Sucker Punch Productions hasn’t made a Sly Cooper game in 20 years. The last time the Ghost of Yotei developer put together an elaborate heist in the stealth platformer series was 2005’s Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves on the PlayStation 2. If that had been the Cooper Gang’s last hurrah, I would be more than happy to leave the anthropomorphic kleptomaniac crew in the PS2 days and play the old games on my Vita every few years. However, Sanzaru Games brought the series back in 2013 with the PS3 game Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, and it ended on a devastating cliffhanger, stranding the titular thief in Ancient Egypt thanks to some time travel shenanigans. Sanzaru intended to resolve this with a DLC mission, but Sony pulled the plug on that, and the studio was acquired by Meta in 2020. So now, one of PlayStation’s mascots has been in time travel limbo for over a decade, with no sign of a fifth game or DLC in sight. Could Sucker Punch go back and make a new game, saving its beloved thief from a fate worse than death? Nope. Apparently, the studio is just not interested in going back.
Minnmax had Ghost of Yotei co-creative director Nate Fox on its show for 125 rapid-fire questions. Naturally, they talked a lot about the upcoming samurai game, joked about the relief of Grand Theft Auto 6 getting delayed, and discussed a hypothetical VR game concept set in the Ghost of Tsushima world. At roughly the 7:40 mark, Minnmax asks Fox what percentage of the studio would be enthused about working on a fifth Sly Cooper game. Fox says “10 percent” of the Bellevue studio would be excited. Interviewer Ben Hanson expresses shock at the low number, and Fox says, “It’s been a long time, Ben, since Sly Cooper‘s come out.”
Yeah Nate, it has been a long time. The series just celebrated its 20th anniversary with a series of exclusive merchandise (all of which I bought), and Sly has spent more than half of those years now stranded out of time because Sony left him there. Look, I’m not picky. I just want Sony to get any Sly Cooper project off the ground that could potentially save my raccoon son from this terrible fate, I don’t need it to be Sly Cooper 5. In the years since Thieves in Time, Sony has greenlit and then canceled an animated film, and the animated series that was in development at Technicolor Animation Productions has vanished without a trace. Hell, Sony could make a short comic series about the rescue mission to get him back to the present day, and I’d shut the fuck up. You will never hear me ask for a fifth Sly Cooper game again.
While Sly may not be getting his own game anytime soon, the character continues to make appearances in PlayStation crossover games like Astro Bot and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Should I just consider him showing up in Rift Apart as a sign that Ratchet saved him from time travel purgatory?