~~ Put On Your Fool's Cap ~~
If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. -I Corinthians 3:18
What if you don't have a fool around to help you? Why not give yourself a license to be foolish. You're smart, right? You've got a sense of humor, right? Go ahead and put on your fool's cap. You will find that it cleanses your judgment and opens up your mind. Don't worry about people who say "don't be foolish." After all, you know that thinking like a fool is for a good purpose. Dig into vour fool's bag of tricks. Look at the problem before you and say, "It's not what everyone thinks it is," and give a different interpretation of what's going on. Deny that the problem even exists, or maybe solve a different one. Doubt the things that others take for granted. Ridicule your basic assumptions. Expect the unexpected. Ask the stupid question that nobody else seems to be asking. Do whatever you can to shatter the established way of looking at things. You'll find that it will stimulate your creative juices.
~~ Consult A Fool ~~
Any decision-maker (and we all are) has to deal with the problem of conformity and groupthink. But how? Why not do what decision-makers and problem-solvers since the dawn of civilization have done to stimulate their imaginations and improve their judgment:
Ask a fool what he thinks.
Looking at the fool's wildly-colored clothing and donkey-eared cap, it's easy to regard him as a simpleton, an imbecile whose proverbial "elevator doesn't go all the way to the top floor," or a moron "whose bell has no clapper." Don't be fooled! The classical fool is no dunce. It takes in-telligence, imagination, cleverness, and in-sight to play this role. A good fool needs to be part actor and part poet, part philosopher and part psychologist.
The fool was consulted by Egyptian pharaohs and Babylonian kings. His opinion was sought by Roman emperors and Greek tyrants. He advised Indian chiefs in the Pueblo, Zuni, and Hopi nations. He played an important role at the courts of the Chinese emperors. The fool was prominently employed by European royalty in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Because of his ability to open up people's thinking, the fool has been held in as much esteem as the priest, the medicine man, and the shaman.
What did the fool do? Simply stated, it was his job to whack the king's (pharaoh, emperor, chief, decision-maker, problem-solver, etc.) thinking out of habitual thought patterns. The king's advisers were often "yes-men"-they told him exactly what he wanted to hear. The king realized that this wasn't a good way to make decisions. Therefore, he gave the fool a license to parody any proposal under discussion and to shatter the prevailing mind-set. The fool's candid jokes and offbeat observations put the issue in a fresh light and forced the king to re-examine his assumptions. By listening to the fool, the king improved his judgment, enhanced his creativity, and protected himself from groupthink.
The fool's job is to shake, assault, massage, caress, and take a whack at the habits, rules, and conventions that keep you thinking the same old stuff. A good way to think of the fool is to compare your thinking to the transmission of a car. Most of the gears, like most thinking, are designed to go forward, to get ahead, to get the job done. But some times, when you can't make forward progress, you need to put it in reverse so that you can go forward anew. That's your what the fool is all about: he's the reverse gear for your mind. He may not give you the right answer or solve your problem, but he'll get you out of the rut and put your thinking on a mental freeway where you might find a better solution yourself.
The fool operates in a world that runs counter to conventional patterns. Everyday ways of perceiving, understanding, and acting have little meaning for him. He'll extol the trivial, trifle the exalted, and parody the common perception of a situation. Here are some examples of the fool's approach:
The fool will reverse our standard assumptions. He might say, "If a man is sitting on a horse facing the rear, why do we assume that it is the man who is backwards and not the horse?"
He is irreverant. He'll pose a riddle such as, "What is it that the rich man puts in his pocket that the poor man throws away?" When he answers, "Snot," he forces you to re-examine the sanctity of your most basic daily rituals.
He might deny that a problem even exists and therefore reframe the situation. Most people think recessions are bad. Not the fool. The fool says, "Recessions are good. They make people work more efficiently. People work harder when they are insecure about the future of their jobs. Also, most companies have a fair amount of fat in them. Recessions force them to trim back to their fighting weight and be more aggressive."
The fool can be absurd. Having lost his donkey, a fool got down his knees and began thanking God. A passerby saw him and asked, "Your donkey is missing; what are you thanking God for?" The fool replied, "I'm thanking Him for seeing to it that I wasn't riding him at the time. Otherwise, I would be missing too."
The fool notices things that other people overlook. He might ask, "Why do people who pour cream into their coffee do so after the coffee is already in the cup, rather than pouring the cream in first and saving themselves the trouble of stirring?"
