Sly Cooper - Family Feuds

"Let's start from the beginning, shall we? My name is Sly Cooper and I am a master thief. I come from a family of master thieves who, just recently, have been restored to their rightful place as the best thieves in history, thanks to my two friends and fellow thieves, Bentley and Murray. We also had help from one Inspector Carmelita Fox, but I guess she might not want to be credited for putting us on the Most Wanted list throughout history - even if she did catch a bunch of other criminals in the process.

On our last adventure, we had just foiled the plans of the shady Cyril Le Paradox from trying to erase my family's history from the time line when things took a turn for the worse. Le Paradox's time travelling blimp began to break apart and he bailed out at the last moment, hopefully into custody. Unfortunately, my luck didn't hold out as well and I ended up goodness knows where and when. However, my instincts, the sand and the pyramids gave me the impression I was in Ancient Egypt.

I kept myself busy, stole a few artefacts and inspired a local orphan to becoming a master thief, but aside from that, I tried every thing I could to get home - after all, I am a Paris raccoon and the desert heat and scarab beetles didn't agree with my fur. Just when I thought my gang wasn't going to find me, who should turn up, but my old friends Bentley and Murray. For me, it had been a matter of weeks, to them, it was more like a year.

After catching up with their lives, I asked which of my escapades got their attention to find something to reach me. The answer was; none of them. They managed to find me based on a mysterious package sent to the hideout, addressed to the gang. Inside it was a golden treasure with a jewel in it, but I'd never seen it before. Even though this stroke of luck got me home, before anything else in the time line might have been damaged, I couldn't help but question who would send this treasure, how they knew how the time machine worked or how they knew we even had one and that I was lost in history.

Whoever had the answers, we were going to have to find out. And it just so happened, they left a return address on that package. So we're headed there now."

Following the events of "Sly Cooper - Thieves in Time", Family Feuds continues where the previous title left off. In this story, Sly is sent on a variety of missions where he must get in contact with the branches of his family who, for reasons unknown, were omitted from the master thieves handbook, the Thievius Raccoonus, the greatest treasure of the Cooper family.

Serving a mysterious client, the gang travel the world to stop some of the world's most dangerous criminals, a task that fell to the branches of the Cooper that were forgotten long ago, but have yet to report. In this story, Sly and his friends travel from the streets of New York, to back alleys of Rome and the wilderness of Russia to hopefully repay the favour from their client.

Cast
Sly Cooper: Sly is the latest in a long line of thieves. Skilled in many techniques developed over centuries by his family, he always carries his trusty cane, a tool dating back to first Cooper of the prehistoric era. After the events of Thieves in Time, Sly has ended up in Ancient Egypt until he's found by his gang and ends up having to run errands for a mysterious client.

Bentley the Turtle: Bentley is the brains of the operations. He, Sly and Bentley grew up in the same orphanage and he was usually the one who came up with the plans for stealing the cookie jar. He designs the gadgets for the team and designed the now-decommissioned time machine that the team used previously. He's very loyal to the team and, even in the face of crisis, doesn't back away from a challenge.

Murray the Hippo: "The Murray", as he calls himself, is the muscle behind the gang and is a heavy-weight (very heavy weight) wrestler in his free time. During the orphanage days, Murray was often the big help who would do the heavy lifting during the cookie heists and the one who would eat most of the cookies. Despite his large bulk, he's strong, agile and has a heart of gold, relishing a physical challenge.

Inspector Carmelita Fox: Carmelita and Sly have a long history together, often involving him stealing stuff and her chasing him with a shock pistol blazing. During a brief "retirement" on Sly's part, due to Carmelita believing he had amnesia, Carmelita has had something of a relationship with the thief, but continued to trust him despite finding out he'd lied to her on their previous adventure. Whilst continuing to fight crime, she has also been working on her own case looking for Sly.

Gerard von Dualle: The mysterious client has a reputation behind him. A supposed philanthropist, Dualle has had a long history of working with the Coopers and this time plans to ask favours of the infamous Sly Cooper.

Durand von Dualle: Every family has it's black sheep, but in the case of the Dualle family, they tend to be pretty bad apples. The two halves have been at each other's throats for centuries, with dire consequences when it breaks out. Just what has he got planned for his counterpart?

"The return address on the package from our mysterious sender led us to a large estate on the outskirts of Paris. We pulled the heist with great success - perhaps a little too easily. Once I was inside, it turns out the sender wanted to meet me face to face, mainly because he wanted to, as he put it seal the deal.

