescue you.

Clockwerk (computer): Ha ha ha ha ha ha — you sentimental fool! Empathy has always been the downfall of the Cooper clan.

Bentley (binocucom): I knew this was a trap. Looks like I'm going to have to do some fast and furious hacking to shut down that gas before Sly's brain is turned to cheese.

(After completing "Bentley Comes Through.")

Carmelita Fox: Sly, I was wrong about you. Break me out of this force field by smashing its base, and I'll make it up to you somehow.

(After waiting a moment.)

Carmelita Fox: Sly, I know you must hate me now, and I don't blame you. You've got to break me out of here before the gas comes back on!

Bentley Comes Through
Bentley: Haven't had to do this in a while. Okay, I use the left analog stick to steer, and the right analog stick to unleash my hacker code. Those green data packets need to be destroyed if I'm gonna get at the yellow security code.

(Upon collecting one, three and seven yellow blocks, respectively.)

Bentley
 * Level two!
 * Level three!
 * Level four!

(Upon reaching level two.) Bentley: Uh-oh! Looks like I triggered one of Clockwerk's security algorithms. Stay sharp, Bentley!

(Upon completing the level.) Bentley: I'm the best! No code can stand before me!

A Temporary Truce
Carmelita Fox: I don't get it, Cooper. I've hunted you for years, tried to throw you behind bars. But when you get a chance to leave me in a cage, you set me free. Why?

Sly Cooper: Carmelita, we may be on opposite sides of the law, but you're not my enemy. Now the homicidal robotic owl that built this death ray and nearly gassed us to death, that guy's on my list!

Carmelita Fox: I see your point. Alright, until Clockwerk and his evil schemes are destroyed, I suggest we work together.

Sly Cooper: Together at last!

Sly Cooper: Huh, what? I need that cane! It's been in my family for generations!

Carmelita Fox: Don't worry, ringtail. I'll cover you while you get it back. If you can, make your way to the top of the death ray. I stashed my jet-pack there before Clockwerk nabbed me.

Sly Cooper: Now that we're a team and all, I hate to leave your side.

Carmelita Fox: Hold on, this truce is only temporary. Once we beat Clockwerk, I'm coming after you.

Sly Cooper: Really?

Carmelita Fox: Well... maybe I'll give you a 10-second head start.

(Upon completing the level.) Carmelita Fox: Nice job, raccoon.

Sinking Peril
Bentley (binocucom): There's Carmelita's jet-pack right where she said it would be. The magnatronic support field for the death ray got destroyed as you were making a run for your cane. You'd better hurry, this whole thing is about to fall apart!

Sly Cooper: I'm on it.

Bentley (binocucom): It's sinking fast! Climb, Sly! Climb!

Bentley (binocucom): Smash through those gears with your cane. You've got to keep moving!

A Strange Reunion
Bentley (binocucom): Okay, that jet-pack is easy to fly. Use to aim and steer, and press  to fire its rockets.

Bentley (binocucom): Sly, behind you!

Clockwerk: Sly Cooper, you have escaped my gas chamber and destroyed my death ray. Remarkable. You Coopers always find a way to beat me!

Sly Cooper: "Always"? So that was you in the background of all those old pictures in the Thievius Raccoonus. How old are you?

Clockwerk: Perfection has no age.

Sly Cooper: What, you're immortal?

Clockwerk: Revenge is the prime ingredient in the fountain of youth. I've kept myself alive for hundreds of years with a steady diet of jealousy and hate, awaiting the day when I would finally eclipse your family's thieving reputation.

Carmelita Fox: Sly, my missiles don't hurt him, but seem to create holes in his armor. Shoot into the gaps I create!

(Throughout the first and second phases of the fight.)

Clockwerk
 * My intellect is refined, my experience is greater.
 * My skills are superior.
 * You can't dodge me forever.
 * You cannot escape me, Cooper raccoon.
 * You're the weakest Cooper I've yet encountered.

(After shooting Clockwerk down during the first phase.)

Bentley (binocucom): Nice shooting, Sly — you got him!

Bentley (binocucom): Wow! That's one tough owl.

Sly Cooper: I don't get it. You're so familiar with my family, you must have known my father had a son. If you hated the Coopers so much, why did you let me live when you stole the Thievius Raccoonus?

Clockwerk: Because I wanted to show the world that without your precious book, the Cooper line was nothing.

Sly Cooper: Ah, well, there's where you're wrong. The Thievius Raccoonus doesn't create great thieves, it takes great thieves to create the Thievius Raccoonus!

Clockwerk: Enough, Sly Cooper! It ends here. I'll finish you like I finished your father. Then the Cooper line will be erased, and the only master thief will be Clockwerk!

(After shooting Clockwerk down during the second phase.) Bentley (binocucom): Now's your only chance, Sly! You've got to get to his head and destroy it before his auto-reconstruct circuitry kicks in!

(While heading towards Clockwerk's head, in this order.)

Clockwerk:
 * I am-
 * Selling-
 * Flowers-
 * Never-
 * Feet together-
 * I will live-
 * Immortal-
 * Redirect energy-
 * Shift F5, shift F7, F5 will live.

(Upon reaching Clockwerk's head.) Clockwerk: Cooper! You will never be rid of me! Clockwerk is superior!

10 Seconds (Ending)
Sly Cooper (narrating): It took some tricky maneuvering, but I managed to snatch that last piece of the Thievius Raccoonus from Clockwerk's claw. I had taken down each member of the Fiendish Five: Raleigh, Muggshot, Mz. Ruby, the Panda King... and finally Clockwerk. I'd beaten them all one by one and reclaimed my birthright.

Sly Cooper (narrating): Of course, there was no way I could have gotten here without the help of my pals. I know this hasn't been easy for them, but they stuck with me through it all. (chuckles) Murray. Boy, it took a lot of guts for him to get out in the field with me. I know he was scared, but he's got more heart than anyone I've ever known. Thank goodness for Bentley. Without his expertise, I'd have never found my way off that rooftop in Paris. A guy couldn't ask for a better gang of friends. (chuckles) Who could ever forget the lovely Carmelita? Looks like we're not going to be friends anymore. Now that Clockwerk's death ray is out of commission, we're back to playing cops and robbers. I thought for sure she was going to slap the handcuffs on me right then and there. But instead, she was true to her word and gave me that 10-second head start.

Sly Cooper (narrating): 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4... 3... 2... 1. I felt bad leaving her stranded on that giant rock, but I knew it wouldn't be long before we'd see each other again.

Hideout
(After completing the prologue.) Bentley: That was a nice piece of work back there at Police Headquarters, Sly. Come see me if you want to check out any of your old movies. I've got them all here on my computer. Use the left to move around the hideout and  to select things.

(Before beginning the first episode.) Bentley: I've already plotted a route to our first target.

(Upon selecting Murray while he is eating peanuts.) Murray: Oh, you want... one?

(After completing the first episode.) Bentley: I took the liberty of pinning your mission map up on the wall. You can use it to warp directly to any levels you've already visited.

(Before beginning the second episode.) Bentley: We're all set to go to Mesa City!

(Upon selecting Murray while he is playing paddle ball.) Murray: Okay, I'll stop... soon.

(Before beginning the third episode.) Bentley: I figured out a way to get us to Haiti.

(Before beginning the fourth episode.) Bentley: Travel plans to China have all been worked out.

(Before beginning the final episode.) Bentley: Okay, partner, this is it! A trip to Clockwerk's lair!

(After completing the final episode.) Bentley: I hate to tell you this, Sly, but the Thievius Raccoonus isn't fully restored. You're going to have to go back and unlock all the vaults to find the pages you're missing. There is some good news though — a friend of mine in Japan just sent me this really cool movie, and guess what, it's all about us!

(After opening all vaults without having completed all of the Master Thief Sprints.) Bentley: You've done it, Sly. The Thievius Raccoonus is complete! Now try completing all the Master Thief Sprints to unlock the designer's commentary. Once you've unlocked them all I've got a special "behind the scenes" movie to show you.