The fool is metaphorical. When answering the following question on an intelligence test: "Which is true: A) Birds eat seeds, or B) Seeds eat birds," he might answer both A and B because he has seen dead birds on the ground decompose into the soil to fertilize freshly planted seeds.
The fool will apply the rules of one arena to another. He'll go to a football game and imagine he's in church. He'll see the players huddling and think they're praying. He'll see the vendors in the stands and think that they're taking up a collection. He'll see the fans' hero worship of the star quarterback and imagine that he's witnessing the Second Coming.
The fool can be cryptic. He'll say the best way to see something is with your ears. Initially, this may seem a little weird, but after you've thought about it, you just might agree that listening to a poem or a story conjures up more images in your mind than watching television.
Physicist Niels Bohr felt that thinking like a fool was essential to coming up with breakthrough ideas. During a tense brainstorming session, he told a colleague:
We all know your idea is crazy. The question is, whether it is crazy enough.
The great benefit of the fool's antics and observations is that they stimulate your thinking. They jolt your mind in the same way that a splash of cold water wakes you up when you're drowsy. You may not like the fool's ideas. Some of them may even irritate you or strike you as silly or useless. But he forces you to entertain -perhaps only momentarily- an alternative way of looking at your situation. Whatever assumptions you hold must be suspended. The fool's approach to life jars you into an awareness that there is a second right answer to what you're doing, and that you should look for better answers than the ones you've got. Indeed, sometimes the fool makes more sense than the wise man. In a time when things are changing very quickly, who is to say what's right and what's foolish.
As Albert Einstein once said: A question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I or are the others crazy?
~~ Laugh At It ~~
As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it. -Lao Tzu, Philosopher
The fool believes that if you can laugh at something- be it a problem, a project, a recipe for chicken, how airplanes are designed, or your relationship with another person-then you're more likely to think about it in a fresh way. Laughter puts you at ease. Do you feel more comfortable talking with someone who has just told you a joke, or with someone who is deadly serious? Would you rather listen to a speaker who approaches his subject in a plodding straightforward manner or one who has just given you a humorous aside on the state of your business?
Getting into a humorous frame of mind not only loosens you up, it enhances your creativity. This has been demonstrated in tests investigating the role humor plays in stimulating a creative outlook. Typically the tests are run as follows: test participants are divided into two equal groups. One group sits silently in a study hall for a half an hour prior to the test. The other group spends the same time in another room listening to an audio tape of a standup comedian telling jokes like:
Question: How deep is the ocean? Answer: Just a stone's throw.
Question: What do John the Baptist and Winnie the Pooh have in common? Answer: They both have the same middle name.
Question: What do you get when you combine the Godfather with a lawyer? Answer: An offer you can't understand.
...[H]umor stretches your thinking. The term "just a stone's throw" typically denotes a short distance. But when you throw a rock into water, it travels until it reaches the bottom-perhaps as much as seven miles depending on where you toss it. The punch line forces you to make a shift in how you think about a "stone's throw." Getting the joke then is an exercise in "breaking set"-one of the key aspects of "thinking something different." For if a stone's throw can mean seven miles, who is to stop you from looking at a broken light bulb as a knife, a vacuum cleaner as a musical instrument, snails as food, a clothes pin as a toy, a potato as a radio antenna, or a box of packaged baking soda as refrigerator deodorant?
Secondly, humor forces you to combine ideas that are usually not associated with one another. Few people think of "John the Baptist" and "Winnie the Pooh" as having much in common. The former was a first century Jewish prophet who baptized Jesus; the latter a frivolous fictional bear created nineteen centuries later by the English poet A.A. Milne. Yet for purposes of this joke, this unlikely pair is brought together. In a world where John the Baptist and Winnie the Pooh can be thrown together into one concept, what's to stop you from combining television sets and flea repellent into one idea? Or sunglasses and prayer meetings? Or freeway congestion and bookmarks? If you think hard enough, you'll think of a connection. This type of thinking is also at the core of creativity. The ancients combined soft copper with even softer tin to create hard bronze. The first person to put a satellite dish on the back of a truck to create a mobile uplink-downlink station did this. So did the person who combined a surfboard and a sail to create the sport of windsurfing. So did the person who combined movies and airplanes to create in-flight entertainment. I'm sure you can think of many other creations that were the combination of simple ideas.
