Imagine a modern stealth action Sly game. It’s probably not the greatest tagline, but for some reason Sly Cooper x Splinter Cell is what comes to mind, and that’s something I absolutely want to play.

A lot of the building blocks are already there. Sly and the gang are antiheroes, they do good despite their usually selfish motivations, and it makes for a compelling, and more importantly, adaptable story. Think about all the possibilities for Sly to discover a new ancestor, go on a quest to learn more about them, and then discover some evil that gets in the way of him reconnecting with his heritage. Egypt, Tibet, Japan, the possibilities for setting are almost endless. You could have it set in modern day and then include flashbacks to the ancestor as Sly discovers more about them. These could be narrated by sly while we play as his ancestors, or they could be playable as Sly, as kind of a daydream as he’s learning about the past.

There’s even a lot of modern day storytelling that could happen. Other crime organizations are bound to be interested in the gang’s antics and it would be a perfect plot to incorporate some espionage missions, like in the original gsmes. You could even have a split gameplay loop, like the Animus and then real world gameplay in Assassin’s Creed, or even just a dedicated game set in the modern day.

Now let’s talk about gameplay. I think the gameplay in sly has actually aged pretty well, especially looking at 2 and 3, but with some updates it could easily be modernized. First, I’d want more complexity and focus on combat. Think about how satisfying a Sifu or Arkham flow based combat system could be with the thwack of that signature cane. Or, going the total opposite direction, maybe sly is a pretty squishy raccoon and some Souls inspired combat gets added, with a fluid dodging system that leverages the existing platforming, maybe something like Insomniac’s Spider-Man, where you can jump around the environment and onto enemies. Spider-Man on the harder difficulties is already similar to this in concept, with bullets being almost instant death.

Beyond the combat, I think a lot of the gameplay loop can be the same, but flesh out the stealth gameplay some more and draw some inspiration from games like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear. You’re encouraged to stay in the shadows, use the environment and gadgets to distract, incapacitate, and kill your enemies. This opens up a lot of possibilities for interesting and unique level design; not many other games have an excuse to give us lots of railings, vents, and even climbable terrain, but Sly is an extremely agile raccoon and it fits amazingly thematically.

These two contrasting gameplay styles could also be used to inject some RPG elements into the game, as well as incorporate the rest of the gang. Even if Murray and Bentley aren’t playable (which they absolutely could be!), maybe you want to put more focus into combat as the game goes on, and Murray is your trainer, teaching you new moves and giving you a way to level up your health, strength, and whatnot, while Bentley is a tinkerer and inventor and can provide new gadgets to make traversal and stealth easier and more rewarding. It could even be a way to introduce some branching level design, and the loop/shortcut elements from Souls games. Say you come up on a crumbling brick wall, well if you’ve been spending time in the gym with Murray maybe you can use your cane to smash through it, or maybe if Bentley has had enough funding, you have some explosive gel that you can use to take down what’s left of that wall. And then there could be paths exclusive to one skill tree or the other, a set of lockpicks from Bentley to get into a locked area, or a heavy door that Sly can lift and slip under, thanks to all the recent gym time.

So that covers the basics of setting, story, and gameplay; really all that’s left is art style. This one is honestly both the easiest and the hardest On one hand, I think the style from the original games could work if it’s just tweaked, maybe some noire is added to it, with more emphasis on dark and light in the environments, some more realistic looking and feeling combat, and some blood. But on the other hand, I think more modern environments could work, even with a cartoon-ish Sly running around in them, I’m thinking along the lines of Daxter running around in the dark and dingy city in his solo game. There’s a lot of possibilities, but I think I would avoid having a more human-like Sly, something about that would make it feel too far removed from the original games, I think. Despite all the other changes, as long as Sly himself doesn’t get changed too much, I think it will be easy to make the games feel like an evolution of the previous series, rather than a reimagining.

Sly’s 20th anniversary was this last week, and it gave me a good excuse to write up and expand on some of these ideas I’ve had kicking around in my head. I don’t think every series should go on forever, but the ones that were unique and compelling should always be given a chance to continue, as long as there are old fans out there that still want new games, and new fans that would embrace the charismatic raccoon’s take on modern gaming. Sucker-Punch makes some incredible games, and I would love for them to take on Sky again now that they have a couple new IPs in their repertoire, but if it’s not something they’re interested in, I’m sure there are plenty of other studios under Sony’s umbrella that have fond memories of the orphaned animals I grew up hanging out with and could do justice to the gang.

Regardless of the future of Sly, I’ll always cherish my time with the gang growing up, and I’ll probably still be replaying those old games when the 50th anniversary comes around.

- Zack