(After completing all of the Master Thief Sprints.) Bentley: Excellent, Sly! You've beaten all the Master Thief Sprints and unlocked all the designer's commentary! Check out this fascinating "behind the scenes" movie.

Bentley
(In "High Class Heist" and "Into the Machine".) Bentley (binocucom): Remember, Sly, hold down near the blue stealth auras to perform super sneaky thief moves!

(When approaching an open furnace in "Into the Machine" and "The Fire Down Below".) Bentley (binocucom): Better close those furnace doors. Jump and press, that'll slam them shut.

(When approaching a large wheel in "Prowling the Grounds" and "The Fire Down Below")

Bentley (binocucom): Sly, see that machine wheel? If my knowledge of mechanical engineering serves me right, applying significant rotational torque to achieve maximum velocity will yield a positive result.

Sly Cooper: Y'mean something good might happen if I can get the wheel to spin fast enough?

Bentley (binocucom): Isn't that what I just said?

Murray
(The lines in this section are from "Murray's Big Gamble" and "The King of the Hill.")

(Upon beginning the mission)

Murray
 * I'm going in, Sly.
 * Let's go, Sly.
 * Let's do it, Sly.
 * Time to move, Sly.

(When Murray sees an enemy)

Murray
 * (screams)
 * Eee!
 * No!
 * Oh, no.
 * Whoa!
 * Yikes!

(Upon killing an enemy that Murray has seen)

Murray
 * Bingo!
 * Good shooting!
 * Oh, thanks!

(Halfway through the mission)

Murray
 * Almost there!
 * I'm halfway there!

(Upon completing the mission)

Murray
 * Alright!
 * We did it!

Tutorials
(During the prologue.) Bentley (binocucom): Try hitting to break things.

(During "Prowling the Grounds")

Bentley (binocucom)
 * Hey, Sly, you can adjust the game camera using the right . And to bring the camera behind you, click it.
 * Hey, Sly, hit the button to bring up your mission map. From there, you can check out the stats of places you've been to and also take some shortcut warps to get around faster.
 * Now might be a good time to mention that hitting twice will give you an extra high jump flip.

Vaults
(When approaching a vault with less than half of the clues in the level collected.) Bentley (binocucom): Dude, this is the vault, but you need more clues.

(When approaching a vault with between 50–80% of the clues in the level collected.) Bentley (binocucom): You're still jumping the gun. You need a few more clues.

(When approaching a vault with over 80% of the clues in the level collected.) Bentley (binocucom): Bummer. You can't open this vault without finding the rest of the clues.

(When approaching a vault with all but one clue in the level collected.) Bentley (binocucom): Sly, you've got to find one more clue if you're going to open this vault.

(When approaching a vault with all the clues in the level collected.) Bentley (binocucom): Press to enter the vault code.

Techniques
Dive

Bentley (binocucom): Sly, you've found a page from the Thievius Raccoonus! This page teaches old Drake Cooper's Fast Attack Dive Move. Press to use it.

Roll

Bentley (binocucom): Interesting! Old Sally Cooper's Fast Getaway Raccoon Roll! Stories claim she could move faster than anyone else could on the run. Hold down to use this move. Switch between power-ups using and.

Slow

Bentley (binocucom): Outstanding! Another page from the Thievius Raccoonus! This one features Dev Cooperinda's Slow Motion Jump. He used this to get by all kinds of airborne threats. Hit while in the air, to slow down time!

Dive upgrade

Bentley (binocucom): Interesting! Chris Cooper's Dive Collection technique. This move is an extension of the dive move you already know. Just jump and hit near breakable objects for some fast-breaking, fast-collecting action!

Coin magnetism

Bentley (binocucom): Oh, you're lucky! This page features Karin Coopergiwa's Coin Magnet technique. All she had to do was stand near money, and it would magically jump into her purse. From now on, you will automatically collect any coins you come near!

Mine

Bentley (binocucom): Outstanding! You've uncovered Rob McCooper's patented Explosive Hat technique! Use to toss your cap, then use  again to detonate it. Better back off to a safe distance first!

Fast

Bentley (binocucom): Okay, this page is from you hyperactive ancestor B.F. Cooper. He discovered a way to speed up the clock, perfect for those long stakeouts. Just hold down to use it.

Water safety

Bentley (binocucom): Oh yeah, this will come in handy. It's Suzanne Cooper's notes pertaining to water safety. With this knowledge under your belt, you won't have to lose a charm whenever you fall into water.

Decoy

Bentley (binocucom): A-ha, it's Sir Andrew Cooper's Thief Replica technique. He used to make fake stand-ups of himself to confuse guards into attacking the wrong thing. Use to put together a fake Sly Cooper.

Roll upgrade

Bentley (binocucom): Electrifying! Kelle McCooper's notes on how to harness the electromagnetic field, created by a rolling raccoon! Now your raccoon roll move will really pack a punch! Plus, it should give you a nice tingling sensation!

Computer hacking

Bentley (binocucom): Ah, a more modern entry - Bruce O'Coop's Computer Hacking technique! Using the data on this page, I should be able to tap the duty roster in each hideout and project the information directly into your binocucom!

Slow upgrade

Bentley (binocucom): Mind-bending! It's Matthew de la Coopeur's Perpetual Slow Motion technique. With this move you can slow down time whenever you want, not just while jumping. Hold down to use it.

Move while invisible

Bentley (binocucom): This just gets better and better. I'd always heard that one of your Southern ancestors, Huckleberry Cooper developed a technique to move while staying invisible! Hold down to turn invisible, then move around with.

Defy gravity

Bentley (binocucom): Incredible! I would have never thought this was possible! Sir Augustine Cooper's technique to briefly defy gravity! From now on, you should be able to pop right out of those bottomless pits you keep falling into, and you won't even lose a lucky charm!

Stun

(Before defeating Clockwerk.)

Bentley (binocucom): Unfortunately, this vault code appears to have been written in owl dialect. I won't be able to crack the code until we meet and defeat the bird who created it.

(After defeating Clockwerk.) Bentley (binocucom): Amazing! Colonel Reid Cooper's Time Stopper technique! Press and execute a flash bang that will stun all guards in the world for a few seconds! I can see how this might be useful... and entertaining too!

Blueprints
Raleigh's

Bentley (binocucom): These are the blueprints of Raleigh's entire operation! I wonder... Yes! I can wire this info directly into your binocucom! It'll show you the position of nearby clues and breakable objects.

Muggshot's

Bentley (binocucom): You found the blueprints to Muggshot's additions to Mesa City. With these files, I'll be able to help you find all his clue and breakables. Just look through your binocucom to get the information.

'''Mz. Ruby's'''

Bentley (binocucom): These are the blueprints to Mz. Ruby's production facility. I'll pipe this information into your binocucom. Use it to find breakable objects and clues nearby.

The Panda King's

Bentley (binocucom): You found the blueprints for the Panda King's lair. I'll upload the data straight into your binocucom.

The Thievius Raccoonus (100% Ending)
Sly Cooper (narrating): At long last, the Thievius Raccoonus restored to its original state, the first time I held the whole thing under my arm since I was 8 years old. The same weight that all my ancestors had felt beneath their arms as they had passed it on. Although, while other family members may have been great thieves, they all inherited the book. I got a chance to earn it. I had taken down the Fiendish 5 having used the moves my ancestors taught me and become a master thief along the way. The time had come for me to chronicle my own adventures into the great book. This is gonna be fun.

Developer commentary

 * Notes:
 * Stuttering and filler words are omitted from the transcript.
 * Paragraphs without a preceding name have been broken up for readability and were delivered by the last indicated name.
 * In the commentary audio, bleep censors are used to omit some copyrighted names. These names, if known, are included in the transcript as bracketed text. If unknown, they will be indicated by "[omitted]."
 * Commentary was recorded for every level except boss fights. However, the player can only access the commentary of levels that have a Master Thief Sprint (due to the commentary being the reward for completing the sprint). The other commentaries are accessible through the game's files and have been transcribed in a separate subsection.