Third, humor allows you to take things less seriously. In the Godfather-lawyer joke, both attorneys and Mafia Dons are targeted. Just how effective would a Godfather be if he couldn't threaten people? How effective would an attorney be if he couldn't find and create loopholes? If you can make fun of something, then you're more likely to challenge the rules that give that "something" its legitimacy, and perhaps you can think of alternatives.
This is not meant to be a treatise on humor. (Heaven knows! Some of the most boring works around are those describing humor.) But the point is this: there is a close relationship between the "haha" of humor and the "aha!" of discovery. If you employ the same thinking that you use in humor-breaking set, putting ideas into different new contexts, seeking ambiguity, combining different ideas, asking unusual "what if" questions, parodying the rules and apply it to problem-solving, then you're likely to come up with some fresh approaches to what you're working on.
Go ahead and be whacky. Get into a crazy frame of mind and ask what's funny about what you're doing.
Humor is an effective tool even with the gravest of problems. As the physicist Niels Bohr once put it, "There are some things that are so serious that you have you laugh at them." Some people are so closely married to their ideas that they put them up on a pedestal. It's difficult to be creative when you have that much ego tied up in your idea. Therefore, step back, loosen up, and remember Laroff's credo:
It's not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things. The monkey wears an expression of seriousness that would do credit to any great scholar. But the monkey is serious because he itches.
~~ Reverse Your Viewpoint ~~
You can't see the good ideas behind you by looking twice as hard at what's in front of you. -Andrew Mercer, Innovator
In the late 1950's, a mysterious phenomenon occurred in Seattle: people began discovering small pockmarks on their car windshields. As more and more of these tiny indented scars were found, a kind of mass hysteria developed. Two main theories arose to explain the cause of the pitting. One was that atomic tests by the Russians had contaminated the atmosphere, and this, combined with Seattle's moist climate, had produced fallout that was returning to earth in a glass-etching dew. The other theory was that Seattle's recently constructed roads, again with the help of the foggy dew, were flinging acid drops against the windshields. As the situation became more serious, the Federal government sent a team of experts to investigate the mystery. What they discovered was that there was no increase in windshield pitting at all. As the reports of the windshield pits came to the attention of more and more people, they began to check their own cars. Most did this by looking through the glass from the outside of the car instead of from the inside. This revealed the pitting that is almost invariably caused by normal wear on a windshield. What had broken out was an epidemic not of windshield pitting, but of reverse windshield viewing. People reversed their view of the windshield and discovered something that had always been there but they'd never noticed.
This story illustrates what can happen when you reverse your point of view. The fool believes that thinking about and doing things opposite from your customary way allows you to discover the things you typically overlook. For example, when everyone else is gazing at a gorgeous sunset, why not turn around to see the blues and violets behind you? What do you notice when you look at a coffee cup? Its color? Its material? Its design? Reverse your focus and look at the empty space inside the cup. Isn't that what gives it its functional value? When you look at a lawn just after it's been mowed, what do you typically think about? That it looks nice and neat? That it has a fresh smell? How about reversing your viewpoint and paying attention to where the grass clippings have gone? What problems do they create? What other uses could you make of them? Compost pile? Land fill? Stuffing?
Reversing your viewpoint is a great way to sharpen your thinking. Try disagreeing with people whose ideas, principles, and beliefs you usually agree. You may find that the opposite view makes more sense. If you don't have anyone handy to disagree with you, why not disagree with yourself? Play the fool and take the contrary position on common sense proverbs.
"If something's worth doing, it's worth doing well." If a thing's worth doing, it's okay to do it poorly. Otherwise, you'll never give yourself permission to be a beginner at a new activity. If you have to do well, then you'll prevent yourself from trying new things.
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Two in the bush are great. After all, everybody needs a dream. Without the "two in the bush" mentality, what would happen to risk-taking?
"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link." Weak links are wonderful! As a matter of fact, many systems have weak links designed into them. They're called "fuses." When a system gets overloaded, the fuse blows and saves the rest of the system. After all, which part do you want to break: the $50,000 piece or the 5¢ one?
Exercise: Take one of your favorite pieces of common sense and roast it. You might try some of the following:

