Honor Among Thieves Excelled With One Feature Everyone Agrees Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Perfected

With the first title released in 2007, the Assassin’s Creed franchise is just three years away from a two-decade run. Ubisoft has created an entire universe in which Templars and Assassins have often interchanged as the protagonists of the adventures.

The franchise has also inspired many other stealth-action titles. The games from Origins took on a more RPG approach but retained some of the core aspects of previous titles. While many might think the Assassin’s Creed Black Flag introduced high-seas combat to gaming, one other game did it before the release of the PlayStation 3!

Sucker Punch’s Thieving Mascot Could Have Inspired Much of Ubisoft’s Massive Franchise

Stealth action games were not a genre by the time the PlayStation 2 was widely available. The Metal Gear Solid series had three mainline games already on the roster, and stealth was a known mechanic. Sucker Punch was a fairly new studio at the time, having released just one game on the Nintendo 64 before jumping onto Sony’s platform with their first major release: Sly Raccoon and the Thievius Raccoonus.

In 2002, we met the four major players in the story: Sly, the sneaky one; Bentley, the brains; Murray, the brawns; and Carmelita Fox, the officer. The first game offered a blend of linear story progression and freedom to choose missions from a hub world. It can be played now on the PlayStation 5 through the PS Store, but there is no news for the next two titles yet.

The second and third games took a different approach, turning the mission hub into an open-world area. The sequels also introduced several mechanics, such as pickpocketing and lockpicking, along with mission types, such as recon and tailing missions.

At the time, these were fairly new to gaming, but we now see them repeated in almost every title released by Ubisoft. However, these are not the only mechanics adopted by the Assassins.

Sly Raccoon Sailed the High Seas Before the Assassin’s Creed Convened

Black Flag is considered one of the best games in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. The naval combat received much praise from the community. It allowed players to engage NPC ships in a barrage of cannon fire that required adept steering to avoid damage. Emerging victorious resulted in the player acquiring valuable resources to upgrade the vessel or tools.

The majority loved this aspect of the game, but Ubisoft was not the first studio to allow players to send opponents into a watery grave. Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, released in 2005, featured such a combat system in the penultimate episode of the game, Dead Men Tell No Tales. Per the name, the main antagonists in this episode are a gang of pirates led by Captain LeFwee.

The second half of the episode sees the gang board a ship and sail the open waters in search of allies and equipment. As the gang is going from one mission to the next, the player can choose to engage in combat with ships surrounding ships in much the same form as Black Flag.

The player can utilize cannons on either side of the ship to attack the enemy and will need to steer away from incoming fire. After enough damage, just like in the Assassin’s Creed games, the player can either board the enemy vessel for extra loot or simply sink the ship. Sly 3 may not have offered the same level of refinement to the gameplay as Ubisoft, but the core mechanics were already in place from the PlayStation 2 era!

While taking down pirates was only the third title, all of the games featured many mechanics that we see in gaming today. Players were able to switch between three main characters to explore the map and entirely new characters as well for some missions. Even the storytelling and characterization were top-notch in the games.

Sucker Punch’s Forward-Thinking Approach Went Beyond Gameplay

For those who have not played the games yet, spoiler warning ahead. In the final events of the second game, Bentley’s legs are crushed under Clockwerk’s beak. While Murray got the load off of Bentley, the damage was done.

In the next game, Bentley is permanently wheelchair-bound. Murray blames himself for not being strong enough to help Bentley and retreats to the Outback, where he is being trained by the Guru in Sly 3. After their reunion, Murray expresses his regret and apologizes for not being able to help Bentley in time.

However, Bentley is quick to tell him that the only regret he has after the end of the previous adventure is the absence of Murray in his life. In the second game, despite being able to move around on his feet, Bentley controlled a little slow and clunky.

In the third game, the brains of the operation can kit out his wheelchair with an array of tools, allowing him to move faster, jump higher, and fight better. His friends also never treat him with kid gloves or ask that he stay out of the action, treating him pretty much no differently than before and after the accident.

This entire story was, for the time, an authentic representation of disability that didn’t feel shoehorned into the game. Bentley accepts his circumstances, refuses to blame his friend, and is determined to be an asset to the team on the field. Sucker Punch has continued its strong storytelling with Ghost of Tsushima, but many are hoping the studio once again revisits this beloved franchise.

What are your thoughts on the Sly Raccoon series? Let us know in the comments below!