Nate Fox: So this is the approach leading into Raleigh's storm machine boat, and this is one of the first levels of the game we made. And it has been... gone over and over and over, and as the characters changed, as his jump length changed and jump height changed, this level got changed too. And it's also sort of like this test bed for the lighting, right?

Hokyo Lim: Hmm-hmm.

Nate Fox: Hokyo, you did all of the lighting in the game.

Hokyo Lim: Right.

Nate Fox: What kind of stuff was going through your head when you were making this level?

Hokyo Lim: Before I do any lighting, the artist, me and include other artist we try to get the right color palettes. You know, get the right mood of the time. The main goal that I was trying to do for this game was not making it too dark, but you still get the sense that you're at the nighttime.

Nate Fox: Mm-hmm. Is it hard to do to kind of get a versatile set of colors going on to represent night that not be kind of Las Vegas-y?

Hokyo Lim: Right. As you can see right now, the auto you have till-ish, shadow all over. That is our shadow. Most of the game uses black as a shadow, but we have a different lighting that can make the shadow. You can choose the color shadow. We can make a pink, blue, whatever color, and we can give the intensity and stuff like that, so just a lot of time consuming just trying which shadow is works the best with these textures. That was the most time consuming, was with the textures, does it work well with the blue, you know. If it doesn't, then we slightly change the saturations or the, you know, the colors of the textures. We did a lot of process on those in this level.

Nate Fox: How many times do you reckon you went through this level and re-lit it?

Hokyo Lim: Maybe more than thirty times.

Nate Fox: Whoa. That is intense.

Hokyo Lim: Because this is, we're dealing with the fog and the shadow, and the most important thing is the brightness. If the game is too dark, everybody has a different TVs, so it might look very dark on some other people's TV, and might look very washed out, you know, very bright, so that was very challenging for me, to making it, kind of getting it right, you know, on the brightness.

Nate Fox: Mm-hmm. You got a really weird setup here at work where you've got your computer monitor and then three TVs right next to each other while you're doing your lighting, and like one is a bright TV, one's a normal TV and one's a dark TV.

Hokyo Lim: Right. The reason that I have a 3 different set of TVs, yeah, I wanted to see the game with really kind of washed, bright and also very very dark, so my goal is trying to make it all same with those three different monitors, trying to get it all same brightness and the colors.

Bruce Oberg: This is another one of these levels where, actually, the key is available right at the beginning, you can see where it is. It's a little small, but still, the key is right on this ledge very, very close to that first elevator when you go in, and so you're gonna end up going into the level and coming all the way back out on a different level.

Rob McDaniel: Brian actually did some initial level layouts for this, and that's what got me started in really double-deckering the game path in here.

Bruce Oberg: And we did that in other places too, but this was like the first where we did a really serious double-decker. Different types of challenges on the top and the bottom.

Rob McDaniel: And Hokyo also did the texture maps for all the NPCs. You really unified their visual style in a really good way.

Hokyo Lim: The main problem for all levels... my goal is to making it not dark, but give it the night sense. And especially like this level is interior, but you still get the night light, so it was pretty difficult for me to do the lighting at first.

Rob McDaniel: I know we changed lighting models...

Bruce Oberg: Three times?

Rob McDaniel: Three times. So each time, you got to learn the tricks of the new lights and change all those out.

Hokyo Lim: Right. That was kind of difficult at first learning through the new lighting system, but it really helped the visual since we have the shadow. Most of the game doesn't have this shadow system, so shadow turns to just a black. They cannot make it to the colors, and thanks to our programmers that made it happen.

Rob McDaniel: When you collect the key in this level or any of the other levels, you'll notice that the background completely goes dark, and we go into this letterbox and show you this animation of Sly with the key in it. It's kind of funny, we used this alternate lighting model to darken everything at this base level. It was a weird hack feature that I put in to just darken everything, but then you have to say, "Well, I don't want to darken Sly" because he's the one collecting the key. So Sly's actually marked as "don't darken me," but he's the only thing in the game that's marked that way. Oh, and the key's marked as "don't darken me," but everything else in the game gets darkened by this alternate lighting model when you collect your keys.

Rob McDaniel: This level began with just the mechanic of this wheel that you can interact with by running on it. It's one of the few, more puzzle-ly elements in the game where when you walk up to this thing, it's not completely straightforward what you're supposed to do.

Chris Heidorn: Right. Yeah, it's not immediately obvious what that wheel is used for.

Rob McDaniel: So in both these cases, running on it drives animation of something else in the scene, whether it's the hooks or the conveyor belts.

Chris Heidorn: Right.

Rob McDaniel: I know you did some rigging in here.

Chris Heidorn: Yeah, I had actually done the rigging on both of the wheels, so that was a little bit challenging from the perspective of the conveyors. The conveyors that we've got on the back wall there with regard to getting the textures to actually go with the speed of the conveyors. That was the challenging part of rigging this, was doing that work. But most of the rigging just was driving the animation; changing the speed of the animation of the hooks going around or changing the particles, the steam coming out of the whistle. That's the extent the rigging was.

Rob McDaniel: The hot coals that roll down on the floor is something that I've stuck to my guns on. A lot of people have not liked the hot coals...

Chris Heidorn: Oh, I think they're great.

Rob McDaniel: ...because it's this random thing. It's not something that's totally easy to predict even though the floor has been modeled with these dips to really... they're real physics, but they're going down a pretty similar path just because of the shape of the floor.

Chris Heidorn: It's kind of a valley there that takes it right down to the grating and then back around again.

Rob McDaniel: We're actually kind of moving... when the coal gets to the bottom of the shaft, we just move it to the top where it comes out of to respawn it, so it's kind a transporter or something like that. And at one time, instead of the clues, we had these bags of loot that would roll on the ground. And you would break a safe open and this bag loot would come out and it would roll down this hill because it's designed for this coal to roll down. And then it would fall down the chute and then the money would come out of the chute where the coal was coming from. So we kind of revealed how exactly we were doing this.

Chris Heidorn: Yeah, I can imagine a player seeing the loot going down like, "oh no, I just lost it!" And then looking at the chute and there it is, popping out.

Brian Fleming: So this started off as a puzzle where you were gonna come to the end of this boat deck and actually, the top of the boat deck where the first starfish-throwing NPC now is was going to be the training section. And the idea was gonna be that there was gonna be invisible lasers all over this area, and you were gonna have to spray something ahead of you to expose the beams; either smoke or frost or something in front of you.

So it was actually laid out very rectangularly and there were all these things to jump on, these floating platforms to jump on, and each time you did a jump you had to look around you for the invisible lasers and then make your next jump. And as we backed away from the puzzle-ly, slower gameplay, that was the first idea that went away. So, then what came?

DJ Stiner: Well, there was the idea of, once you got to the rear set of buoys that floated in the water, there was a giant fish that was sitting below you.

Brian Fleming: Oh yeah, the giant fish.

DJ Stiner: And he was the one that paced you and made you want to move forward faster and get through the level or otherwise he'd come up and gobble you up.

Brian Fleming: Yeah, so the giant fish, he got cut. Giant fish got cut.

Rob McDaniel: We'd definitely learned a thing or two about physics engines in games.

Brian Fleming: How?

Rob McDaniel: The predictability of something animated over relying on the physics engine to work itself out was usually...

Brian Fleming: Yeah, physics engines tend to work out in really clean, isolated situations or in shrapnel or in other situations where you want good looking, ambient animation but not as good for stuff that has to work one hundred percent of time, super predictably.

And then I think environmentally, this was one of our first levels that had a really good, misty, really rich, kind of textured feel to it. You know, the fire on the side, what you can see from outside and the approach even.

Rob McDaniel: All the moss hanging off of everything...