1. Business before pleasure.
   
2. Every cloud has a silver lining.
   
3. Every dog has its day.
   
4. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
   
5. Fight fire with fire.
   
6. Patience is a virtue.
   
7. Haste makes waste.
   
8. He who laughs last laughs best.
   
9. Curiosity killed the cat.
   
10. Beauty is only skin-deep.
    
11. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
    
12. If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again.
    

Looking at things in reverse can also be a good technique for discovering the comic side of things. Here's one fool's view of what would happen if we lived our lives backwards.
Life is tough. It takes up all your time, all your weekends, and what do you get at the end of it? Death, a great reward. The life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, and get it out of the way. Then you live for twenty years in an old age home, and then get kicked out when you're too young. You get a gold watch and then you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You go to college and party until you're ready for high school. Then you go to grade school, you become a little kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating, and you finish off as a gleam in somebody's eye.
~~ The Fools and the Rules ~~
Finally, the fool loves to parody the rules. In my seminars, I provide an opportunity for participants to do just that. We play a game called the "Fools and the Rules." It's easy to play. You take your holiest sacred cow and sacrifice it on the altar of foolishness. In a perverse sort of way, sometimes the fool makes more sense than the rule. Here are some examples:
RULE: "Always be polite on the telephone."
FOOL: "Are you kidding? Abusive behavior cuts down on phone time. It also gives our public relations department more work. It would eliminate the hold button on the telephone as well as lead to honest employee relationships. Finally, rude telephone manners could serve as an outlet for employee stress."
RULE: "Our company is 'Committed to Excellence.
FOOL: "How about 'committed to incompetence." Think of the possibilities! We would have less development time, lower training costs, and no backlogs. Part shortages wouldn't halt production. Also, we'd improve our chances of reaching our design goals, and we wouldn't be afraid to try new ideas— after all, what would we have to lose? In the past we've been able to sell our products based on their technical merits. With mediocre products, we'd have to learn how to sell. We'd also have a larger market: there are more mediocre people in the world than excellent ones. But we'd be successful because: Nothing succeeds like mediocrity because everybody understands it so well."
RULE: "Always communicate through the proper chain of command so as not to surprise your boss."
FOOL: "That's a waste of time. After all, bosses like surprises they're fun! This would remove any chance for preconceptions (and we all know that preconceptions get in the way of creative ideas). This would also demonstrate how much goes on without anyone knowing. In addition, you would be provided with a means of visibility because you'd continually be called on to the carpet."
As you can see, playing the fool is a lot of fun. It's also a great way to generate ideas and examine your most basic assumptions. While the ideas produced may not be immediately useful, it may happen that a foolish idea will lead to a practical, creative idea. And if you come up empty, at least you'll understand why the rule was there in the first place.
TIP: Occasionally, let your "stupid monitor" down, play the fool, and see what crazy ideas you can come up with.
TIP: Reverse your perspective.* You'll see the things you usually don't look at. It's also a good way to free your thinking from deeply engrained assumptions. Example: Write two paragraphs describing a problem you're currently trying to solve. Here's the twist: if you're a male, write it from the viewpoint of a female; if you're a female, write it from a male's point of view. At the very least you'll generate some interesting stepping stones.
TIP: Laugh at yourself. What's the funniest thing you've done in the past year? What did you learn?
*Of course, perceiving things backwards is not without its problems. The story goes that William Spooner (the late nineteenth century educator known for transposing the initial sounds of words, e.g., tons of soil for sons of toil or queer old dean for dear old queen, and from whom we get the term Spoonerism) was at a dinner party in which he happened to knock the salt shaker on the carpet. Without missing a beat, Spooner poured his wine on top of it. -- Taken from "A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative" by Roger von Oech. --

