The Making of Sly 2

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The Making of Sly 2 is a bonus video included with Sly 2: Band of Thieves. The developers discuss the work behind the scenes of the game.

The video is unlocked by completing "Menace from the North, eh!" and accessed by hovering over the episode in the episode select screen. After a few seconds of waiting, a police badge will appear, prompting the player to press square. The video is not available in The Sly Collection and can only be accessed from the PlayStation 2 release of the game, no matter which version.

Synopsis

Introduction

An interviewer asks Kevin Miller to describe Sly Cooper. Miller responds by describing Sly as a thief that is cool and tough but has to be lovable at the same time. He also tells the interviewer that Sly is a really good-looking guy with a sexy voice.

The Plan

Brian Fleming, the game's producer, states that at approximately one month into the game's development, the team came up with a one-sentence description: Sly and the gang work together to pull off a string of big heists. Nate Fox, a game designer, elaborates on Fleming's sentence by describing the heists the Cooper Gang would pull off as akin to the heists from classic Hollywood heist films.

The Job

Bruce Oberg, one of the game's programmers, states that the Sucker Punch team wanted to differ Sly 2 from Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus by broadening gameplay elements. Dev Madan, the game's art director, lists a few of the new concepts introduced in Sly 2, including backstabbing, betrayal, and a jailbreak. After a short clip of beta-compared-to-current Sly Cooper: The Second Season, Chris Zimmerman, the game's director of development, explains that thieviness is different to different people, and that the game's developers wanted Sly to encompass of all of those aspects. Grady Hunt, the senior producer, lists some of the aspects and describes how fun that they are in gameplay. Zimmerman displays his envy for Sly regarding the latter's abilities.

The Crew

Travis Kotzebue, a concept artist and cinematic animator for the game, explains that the two most important things that were needed to be kept in mind when drawing Sly were creating a strong silhouette (a very important aspect of creating an animated character) and finding a way for Sly to move around. Kotzebue elaborates on the motion aspect as concept drawings of Sly appear in the background, transitioning from base to final product. Fleming and Fox describe Sly in great detail, explaining to the audience that Sly is the charismatic leader of the band of thieves with a moxie and a skill under pressure, in addition to his relationships with Carmelita and Neyla. A clip from the game appears, then cuts to a recording of Miller and Alesia Glidewell voice acting shown through Sly's Binoc-U-Com. Suzanne Kaufman, the senior artist, describes Bentley as the brains of the organization and the fun guy with the gadgets. Matt Olsen appears in another binocucom view, then explains to the viewers that people said that he looks like Bentley, and that he can clearly see that. Fleming explains that any heist will need someone to work the demolitions, and that it was undoubtedly Bentley. Fox, Oberg, and Andrew Woods, one of the character animators, all describe Murray, and Chris Murphy takes part too, even impersonating Murray during his screen time. Murphy is seen voice acting before the camera cuts to in-game moments with Woods doing the narration, which continues to describe Murray, this time focusing on how Murray wants to do things the way Sly does. Murphy explains how the Cooper Gang lives in a world of pantslessness, and Fox makes a little joke out of it by saying that they are just "being themselves".

The Game

Chris Bentzel, another programmer, elaborates on Oberg's previous statement about differing Sly 2 from Sly 1. He does this by mentioning that one of the things the Sucker Punch team really focused on in the game was working on artificial intelligence. Rob McDaniel, another game designer, explains how Sly is able to handle different classes of enemies in Sly 2, and that the ones which are dangerous to him tend to be guarding the streets all the time. Darren Rice, the assistant producer, elaborates on that by stating that the guards are more intelligent and sophisticated, effectively making the experience of traveling from point A to point B in the games more interesting and unique, as evidenced by how every player will go through this and how no players will have the same experience as others. Karin Yamagiwa, a texture artist, explains part of the process of creating a three-dimensional map, and Kaufman elaborates on the "map" part and explains that they wanted for the environments to be beautiful and interesting, but never more important than Sly. She also explains that the team wanted for the environments to be jungle gym-esque and stealthy.

Help Sly Foil the Klaww Gang

Each member of the Klaww Gang (sans Neyla) appears on-screen while voiceovers for them are heard in the background. Fleming describes Dimitri, then Madan continues (via a voiceover) by referring to him as a lounge lizard who runs a seedy nightclub, a master forger, and a counterfeiter. While describing the way that Dimitri talks, Fleming reveals that Dimitri learned English from watching hip-hop music videos, and then a clip from the game is shown, providing the impact that the hip-hop videos made on him. Madan makes a detailed description of Rajan by providing his backstory, then describing him as a "street thug in rich robes" trying to buy his way into royalty. Fleming begins to describe the Contessa, but after he mentions that she opened a rehabilitation clinic for criminals, Fox cuts him off and finishes it by saying that it is a scam and that the only reason why it is there is so that she can hypnotize criminals and trick them into revealing where they hid their fortune. A binocucom view shows Gloria Manon voice acting, then the binocucom closes, leaving the camera right where it was. Manon replies that the closing scared her. Fox describes Jean Bison by telling the audience about his backstory and how when he thawed out, he decided that he was ready to push back the wilderness. Fleming and Madan elaborate on Bison's act of taming the wild north by listing things that he likes to do, then simply describing him as "a product of his time that just so happens to be living one hundred years later". A binocucom view focuses in on Ross Douglas, who says that his father told him the only good fish is an eaten fish. Madan describes Arpeggio by stating that he is completely enthralled with all of the flying machines of divinity simply because he cannot fly himself. Sam Mowry appears in yet another binocucom view and states that he found it ever so strange that he was a giant guy and that he was playing a tiny parrot.

Outro

Hunt states that he thinks on the real big strengths of Sucker Punch is that they are a creative team that tends to push themselves. Madan tells the audience that it has always been a collaborative effort all the way through the pipeline, and that the pipeline is set up like that so everybody gets a chance to inject themselves into what they have been doing. Oberg says that the team was really lucky and that they had gotten really great people on board to do the kinds of things which they needed to do while making an awesome game. Fox finishes it off by using dialects which would make the game appeal to the European gaming market. A Sly mask flies up on the screen with the text "There's a new rat pack", which changes to "There's a new raccoon pack" (because Sly is a raccoon). As the video ends, a spotlight shines on the Sly 2: Band of Thieves logo.

Video