Brian Fleming: Yeah, A lot of organic richness in this level. Especially back when there was a fish and all that stuff. The waters being space-warped has some interesting stuff going on. And all of the surface effects that the texture artist put in all made this a really good-looking level and one that we kept investing in because it was something that... the surroundings were so appealing that we wanted to make sure that we used it in a really constructive way.

DJ Stiner: Yeah, wisps floating through the air and whatnot. The fire in the background brought out a great richness in the environment. I remember when I first loaded it into the world after it had just gone through this massive change, and it was just one of the most spectacularly beautiful levels that we had at the time. It was just exciting to go back and play through it.

Rob McDaniel: After doing the crankshaft level, we decided that it would be impossible to finish this game with levels that were that size. So we were kind of in this mode where, "okay, that was a regular big level and we'll also do these smaller levels that are kind of bonus-y." And we wanted to do one that was as much security as I could put in. So this is going to be a small security level, and it ended being actually pretty...

Suzanne Kaufmann: Large. A great size.

Rob McDaniel: Good size. For security in the game, we decided to go with a one-free-hit-per-system, I guess you could say, where they're kind of in sensor mode they're yellow and they don't actually cause damage to you if you trigger it, but it sets off the alarm and changes them to a red damaging state. And we primarily did that for inexperienced players; to give them an extra chance to get through instead of just hurting them every time. And also because we liked the idea of you running around while the alarms are blaring and it's loud, it's a little disorienting. If it immediately burned you, a lot of people would probably die then and wouldn't get that experience of running around while the alarms are blaring. So we thought that that was a good thing. So we switched to that kind of one free hit, I guess, per system.

Suzanne Kaufmann: Being under really tight constraints, the challenges of creating this environment, one of our best traits is that we have a great way of communicating. So, between the designer, the modeler and the texture artist, we made sure that whatever we were creating could get done in the time we had available. We really adjusted when we had to. We adjusted things in the model to work for gameplay. And then also before I did my final hand-off, I really talked to the texture artist because he had a limited amount of time and said, "Hey this is what I did." I really tried to model it toward him being able to texture it in a fast period of time, and also look great. So it was really great, we really talked about it and we learned about our game designer process through this. After this, Rob started doing almost all the elevation final: doing any turns, adding any elevation changes and so it really helped the whole process along the way.

Rob McDaniel: This is also, I think, our last level that had split collision versus... what you see on screen versus the physics you're running around on. So, this really was...

Suzanne Kaufmann: A transition.

Rob McDaniel: Yeah, a transition from how we did levels. And it really helped us get into a position where we could finish the game.

Suzanne Kaufmann: Yeah, that's totally true. We did that fast, yeah.

Rob McDaniel: You may be saying this level is large, but it is actually a third of the size of the original level.

Dev Madan: The original concept behind the original NPCs was to tie them to Alice in Wonderland.

Augie Pagan: What was challenging in lighting this level, Hokyo? You have fire in here, you have multi-levels, you have lasers...

Hokyo Lim: Okay, the hardest thing for this level was we had two different kind of sets of mood. One is very cold. You start with cold, and at the end you get hot. So, we can only use one fog in this level; actually, for every level. So choosing the right color of the fog was very difficult to stay same.

Augie Pagan: To keep it consistent with other levels?

Hokyo Lim: Right.

Karin Yamagiwa: Just having that progression from cold and warm from the very start.

Augie Pagan: Wasn't there an octopus? Or was that in the long, long time ago?

Rob McDaniel: That was in the long, long time ago for this level.

Suzanne Kaufmann: We were very sad when it was removed. It was quite large.

Karin Yamagiwa: It was a sad day.

Rob McDaniel: It was a huge octopus head and you got to knock its eyeballs out of its sockets and knock its teeth out of its head.

Karin Yamagiwa: And it's eyes looked at you.

Rob McDaniel: Yeah.

Suzanne Kaufmann: It was pretty creepy, wasn't it?

Rob McDaniel: And he had a bow-tie. Our NPCs were all kind of formal, wearing formal wear.

Brian Fleming: So, second approach of the game. This was actually touched by a lot of people, too.

Nate Fox: Yeah, originally it was a huge junkyard you were navigating through. It was really confusing for the player to know where they needed to go and what was a wall and what wasn't because everything was equally interesting, as it was just piles and piles of trash. Like, some breakables, but some not, and it was really sort of dissatisfying to play. And then it morphed into this mesa thing primarily to define space that you could and could not walk on. As the player would progress in towards Mesa City, you get more of that abandoned, desolate... not so much junkyard feeling, but ghost town vibe.

Brian Fleming: Definitely.

Nate Fox: As you went from no man-made structures, and then you find a shack, and then you get to a house, and then a building, and then multiple buildings, and then this subway terminal, all of which are kind of denser and denser urban images.

Brian Fleming: So, in this level you got stick guy, dog. A leash dog.

Travis Kotzesbue: Oh, yeah. There's four that I did in this level, then. The stick guy, there's the card thrower, there's the bulldog on the leash, and there's the jailbird dog.

Nate Fox: You have pet names all of the NPCs.

Travis Kotzesbue: Yeah, I have names for them because I hate calling them stick guy.

Nate Fox: What? You don't like stick guy?

Travis Kotzesbue: I don't like stick guy. I'd rather call him Gorgeous Lou. Gorgeous Lou is the stick guy, the card thrower is Inkspot Jackson. Dalmatian, obviously. The bulldog I never had a name for because I didn't do the bulldog. I just helped on the animation and, I think, design. And then Paulie Shackles is the jailbird dog.

Brian Fleming: He has the best idle of any NPC in the game: trying to gnaw on his chains.

Nate Fox: Very odd theme.

Brian Fleming: Very much.

Nate Fox: It's always cool when the NPC is showing you what he's going to be doing to you through his idle, so you get a sense of what his weapon will be. Those are always successful. Both those guys do it pretty well. Oh, this level features maybe the coolest security setup of them all, where you have that checkerboard on the floor.

Brian Fleming: With the lasers.

Nate Fox: And the sweeping lasers. And it looks like you're a goner, that there's no way in the world anyone could get through this. And you can totally get through it, but the thing is, because the security devices have to sense you before they become dangerous, you can practically run through the whole thing and live, but it just looks overwhelmingly tough. And in a lot of ways, our goal in the whole game was to give the perception of crazy difficulty and make it very doable, so that you got that feeling you had done something exceptional and that Sly was a really exceptional thief.

Rob McDaniel: This level started with just experimenting with the field-of-view of the camera. It's a lot more extreme and more fish-eyed lens than any other level in the game. And once that was in, it was like, "Well this is very much like vertigo." You get this feeling of vertigo from being high and seeing the ground below you. That's why I tried to make the design be the sides of the building or skyscraper as you're going up; to help motivate that.

Brian Fleming: Yeah, we ended up doing it on the inside of the hotel in an atrium or courtyard, in theory. We invented these bouncers. This was actually the first place in the game that we used, in this case it was an awning, anything that would bounce Sly forwards and really started to tune and play with that gameplay about how high should they each bounce and what's the right amount to give the player control while he's in the air. And really, the combination, I think, of the unique camera angles and the huge amount of bouncing on things and jumping up and down on things really defines the concept for this level.

Brian Fleming: It presents some good challenges. It sort of took on this retro feel, playing like a 2D sidescroller. Our producers at Sony even took us to task once or twice about how retro that felt, but the retro feel also had a big impact on the kinds of NPCs we could use in this level.

Rob McDaniel: Oh, definitely.

Brian Fleming: Because, you needed an NPC that could work well in a really confined space, and in fact the original design for the ball-and-chain NPC had him swinging the ball in the wrong hand for this level, and we had to change him so that he would be comfortable with his right side up against walls. From a secondary standpoint, I thought that the introduction of the air conditioners was a good idea because it was this skill element that required you to pay attention.

Rob McDaniel: Right. It was one of the few leftovers in terms of mechanics from some early, early designs for the game where we had these things called "break-falls" where each one you hit would fall away. So, it was very much the environments getting destroyed and your choices getting limited as you're going, so you have to pretty much do it right the first time.