[TLDR]: I suspect the Google Translate team made changes in their algorithm (AI introduction ?), so much so it's not as reliable anymore: use with extra caution. Did you also notice ?
Native french speaker, I have a decent level in English, Dutch and German. I use Google Translate on a daily basis, and I sometimes was very positively surprised by the quality of the results, especially with complicated sentences, proverbs or tricky words: having enough knowledge in those other languages, I could appreciate how fine and accurate the results were.
But since a few months (mid 2023), I'm regularly confronted with awkward, sometimes bad, if not erroneous translations (very rare though, but still. And definitely more than previously). Stay with me: I know very well G.T. is just a tool with its limitations. But lately, I have the strong felling that this solid and quite reliable tool has been replaced by a cheaper, weaker version.
Simple examples:
Really, Google? Really ?
- In French, "Bon d'achat" can be translated by "Voucher", or "Coupon" depending on the context. Not "Good buy", which is almost a literal translation, you silly ! - French "Liquidation Totale" (En: "Liquidation Sale / Clearance Sale") is a financial term (right?), and should be translated in Dutch by "Uitverkoop", not by "Liquidatie", which is a term used in a mafia context when you get rid of a body.
I suspect Google/ Alphabet made important changes in their algorithm, so much so it became the shadow of itself. Use it with even more precautions, more than ever.
On the other hand, Reverso has really made a step forward those last years: I'm learning Polish, and because this language is way more tricky with grammar and much less forgiving with automatic translations from/ to Germanic or Latin languages, I'm confident to say : use Reverso instead.
(By extension, the Google Image search engine now gives a lot of AI generated images: just try "beautiful landscape" and see how few real landscape pictures you get VS fake landscapes: AI all over the place. Even the basic Google Search engine doesn't go "as deep" as it used to: you have to be much more precise (or lucky) to find what you're looking for.I suspect Google/ Alphabet, in its "quest to be the best", took a bad turn somewhere... Or maybe are they testing AI globally, and we're in the early, learning stages? Who knows... )

Dungeon Hunter 6 — VIP Arrangement
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Let us begin with the VIP arrangement in this location, which we will be checking out before anything else. At present, you are going to be able to have or do a few free articles. Well, it’s not actually completely free, but it’s following a great discount on the price for it, like, as an instance here, that’s for the Start if your VIP is nothing, but you need to expect giving or supplying to generate some of the green crystal within financial means. catch one or the other, it’s for just one Crystal you are making use of within financial means, catch title, the original for, or anything that name is and some distinctive benefits for the VIP also, and accompanying all levels, you are going to be able to have or catch a few free articles accompanying a good discount. or some unique part genuinely accompanying a good discount.
You know anyway, the VIP is actually good expected arising out of the fact that you are making use of performing, some extra benefits in another direction, like the shop park, are that it will perform a maximum of regular increases in addition to affinity boosts and XP also, and when you are purchasing an entity from the profession or trading something, it makes use of performing the taxes. diminished by 5%, which is too much, and over here, you’re making use of being able to have or do weekly PA for 30 individual days for $5. You are making use of being, when you get it, you have 30 green crystals. You make use of them and generate them instantaneously before you buy pass away, you are making use of catch this one in addition to 300 vulgar crystals and day-to-day 100 crystals every 6 era in addition to all the different benefits regularly free call as well as premium gear frop and AFK XP extra accompanying 25% accordingly much more, we also have the constant and that one it cost you 10 dollars, but it’s legitimately bestowing on you infatuated profit for it. We have you attending once you pass away. You are making use of 600 green crystals. as well as 600 sad crystals and title, and the synchronal you are making use of is continually getting 150 gemstones and the one is forever as well as you are going to generate from the fiction raid 15% extra XP allure make use of help you decided upon be leveling up fast, you see, and we have also over-presented the premium permanent and the one you are going to generate it for $48
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you are making use of be getting immediately SSR organ and 2880 green crystals and 2880 sky crystal in addition to everyday 300 diamonds sad We have gemstones and you can use them to earn an extra 20% XP from the mafia. We also have a weekly loan that you can use. costing you 5$ the act of procuring you see it’s the period somewhat like the weekly card but attending you have well expected honest it’s the alike the only. The dissimilarity that you are going to generate is that you have the premium contribution investment rhythm and the one going to be bestowing on you 1000 green clear in addition to 1000 sad clear and 200 daily gemstones. We have the development fund and the one that costs you. $20, but independently, to be truthful, I do not indeed contemplate that the one is completely good; it is an appropriate individual if you are active or If you are revered, get sky crystal; alternatively, I hope you stay away from it. That’s my individual belief, you see, and we have the worth. packs and that one over in this place from whole works the individual that i find it absolutely advantage for me at least it’s that one attending expected accumulating the gear hunt Order the one for the treasure hunt occurrence expected meal you decided upon receiving some punching competition ulet and the talsman because these ones are good to generate. from the occurrence we have the constantly whole and one or the other it’s somewhat still the same the only offer that I hopeful proverb take a risk it’s the one Otherwise, refrain or stay away from it
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We have the newspaper whole, and one is the same. Just get individual accompanying gear hunt orders, but still, if you want to skip one or the other, I would mention going for the individual accompanying $50 to generate 30 secret summoning manuscripts as well as the 2000 green crystal gemstones I intended, and we have the XP Tom and the one It helps you expect leveling up the assistant for the direct top-up. The only occasion I would suggest, like one or the other, is just to get the 100% benefit. Forbiddance: use it anymore. We have the profit packages present, and in addition to affirmative, it’s only the one to generate the 100% extra diamonds, and therefore to reject the one repeated, and also if you are making use of being offset to devote from the first era, I would announce look to this new attendant top. Up to the one that is actually silly, it gives you plenty of free articles by just lending in the game. If you take the 6,000 gemstones you are going to generate, they will grow in addition to a few. Extra items are entirely free, and if you make use of the achievement for 3 days, you are going to generate legitimately good articles expected to start the game. and it’s all completely free because it’s really a good moment for you if you are preparing for the top 10 and for the occurrences here. We have the consent benefits, and if it’s related to the tale, it’s good to generate it; otherwise, well, it’s good to appreciate; it’s not expected to flee; it’s
It’s good to generate some occurrences in addition to a few secret convenes for the milestone and the one it’s affiliated with in consideration of lieutenants hir star to generate some extra free articles, thats all for this site.