Brian Fleming: Yeah, the stealth sections were some of the earlier sections to use the duck and to use cameras fairly heavily, I though pretty successfully in this case. You get some looks you don't see elsewhere in the game. And the last section in the bedroom, the bouncers go up through the ceilings, which was kind of a fun change. It gave us some real sense of three-dimensionality as you pass through the floors. It was a fun change. And then the big finish. The precariously big finish. You have to sneak out onto the sign. All in all, a pretty successful level.

Nate Fox: This is the only level in Muggshot's world that actually is a casino, and originally, when we had set off to make Muggshot's world, it was all gonna be casino. And we just weren't that interested in making a whole casino world after doing one.

Bruce Oberg: So, we had to find lots of stuff around it. That's why we have buildings outside of it and the rooftop on top of it.

Nate Fox: Well, it's just more interesting going through the urban environment than it was making your way through these slot machines and dodging the gangster dogs.

Bruce Oberg: Kind of like real Vegas, where it's interesting for the first time you see it and for a little while, and then after a little while you get numbed.

Matt Olsen: But it's based on real casinos that have a lot of water and swinging, sparking cables. What casinos have you been to? Over in Tulalip.

(silence, whispers)

Nate Fox: No, in fact it's not. It's uh... it's not.

This level features a couple of game mechanics that we use all over the place, but in here it's pretty pronounced, and that's when you get on top of chandeliers and you're looking down on a guard, where the whole point is to get the drop on your opponent, jump down, and smack them in the head with your cane. I think this was the first place we did it, and we use it all over the game, but there's some pretty clear examples in here. And oddly enough, even though you're many, many feet away from your opponent, and you can go anywhere, whenever we see people playing, they instinctually bash people in the backs of their heads from above, so it seems to be pretty core to human behavior.

Another very core Sly Cooper gameplay concept is what we call "m plus one," and "m" standing for "mechanic." So, when you're playing the second half of this level and you're jumping on those spinning roulette wheels, you'll notice that the first set you're on, they're not dangerous at all. And that's just to teach you what it's like to be on these wheels that have little partitions and they're moving. And then the second one you get to has dangerous tabs in them, so you have to watch out where you're jumping. That's "m plus one," the "one" is the dangerous tabs. Then you get to the third set of wheels, and you're at "m plus one plus two," and the "two" is the laser beams which you can't cross, so you need to get between the wheels fast. And then you get to the fourth set of wheels and the wheels are going in the opposite direction.

If you sit and you play this game, the second half, and you really look at how the difficulty is ratcheted up one wheel at a time, it's crazy clear that that's how we try and increase the tension in the gameplay but not overwhelming the player off the bat with complexity because you're taught each little mechanic along the way.

Rob McDaniel: I did the layout design for this world using legos, and it actually turned out pretty close to what I did. I knew it was going to be a rooftop, so being constrained by the general blockiness of legos seemed like it was fine, and it helped me get the elevations worked out. And I found it easier than doing it on paper because it's going to be done in 3D anyways, so if you're throwing it together with legos you can hold it up to your face and look at it from all these different angles and try and imagine what shots you're going to have in it. So, I think it was the only level I did with legos, but I think it helped a lot.

Suzanne Kaufmann: Compositionally, the level was really fun to work on. Once he had the letters done and we knew the elevation and I went in. And even from the first shot, you'll see that nothing overlaps each other, so the level doesn't feel extremely, super full, but it doesn't feel like it's all a bunch of clutter. And dealing with the NPCs: they were really fun. We had a lot of designs and quite a bit of ideas that would relate to the idea of dogs playing poker. So, you'll see the dog throwing cards and having his idles being card tricks. And the slobbering dog, the junkyard dog, started from a whole different design with the bobbing head and ended up being one of our most complex characters. With blend shapes and a really great idle of chomping on a bone.

And at the lower levels you'll see what we call "dog with stick," which is totally a play on a thiefy dog sneaking around and how the idea of this big, cumbersome guy being able to walk so agile with the big stick. And also, the final one that you see up at the top level we call him "Paulie Shackles," and that's jailbird, and he originally was a woman with a purse. And we found it too offensive, so we had to redesign. We were like, "what are we going to do? We have to redesign with the same gameplay mechanics." And we came up with different ideas, like maybe being an Elvis impersonator with a microphone, but the whole idea of the thin string was too hard for a player to see, and the microphone wasn't that big of an object. And then, luckily, Travis came up with the idea that it would be great for it to be a jailbird throwing his ball-and-chain, and it ended up being a really strong element with the big ball at the end and a thick chain. It's really fair for a player to jump in and also know when it's dangerous, so it ended up being a real win-win.

Rob McDaniel: A lot of the other game design stuff that's in this world besides the sign came out of brainstorming sessions with people like Suzanne, Karen and Dev, who were going to be directly involved in how this level was gonna get flushed out. So, like, the cars with the clues on them that drop away when you come off of them, I think that was Dev's idea, and having the big bone that crashes through the wall and everything like that. So, it was one of our better, very collaborative efforts.

Suzanne Kaufmann: Yeah, definitely.

Nate Fox: I started working on this the day after I saw the movie [Blue Mill], and I was pretty interested in the funky rooftop scenes they had in that film and the landscape created by those rooftops. This was the first level that we made that featured the inspector Carmelita Fox, and it was a real challenge figuring out the gameplay mode for her because we wanted to have this cop character in the game that made more concrete the fact that you were a thief and that chased you. At the same time, we didn't want to do a chase situation similar to the [Crash] games where there was somebody behind you and you were running down-screen.

Chris Bentzel: Yeah, we wanted to have something where it didn't involve as much memorization, where it involved a fair amount of reactionary stuff rather than having to memorize the environment. This was a particularly challenging level to get cameras done correctly as well as behavior because we had to focus on two different characters at once, and we had to deal with it from pretty strange camera angles. There's a lot of change. So, this was definitely a test for doing the camera angles.

Nate Fox: It's weird for the camera angles in particular because Carmelita needs to be on-screen, Sly needs to be on-screen, Carmelita's shock missiles need to be on-screen, as well as all the areas that Sly needs to jump to or climb on need to be on screen. So, you have all these requirements, and at the same time you don't want to have the camera bonking into chimneys or pipes or what have you. So, if you look at how all the rooftops are laid out, the tallest elements will be at the point on the roof farthest away from the area in which the camera travels, and that's totally on purpose so that it won't be occluding your vision of Carmelita or where you need to go.

Chris Bentzel: Yeah, in this one it's more the upper left corner of each building. So, what inspired Carmelita?

Nate Fox: Carmelita is a composite of two characters. Well, the first thing, right, is we wanted to have someone saying, "Hey, Sly, you're a thief," because otherwise... You're not really making off with a lot of money here. You're stealing a lot of keys and you're stealing back your Thievius Raccoonus from other thieves, so unless we had a law enforcer telling you explicitly, "You are breaking the law," it didn't really seem like you were breaking the law, which you are.

Anyhow, Carmelita is the product of really wanting to combine two characters. One is this inspector character from the [Lupin] series, [Zenigata], who is a detective that hounds you, and it's pretty standard right? It's sort of like a Javert and Jean Valjean, a lot of these works of fiction that are about a criminal character having this tireless cop that hounds them all the time and their relationship. And the second character that we were pretty overtly ripping on was this federal marshal and a bank robber, and they fall in love, but they can't be in love because they're on opposite sides of the law. So, Sly and Carmelita have that thing going on where she is both his true nemesis and love interest at the same time.

Nate Fox: I like the smart guard a lot.

Andrew Woods: The who?

Nate Fox: I like the rodent. The big voodoo rat. For everyone that can't see Andrew, he's a dead ringer for the voodoo rodent.

Matt Olsen: It's a startling resemblance. I was scared when I first met Andrew, I actually hit him with a stick repeatedly. And I will again right now.

Andrew Woods: Ow. The voodoo rodent was one of the few in this world where I could actually act out what I wanted him to do to any extent, and so he's the most humanoid, I guess.

Nate Fox: You act out all of your characters?

Andrew Woods: Yeah, I find that... I think I was saying this in one of the other levels, but I find that, and I make this mistake over and over again, I'm thinking, "I know what this guy needs to do," and I just start animating and looking at it from the outside. And I find if I don't actually do the action myself and feel what it feels like in the body and make sure that the posture and all the gestures all feel right internally, then it's much more of a struggle to animate it. People say especially that the walk that this guy does looks like something I would do. I don't think I really walk like that, but I did do that a lot during the week I was animating him.

Matt Olsen: You called them smart guards.

Andrew Woods: Yeah, the smart guards are any of the... that's our internal word for any of the flashlight-bearing guards that you really want to stay away from, and if they catch you, it's pretty much doomsday. So, they're an element in gameplay to really emphasize stealth and convince you that it's not okay to randomly run through the world bashing things.

Nate Fox: They're actually called "smart" because you can't evade them, or at least not easily without taking damage, so that every time you dealt with them, you had to be sneaky.

Andrew Woods: I think some of the repeatedly used pieces were really effective in this, like the way the huts... You have this sense that you're in this big village. It's a few simple pieces repeated and decorated with some smaller elements around them. When you're down and among them, it feels like a rich environment. It feels like you're in this little village of stung teepees.

Matt Olsen: It doesn't look like the same hut over and over again. They look like they're each their own individual hut. When I saw this game for the first time after already having done the voices, hadn't seen it when I did the voices, I just had all these lines, here is the actual visualization of everything I had read in the script.

Rob McDaniel: The whole waterfalls of soup with the hands and the bones in it are very much inspired by [Conan the Barbarian]. The scene where they're going in to get the [omitted] or whatever and you see this big cauldron of soup that has hands and all this gory stuff in it, and I was like, "well, it's nice if it's in a pot, but as a waterfall... I would like that very much."

(laughs)

Suzanne Kaufmann: Wow, that really grosses me out!

Rob McDaniel: Yeah, originally we were experimenting with how to... the very first one had the floor and the ceiling were two separate objects and the walls were skinned between them, so when you would jump on the floor and the floor would move around and the whole walls would stretch and distort.

Suzanne Kaufmann: Like being on tongue.

Rob McDaniel: Being on a tongue that's pulling on the cheek.

Karin Yamagiwa: The floor was like a trampoline, and then the entryways would stretch and distort so the actual doorways would get smaller and bigger. It was a clever idea.

Andrew Woods: Fitting the number of smart guards in this level that we wanted was pretty difficult because these were probably the most ambitious smart guards in terms of the number of animated pieces they had and was, I think, more than we tried to put in one before. And so we ended up having to do this clever stuff to get them all in there and get them animating like we wanted.

Rob McDaniel: Really, the difference between the initial texture pass in a level and when Karin has time to go in and put all these light cobwebs and all this really nice atmospheric texture buddies and texture accessories in the world, it really makes a ton of difference. And this world really feels like it got a decent pass at that.

Suzanne Kaufmann: Yeah.

Andrew Woods: I think we wanted this level, even the NPCs, we wanted to make it a little bit more scary and push that angle a bit more. It's still stylized and has this animated feel but we wanted it to be... you know the glowing eyes? I think Hokyo did a good job of integrating all the NPCs by giving them all the same glowing eyes.

Karin Yamagiwa: Real consistency.

Andrew Woods: Exactly.

Suzanne Kaufmann: (unintelligible) inspired... when we were modeling, it was the first one for voodoo, so it was really supposed to decide the style of architecture and land and we spent a lot of time on the trees because we realized it was one-third of the whole level.

Kelle DeForrest: And I worked on the maps inspired by Kay Nielsen's paintings, specifically The Twelve Dancing Princesses, an old fairy tale from, I think, around the turn of the century. Kay Nielsen was also the person that inspired the scene in Fantasia with the real droopy trees, and it's got a real cathedral-like scene as the people are all moving through the trees with the candles. It adds to the mysteriousness of this level.

Rob McDaniel: The original game mechanic for this level was having NPCs that aren't just, you walk up and you hit them and you kill them. They are NPCs that are getting generated from something, and you have to fight them down to get to their source and then take out their source. So that's where it started. And luckily, since we're in voodoo, having them be ghosts makes a lot more sense than a lot of other NPCs. So once Andrew got in and did the modeling and animation of Travis's design for that round ghost, it really took off because... just having their fingers going while they're chasing after you. I really love the ghosts in this level.

Suzanne Kaufmann: Yeah, and a lot of the great camera angles you see is not by the modeler. It's all by the game designer, and so it's really great to have... we really put a focus on getting great cameras from the get-go. And then I'll go in and compose, but we really locked them off and let me work with what the camera is so we don't change any gameplay, and we just enhance the experience more by just sculpting.

Kelle DeForrest: Also, I think in the inspiration of a lot of the art style, I think Dev and Travis gathered a lot of research from all kinds of tribal, original peoples. Architecture and props and the lanterns and the gourds and the ropes and the bones. It's pretty much all organic based on what you would have if you were living without a mill to mill your lumber with, and keeping it all organic is part of the fun of this one.

Suzanne Kaufmann: Yeah, we decided to, instead of making the moss a buddy or having it be just a bitmap, we decided to just make it puffy, which made it very toony.

Nate Fox: One of the interesting things about this level is it's the first one that actually has a big shock to open the level because, when we were developing the product, this was the first game level that we built that had that. So there's a really low camera looking up at the gate trying to give this sense that there was something very large inside and to be imposing like the gate in the original [King Kong] movie when they get off the boat and there are all these natives who are fearing the other side of the gate and trying to get that vibe across with this initial shot.

Also, one of the design goals for the level was to focus on Sly's rail run move, so there are a lot of branches you can jump on and feeling pretty ninja-like like as you can move on these surfaces that a normal person can't. So Sly, being upgraded to the point of near-master thief, is able to traverse the treetops in this cool, anime way.

Brian Fleming: Yeah, I always thought it was really cool how he moved between using his hook and his feet and doing regular landings and sliding and running uphill. It just feels like he covers a lot of different modes in the way you move through it. And actually, I remember before we had the control scheme worked out, you had to use different buttons to land with your feet and grab with your hook, and it would just explode you mind to try and play this level because you're trying to run away from this giant snake and still remember to hit the circle for this and the square for that or whatever it was. And I just remember it being very exhausting to play in its original control scheme.

Nate Fox: Yeah, you really had to memorize the buttons.

Brian Fleming: How about the modeling on the trees. What were some of the challenges you faced?

Reid Johnson: Actually, going over poly budget was the biggest challenge because there's such cool, scary shapes we wanted to get out of that to get the gnarled branches we wanted. It was easy to go over poly budget, there was so many of them, and that just added up to be kind of a nightmare. We had to go back in and redo some of the modeling and limit our use of the trees, but it turned out pretty good, I think.

Nate Fox: Did you have to go through any kind of special rigamarole to make sure that the true gameplay path was clean because there are a lot of side branches that don't look playable, yet they exist in the world?

Reid Johnson: Yeah, I pretty much went through the game tree by tree and placed each branch with a reason. I didn't just go in and just...

Nate Fox: Every branch?

Reid Johnson: Every branch has a reason.

Nate Fox: Wow.

Reid Johnson: I mean, you can see it.

Brian Fleming: Every branch that's in the gameplay zone, right? Because there's those top branches that you could never get to.

Reid Johnson: Right, the top branches aren't too bad, but some of the branches sticking out of the side of the trunk are separate models, and I put them in there only for visual reasons and to get them out of the way if they were in the way of gameplay.