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Art by TheGraphicNovelist
Yes, yes I know; horse is dead, stick is broken and the corpse is buried and nothing but bones BUT as a hardcore and die hard Sly fan? I refuse to let Sly die. So firstly I want to pose a few questions to you all and I want your genuine answer in the comments.

1. Can Sly Cooper work as a game in the 'modern age'?
2. Is Sly still marketable enough for Playstation as a mascot or flagship character?
3. Is it wiser to to a remake of the original trilogy and a straight up remake of Thieves in time? Or do we completely start from scratch and reboot Sly Cooper entirely?

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I will give my own brief answer to each of these questions so you can see where I am coming from on this issue:

• Yes, Sly 100% can work as a modern age game and Ghost of Tsushima is living proof.
• Sly Cooper is what MADE Suckerpunch, whether they revive the series or not remains to be seen but if they market Sly the same way Santa Monica markets Kratos and Atreus or how Naughty Dog markets Nathan Drake or even Ellie and Joel? Yeah, Sly is 100% still marketable.
• Hot take: Reboot the series entirely from the ground up but don't HARD reboot everything.

You see over the years after combing through Sly's lore, history and having replayed the games over and over and over again since I was 13(I'm 29 now) I have come to the realization as bitter as it may be that Sly's world is incredibly limited in scope and is RIDDLED with plot holes that may have flown back then but nowadays people expect a lot from their games and their storytelling however that isn't to say Sly Cooper couldn't have a compelling and deep narrative while still maintaining the fun.
In fact that is an advantage I feel it genuinely holds over the likes of Crash, Spyro, Ratchet and even Jak to a degree because of the specific kind of character that Sly Cooper is, and Sly Cooper whether you like it or not; is an Anti-Hero. Yes, he is noble, kind, just and has a good moral compass but he's still an internationally wanted master thief and while yes he only steals from criminals, he hordes the wealth and so this isn't even like a Robin Hood situation where he stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
To Sly and his family it's all a game of cat and mouse or I guess in this case? Fox and Raccoon with a giant owl acting as a third party. Now with that said the crime niore and criminal underworld element of the Sly world is one that sometimes gets forgotten behind all the whimsy but there is a lot of potential for some dark and gritty storytelling but that by no means has to compromise any of the fun or excitement being had.
Now am I saying hard reboot the entire franchise and change Sly into a different character? No, I am saying let's take the basic building blocks of what was already there and expand upon it, expand on Sly's history, his time in the orphanage, what his mom and dad were like, expand on Bentley and Murray's backstory. Hell expand on Carmelita's because a lot of fans don't even know what her backstory is and probably don't care because they have no reason to care.
Then we have the advantage of modern hardware to take into consideration because I have zero doubts that if Suckerpunch could make Ghost of Tsushima on PS4 look as good as it did? Imagine what they could do with Sly Cooper with the power of the PS5. Now personally if I were in the directors role and had to be in charge of how each game was structured, here are the reboot improvements I would make.

1. We start out with the open Hub worlds established in Sly 2
2. Introduce difficulty levels
3. Co-Op multiplayer(think a cross between Ghost of Tsushima legends and the cops & robbers game from Sly 3)
4. Overarching narrative/theme & villain

That last one is VERY important because it would keep the player hooked into the story and lore, keep them wanting to know more and string them along for a saga long mystery that will have a grand payoff by the ending. For me the theme of each game would go as follows:

• Sly Cooper & The Thievius Racoonus: Revenge vs Justice
• Sly 2: Band of Thieves: Teamwork vs going solo
• Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves: Trust, Honor, Redemption
• Sly 4: Thieves in Time: Learning from history and how not to repeat mistakes of the past
• Sly 5: Thieves of Legend : What it means to be a legend and how to leave behind a legacy

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Sly vs Clockwerk's newest frame; art by theGraphicNovelist
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Of course the main overarching villain here would be Clockwerk because in a way I see the relationship between these two to be very akin to that of Barry Allen, The Flash and Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash. Neither can exist without the other and Clockwerk is so petty and dedicated to ending the Cooper lineage that he traded his flesh, blood, bone and mortality through sheer hatred and force of will to keep himself alive so he could prove he was better than them. And in every generation was the one who killed a Cooper of great importance; that is ULTRA levels of petty and that is the kind of villain you want for a story like this.
Of course he wouldn't always be the MAIN villain but he would be one constantly lingering in the background, pulling strings and ensuring that no matter what the Cooper bloodline suffers whether he is around to cause it or not. Each game he would have SOME kind of role to play because he as a character, alive or dead is useful to the criminal underworld of this world they've built.
If he's alive? He basically rules the criminal underworld like its kingpin, he's top dog and the apex predator, but if he's dead? His body parts are infinitely useful and sooner or later some overly ambitious asshole pieces them back together which eventually results in his revival. To quote Thanos.
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https://preview.redd.it/2m5mjjxxj6ma1.png?width=680&format=png&auto=webp&s=4b179658d460e8002a79112a47d8151fd3f683e5
Hell I'll even quote Clockwerk himself upon his first 'death'
"COOPER! YOU WILL NEVER BE RID OF ME! CLOCKWERK! IS! SUPERIOR!"
God he's fucking terrifying.
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In fact you could even break it down like this for each game(injecting a bit of head canon here)

1. Thievius Racoonus: Fiendish 5; the gang Clockwerk assembled to kill Conor Cooper
2. Band of Thieves: Clockwerks Parts are used by a gang of criminal masterminds
3. Honor Among Thieves: You find out in the end that Dr. M sold the Cooper's out to Clockwerk in an act of spite because he felt slighted by Conor as a teammate.
4. You learn Clockwerks true origins
5. Clockwerk revives one final time for a last gambit in an attempt to make his legacy live on forever even if he himself cannot.