Nate Fox: This level is in many ways, in my opinion, the most evolved, from the standpoint of gameplay mechanics, in the game. We do some really crazy things with the camera. Like when you're sneaking around the edge and the icicles are falling at you, where we've constrained the player to a simple decision-making process, being left to right, with the danger coming down on them. But because they're so constrained, you can do totally whack things with the camera and give you this image that you don't normally see in video games as a result. It's more cinematic, and it helps highlight the danger, in the case of this level, from the guards looking down on you when you sneak around the guard tower or the falling icicles. It's a nice change of pace from just having the top-down playable camera all the time.

Matt Olsen: You get a bizarre perspective.

Nate Fox: Let me ask you this. So we were recording the voices for the game. How weird is it to get the script and the game, it's interesting to note that we were not trying to make a cartoon with the voices. Everybody's supposed to be pretty straight-laced. You're one of the weirder voices in the game with your (Bentley impression), but a lot of people are very, very dry. Not hammy at all.

Matt Olsen: Sly Cooper.

Nate Fox: Sly Cooper. If he was hammy, we would be in big trouble, but he takes it all seriously. How hard is it to take it seriously or even understand what's going on from the script?

Matt Olsen: Well, I would say it's actually pretty simple. The idea is you get a character and you figure out what this character sounds like, who they are, what they want. Without sounding too ridiculous, this is what it is. And you say the lines like the character would say them, and fortunately, the lines are not too difficult to manage. A lot of them are, you know, "Wow, press the circle button and you'll jump!" So it's pretty self-explanatory what you need to say and what you need to do. When you get into the crazier stuff about... I think on the other level about, "She's making a disgusting soup out of guts and bones," it's just a matter of going along with the lines and trying to be scared.

Nate Fox: Yeah, but I don't think you can really use Stanislavsky method when you're trying to picture yourself as a turtle freaked out by a voodoo creation soup.

Matt Olsen: Well, it's all just the magic of make-believe.

Nate Fox: Oh really?

Matt Olsen: Yeah. Well you know, you say these lines too if you're writing them or reading them yourself. You say them and you know exactly what you're trying to get across. And the job of the actor, and I use that term loosely in my regard, is just to try and make sure that everything makes sense that's coming out of your mouth.

Rob McDaniel: I kind of used the fireworks in this level as gating mechanisms to keep you dodging and running from Carmelita while you're playing, and also just to have these big events during the game.

Augie Pagan: Just from texture, I know in Muggshot where she's shooting at you, the colors were reversed in this. Like, in this one, Sly Cooper's path is all cool, and where Carmelita is jumping around is where we kept the warm colors. But in the Muggshot one, it's kind of reversed, where Sly's running on the warm path and she's jumping on the cool buildings.

Andrew Woods: Yeah, doing her effect was kind of funny. She originally had an entirely different weapon, and we really wanted to emphasize this stun gun feel. And it was interesting to try and tune because the color tones of the world in general were... she appears in several places, so it was finding something that had a little bit of... it has this icy color, but also this circle, orange center to it, and that seemed to work best across the different levels.

Augie Pagan: So was it your idea always to have... did you have other ideas besides that dragon?

Rob McDaniel: After I changed from the voodoo one, I think Dev was the one who mentioned trying to see if we could do a dragon, which was good because for a Chinese dragon, you have that great shape. I was able to fold it and shape it how i needed it for where she's going to stand on and stuff like that. And then you put in all the legs and everything like that.

Andrew Woods: Yeah, so we were trying to think of places on the dragon, on the high and low points of the humps of the dragon and then also, there are these freestanding poles in the abyss of the mist that you can see down there. Just having her stand in as many different places in possible made her feel really like she was part of the world but always just out of reach.

Rob McDaniel: Yeah, that's a big thing. You have to keep her on-screen, keep her large enough to see her, and at the same time make it seem like you can never get to her. One of the first drafts I did of it had a giant panda Buddha statue laying on its side where she was jumping on. It just wasn't the same, so I'm glad we went with the golden dragon.

Andrew Woods: Never got to see that one.

Rob McDaniel: I tried to keep it away from people, it wasn't very good.

Rob McDaniel: This level was started... the opening shot where you're coming out of the cave and you really see this big temple, was pretty early in the design of the level where I wanted to have this picturesque moment here and also being able to see your end goal from the entrance as well. This is one of the more, we call it, "pretzel" levels, where the course is very much going around itself. It's kind of using this one art space for the different game mechanics. So instead of having a long corridor that has all of the mechanics, you have to do art down all of that corridor or whatever, we take it in one space.

In this case, we go outside the temple, we go inside the temple, and then we go across and you're still able to see the temple when you finish the game. And you're looking down on it, so it's really trying to reuse the art assets by staying in the same space as your going through the level. This is another one of our earlier uses where we're going to more extreme camera angles for dramatic effect when you're going into the temple and having the snow falling away down the cliffs as you go, just for the added drama. And we know what you're gonna be doing because the gameplay is constrained to that curve that's hugging the cliff wall here, so we know it's safe to take the camera up into a more extreme position than the typical gameplay camera.

Darrell Plank: I love, in general, the circuitous route through this whole level. The fact that you get through one area and then slide down to another and then sidle across cliff face to another and etcetera. There's an interesting route through the whole level. I like the firework platforms too. Those were a great idea.

Rob McDaniel: I think this was the first use of lasers where it's really close to the ground. It's not sweeping across the whole hallway. It's creating this dynamically changing player that, when you first come up to it, it's fairly intimidating because you see the glow in the ground. It's constantly changing, but they're actually pretty easy to play, so it's making things... for more inexperienced players, having them see a moment where it looks very dangerous and them getting through it successfully is good because it gives them a sense of accomplishment.

So that's the reason why it's this cool thing that's actually fairly easy to play through. And once this one was put in the game, there's several other areas where we decided that we could use this and change the speeds and change the sweep patterns to give it a different feel. And just making it faster makes the difficulty harder, so you can definitely dial it up to be challenging, but in this case it was set up for one of the earlier levels so it's pretty straightforward, actually.

Nate Fox: So Andrew, you modeled out this level?

Andrew Woods: Yes, another level that you designed.

Nate Fox: What do you like about this world? Or level, I should say.

Andrew Woods: What do I like about it? There's something great about the space. The fact that it's taking place very quickly inside and outside these tall, narrow buildings and that they form both the foreground, sometimes the surroundings, and then actually the background, the sideshow, the thing you're looking at from a distance. So you're constantly seeing places you've been before in the level from a distance, from a different vantage point, and I think this gives you this sense of continuous world more than some of the other ones, maybe.

Nate Fox: That was definitely a goal with a lot of these snow levels, was to give you that inside-outside feeling. And this level starts with something that we thought was gonna be really difficult for players, which was, you get up to this door and it's locked there's no way to open it. And there are two open windows that you can go in. It's pretty easy to overcome. This level was actually made before the Paris level, but we had to test it and have people experience the frustration of not being able to get through the door to know if it was gonna be okay, or if it was going to be to aggravating to include in the game. But that is a seriously simple mechanic that seems to reflect breaking and entering. And the whole level is like that: you're going in, you're going out, you're on top of roofs.

Andrew Woods: You're always going in through windows and back doors.

Nate Fox: Yeah, this level has a really bizarro laser grid on the floor.

Andrew Woods: Right.

Nate Fox: And it's bizarro because there isn't a discernible pattern to how you're supposed to go through it.

Andrew Woods: Right.

Nate Fox: You look at it and you think, "okay, if I study this long enough I'll see that I need to go left, left, right, left," but really, there's none of that. You can stare at it for 45 minutes and you won't see the same thing again because it's all just slightly out of cadence with each other, so you just have to make it up as you go along.

Andrew Woods: And once you get into the middle of it, if you're really paying attention, there's enough time to adjust to what's going on. But it feels great. You've got everything out of phase enough that it feels very, almost random.

One thing about this level too: this may be one of the cases where we learned a little bit about not having the level designer model out quite as much of the actual terrain or the walls and things like that. The buildings initially in this were fairly tightly modeled and the gameplay was fairly tightly constrained to the buildings and they were initially fairly straight, like a lot of the stuff is that we get after level design has been through it. So making it funky and unusual was a little bit of a challenge and eventually required us to go back in and change a little bit of the way the spaces were laid out and everything.

But I think, ultimately, it worked out really well, but it was a challenging level because you've got gameplay both on the inside and outside of these buildings. So in a lot of places we got room to push back the wall in places here and there, and in this one it was very tight and brought up its own unique challenges that I think a lot of the other ones didn't have.

Treasure from the Depths
Brian Fleming: The design for this actually originated at a local Chinese restaurant over lunch one day when we were trying to decide what kind of minigames we wanted to do. And when I was growing up playing Coin Op. I was a huge fan of Robotron, which clearly influenced this a little bit with the move and shoot. But I was also a big fan of a really really old game called Rip Off where you and a friend would try and defend these little triangles of, I don't know, loot, from the marauding hordes. And so this is kind of our combo of those two, where you've got elements; the control and the firepower of Robotron, and the sort of mechanic of protecting things from Rip Off.

Chris Bentzel: Yeah it's actually, I mean the big thing about it is it's really fast. There's a lot of really fast action in it. There's a lot of... it's a sort of nice combination of you having to be at the controls and just shoot things as well as sort of decide where you need to go to-

Brian Fleming: Position yourself.

Chris Bentzel: Where you need to position yourself because as it gets near the end there's a bunch of chests that are all being taken, so you have to like get the closest guy to the exit before you go and get somebody else. So there's a little bit of thought involved, a little bit of player choice involved as well.

Brian Fleming: Also I remember the very first version of this there was no rock in the middle, and we all really enjoyed playing it but I think it was my Robotron background, and I was sweeping around. And we had one of the developers who'd never played Robotron just sat in the middle and just shot in circles, just never moved-

Chris Bentzel: Yeah, that was a bit of a shock, he made it sort of more like you were playing-

Brian Fleming: Playing a reverse Tempest game or something. But once we realized that strategy then we came up with the brilliant rock strategy.

Chris Bentzel: Which forced you to have to move around a little bit.

Brian Fleming: Yeah it forces you to at least circle the environment so that there's no shadow behind the rock that you can't protect.

Chris Bentzel: One of the big things we always had, similar to the tank levels, that we were a little bit worried about with this level was whether people would be able to deal with having two joysticks at once. And as a matter of fact some people don't go full Robotron, they don't go full move-and-shoot independently. They'll move to a place and then stop and shoot, or they'll-

Brian Fleming: Or they'll move and shoot always the same direction.

Chris Bentzel: That's correct, they'll always press up on the stick or something like that.

Brian Fleming: Well they'll move the sticks together in concert. Both sticks always the same direction. But the game is beatable by a variety of players and I think most people when we've observed it, it may takes people a few times, few tries, but everyone seems to get through it which is also a really good thing about this minigame. Oh and it also uses projected, if you look at the texture on the floor, there's a projected texture down there to try and give some early, this was really actually fairly early on. But it's got some sort of caustics moving around in the environment.

At the Dog Track
Chris Zimmerman: We actually worked hard to figure out how we were going to get Murray into the game, how to make him part of gameplay.

Matt Olsen: Because you liked the character.

Chris Zimmerman: Yeah, he was fun. So, we were trying hard to get Murray into the gameplay, so you actually gotta play as Murray. Our original idea was that we turn Murray into kind of a Rambo character and give him big guns and have him run around. And, well we did that, and it really felt out of character--

Matt Olsen: Yeah.

Chris Zimmerman: --for Murray to be running around with a big machine gun, and so all those levels we actually turned into the tank levels, so the hover tank that Sly drives around in shoots stuff up, that was originally Murray. You did almost exactly the same levels, but you did them as Murray carrying a gun rather than Sly driving around on a hover tank. Once we decided not to do that, then we said, "Well, let's..." when we decided to do a racing game, it was pretty obvious that we're-- the original idea with the racing game was that we would have Sly driving something: a pick-up or an ATV or a motorcycle or something. But then we realized that people were probably gonna wish they had, they could drive the getaway van at some point in the game, and this was an obvious place to do that. So, once we decided to do that, then it became clear that that was where Murray was going to be playable, he was going to be the driver, and the driving level, you get to be Murray.

Bruce Oberg: In any of the dialogues, you can move the left and right joystick to actually slightly

Down Home Cooking
Bruce Oberg: So, Gary has never played this before.

Gary Burd: Well, first of all, I'd like to say this is the best video game I ever played. Initial reaction: why are there chickens???

Bruce Oberg: The reason we have chickens is because somebody wants...there's a ghost who wants to eat some gumbo, so you need to get 50 chickens within a certain amount of time so he can get his gumbo now. If he gets his gumbo, he'll give you the key.

Piranha Lake
Brian Fleming: So one of the things we wanted to do with this level was we wanted to make it feel like it was a low-water area. So one of the things that we did was we really spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the terrain look like it was a lows water area. Kelle, can you describe sort of how you got that look?

Kelle Deforrest: Ian and I worked with the water level, so I could map it with a water edge line so I made sure that under the water had a darker look and I got to put some beautiful little lighted pools in it with the rocks at the bottom and then the murky water on top. But the edge of the water was going to be a challenge to map, so figuring out a way to deal with that, with the digital world, was a fun challenge, and by  leaving a mineral scum around the edge kind of helped describe the water area and also helped the water line be fine it went up and down over the bank.

A Temporary Truce
Suzanne Kaufmann: So Chris, you wanna tell me why it's called "Reverse Sniper?"

 Chris Bentzel: It's called "Reverse Sniper" because you're playing as Carmelita; you're not Sly trying to protect Murray, you're trying to protect Sly as Carmelita. One of the issues we had with this was that we were a bit worried about people being confused that they're no longer Sly. We were hoping that people would understand "You're Carmelita; you're trying to protect Sly." One of the things that was really nice about this is it sort of turns the tables a little bit. It also gives you a really good view of Sly. We needed to improve the camera controls quite a bit for the sniper level. The sniper controls that we originally had worked pretty well for the Murray levels because Murray moved pretty slow. In this level, because Sly moves so much faster than Murray and does so much more sort of vertical move than in the Murray levels, we really needed to improve the camera controls quite a bit for this. And so, that was one sort of thing that we needed to change for this level.

Suzanne Kaufmann: And really, in the initial camera position, everything about it, it was composed by Chris, by the designer, by you. You know, it was...we adjust things along the way, which is one of the highlights of the level is that we really adjusted things to be actually better play and to also compose it a bit better than to make it a bit more like a lava dam. A big industrial lava dam. But the initial shot, all of him was just composing with the whole volcano and I just funkified.

Chris Bentzel: Yeah, by the time I gave it to Suzanne, it didn't look that great. By the time it got done, it ends up liking like this great dam and there's all these moving parts that Suzanne put in; originally, it was very static, which, because you're not travelling through the world, it's really necessary to have a lot of moving parts.

Suzanne Kaufmann: From the very first shot, all the elevation you're seeing is actually done by the designer, which is, you know, all of the elevation changes, the diagonals, the design, is pretty much final. Like, we changed about 10% toward the end to make it more interesting. But that was really final, so it's kinda surprising, 'cause visually, it's really interesting. You know, you realize that the designer really thought about the big picture, about the gathering interesting, so I didn't have to do that much modification. As we originally designed, we thought it would be cool if they came out of lava caves, 'cause that was organic, but it didn't work for play, and so, being a machinery thing, we said "Oh, let's just make them all pipes." The nice thing with the pipes is they have a little light source on top; that kinda tells you, like, it should be blinking and things like that to tell you, "Hey, the lava guy's coming!," and every time you see that pipe, you know by the model that, "Oh, a lava guy is gonna come out of that." It's like these consistent elements that you model that kinda leads the player to know what's gonna happen next.