He would act as an allegory for what not to be if you are trying to be a master thief and how to leave a legacy in the wrong way and Sly would be his direct polar opposite and the perfect example of what to be in his line of work but he wouldn't be perfect by any means. Sly's defining traits would be his confidence, arrogance, ego, humor, wit and charm but he would by no means be perfect at everything or always have all the answers hence why he needs his team to help him out through the times when he isn't enough on its own.
I will always say Sly Cooper is the only one of the mascot series that wasn't afraid to add the element of romance into the story and while it was often played as a joke, the affection and love Carmelita and Sly have for each other is genuine and I feel there is a lot of potential for a well told love story. Two lovers on different sides of the law, one because of duty and the other because of legacy; truly you can do something beautiful with that especially in a crime thriller setting.
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They're obsessed with each other.
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But hey lets not make this all about Sly, as mentioned, Carmelita, Murray, Bentley and even the other villains all have so much more potential than the games actually give us. Like we barely know anything about Bentley and Murray outside the basic stuff and the same is true of Carmelita. We barely know any of her backstory or why she became a police officer to begin with, we know she has a black and white view on crime and that Sly is her primary target but what else is there? Where did she come from? Where did she grow up? Why does she see crime this way?
With Bentley and Murray; where did they come from? Parents dead or alive? I always had this head canon that Bentley's parents were the founders of Thiefnet and they didn't dump Bentley off or anything they simply lost him and never recovered him but had been looking for him but Bentley isn't what they named him so they have no idea its him. For Murray I went a bit darker and imagine that he was the son of a street racer who got in too deep with the mafia or got screwed over by police and was killed and Murray as a result was sent to the orphanage as a baby.
For Carmelita my head canon is that she grew up in the slums where crime was not just rampant but normal, joining a gang was expected of you at a young age but Carmelita was simply different, she never wanted to join a gang or be in with the crowd like her sisters or even her parents; she managed to apply herself and get out out of the ghetto and wanted to come back as a police officer to protect it the right way, only to come back years later to find her sisters either dead or in jail, mom is dead, dad is on the run and she swore from that moment on to never waiver on criminals no matter their reasons.
These are just head canons but you get my point, there is a lot of room for expansion here. Even the original villains could use more depth not just in character but the criminal plans they conducted. The Fiendish 5 for example never used the pages of the book to commit any crimes or improve their skills which has always baffled me. So this would be the perfect chance to expand upon that and give the villains and by extension their plans more depth so there is more of a payoff when we finally defeat them.
Then we even have the ancestors themselves which in retrospect are a massive let down because they are literally all nothing but cheap stereotypes. Rioichi is a proverb spouting ninja with a thick Japanese accent yet for some reason speaks English, Bob is a caveman, Sir Galleth is a haughty knight, Salim is a cranky Arabian old man, Tennessee is a cowboy gunslinger. We don't even get to play as the more interesting ancestors like Henrietta One Eye Cooper who was a pirate; I really just feel they slapped a bunch of labels on them and called it a day.
Legendary Linage
There is so much potential here because this is the lineage that makes Sly who is he, it's where he got his genesis, its a template for who he could become and who he might have been in another life because lets be honest the Cooper's are all mostly the same but are defined by the time period they live in and I think that is where Sanzaru screwed up; they had the level defined by the ancestor and not the other way around and none of the villains attached to the ancestors felt personal.
Like seriously who actually can say El Jefe actually gave a damn about Riochi, Toothpick didn't personally care or have a axe to grind against Tennessee Kid Cooper, The Grizz ain't care about Bob, Penelope only had any hate to throw at Galleth because he was related to Sly and Ms. Decibel just did what Le Paradox ordered her to do. Le Paradox himself was just a watered down version of Clockwerk and Dr. M and he wasn't at all intimidating as a threat.
So if we start from the beginning of the series and rework things we can set up brand new villains to take the stage in each game while at the same time bringing back old ones for nostalgia but they wouldn't be the main focus outside of their own game. I feel like if done this way the series could truly and really thrive and if Ghost of Tsushima is any indication? People still want games like Sly because Ghost has you do a lot of things Sly would have you do just in a more real and wide open area.
In order to make the game enticing you need to give players incentive to play and not just play but come back to play again after the first time. So this why you introduce things like collectibles, difficulty settings and of course multi-player and I genuinely think Legends is the best example of how to do a multiplayer for a game like Sly Cooper.
This would be fun and you KNOW IT
You can have different classes based around characters in the game so for example

• Stealth(Sly & the ancestors)
• Hacker(Bentley, Penelope)
• Brawler(Murray, Panda King)
• Long Range(Carmelita)

And you could have different game modes or challenges examples include

• Hide & Seek
• Cops & Robbers
• Capture the safehouse
• Biplane Battle
• Pirate Ship War
• Boss Raid

You'd have access to ThiefnNet and all that good stuff in the Menu's to buy upgrades with coins you earn from completing jobs and special challenges. When it comes to in game collectibles? There are a wide list of those but here are a few

• Clue Bottles(30 per level)
• Sly Masks(Sly exclusive)
• Data Chips(Bentley exclusive)
• Comic books(Murray exclusive)
• Case files(Sly & Carmelita)
• Police badges(Carmelita exclusive)
• Level exclusive treasures

Each game would have something new as to switch it up but these are just some first draft examples I had thought of. I know this may seem like a lot and honestly I could spend the next couple hours typing a script for these if I wanted to and I do; why? Because I love Sly as a character and a franchise and it genuinely hurts me to see him just forgotten and thrown to the side because Sony thinks he isn't profitable when he is. I hope some of these ideas click with you all or at least some of you because I know there is a large part of the fandom that just doesn't have any faith left and that Sly is just dead but I refuse to let that be the case.
So I would love to hear your feedback so long as its respectful and until then? Stay well friends.
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His origin; art by Miralith. omfg he's so adorable T_T also headcanon is mom is a cat named Selena...don't take this from me!