Luckily our mysterious client didn't gloat in his victory of managing to secure having tabs on me and my crew, but rather was relieved this his plan worked. His name was Gerard von Dualle, a name that wasn't too hard to find, it was usually in newspapers, both under good and bad press. He simply told me that he found out everything he needed to know about what happened - he compiled together evidence from his own family history, dating back to the same time period I was stuck in and a variety of confessions and charges of Le Paradox and his collaborators. I didn't want to admit it, but this guy was good and it was clear he wanted something if he went to tremendous effort to bring me here, across millennia.

Luckily, Bentley was able to listen in to the conversation and could feed me everything I needed to know. Turns out, Dualle was indeed telling the truth. According to a footnote in the Thievius Raccoonus, a number of Coopers who fell upon bad times had been offered favours by some member of the Dualle family - but the stakes were high. If they succeeded in repaying the deed, he would see to it that they were well looked after, even rewarded beyond the initial help, but if they failed, well, they were never mentioned in the handbook.

It appeared that Dualle had done a few transactions with the Coopers in the past and now he had me round his finger. Luckily, he had a job he wanted me to do in order to repay him for finding the artefact that allowed me to be returned to the present. Once we'd succeeded, he'd let us go."

"Right after the deal was secured, Dualle had a mission ready and waiting for us. We had to go to Manhattan, New York. Our client gave us the full picture once we set off.

Back in the Great Depression of the 1930s, there were a lot of gangsters around New York. With people looking for jobs to make ends meet, the mob was in charge of a lot of trafficking and bootlegging operations and they hired a lot of people to do the work and not to talk. That's where two of my ancestors came into play.

Two members of the Cooper family living in New York picked up their canes and masks when times were hard and sought to help take the organised crime bosses down a few pegs. They had some pretty decent success in making sure some of the illegal goods ended up into the hands of the authorities, rather than to greedy bosses. However, their luck turned sour when a powerful family managed to put in a corrupt district attorney in charge as revenge and the Cooper couple faced the electric chair.

That was until a Mr. Dualle, one of the state's finest lawyers came to handle their case - in exchange for a few favours of his own. It saw the couple free to walk, as Dualle had given the convicted some iron-clad alibis, making them untouchable by the law. In retaliation, the mob chased down the pair and decided to end it their own way - they'd rather have been sent up the river than to have been made to look like fools. One of the two escaped the vengeful nature of the mob, but couldn't find the strength to carry on, so just pursued to raise a family.

The relatives we need to meet up with were the recently married couple - Ritz and Chrysler Cooper. Still owing favours to Dualle, they'd been following leagues on organised crime at the top, but contact was broken some time later.

As we made it to Manhattan, I spent a bit of time wondering what to say to Carmelita when we would hopefully meet again. Obviously, it would take some explaining, but if I can pull off redeeming some long lost family, I should be able to find a way of being able to talk to Carmelita."

"We managed to break Ritz out of prison, but Chrysler was nowhere to be found. According to her, the two were on a case trying to catch a devious criminal calling themselves the Fallen Prince. Weaker apart, the Prince saw to it make sure Ritz and Chrylser were separate.

Bentley did some research and looked into the backstory of the Fallen Prince on Interpol. We found what we were looking for pretty easily. The Fallen Prince was heir to the throne of a corrupt nobility in the darker parts of the world. That would appear to be the case except for two things.

One - the Fallen Prince was born a girl and the snobbish rule of her family bloodline was that no female could inherit the throne. Enraged by this, she worked with bounty hunters to try and take out all other opponents to her place until only she remained. And that would have been possible, but...

Secondly - the hierarchy fell just as she was about to claim the throne. Without their iron rule, their subjects rose up and overthrew them. After that, she established herself the name of the Fallen Prince and joined bounty hunters. Her favourite kind of style when it came to assassinations was to leave her targets with bite marks on their neck and drinking some of their blood. It was sort of her calling card.

For a while, she disappeared off the radar, but it appears this is where she showed up and it looks like she was poised to try and claim a new kingdom. What we needed to know, was how. After all, she was one nocturnal monster in a city that never sleeps and somehow, it involved my distant cousins."

Making appearances in this title are members of the Cooper clan who's thieving techniques didn't make it into the Thievius Raccoonus. Once rescued, they are playable and can use techniques that Sly and his gang cannot normally use.

Ritz and Chrysler Cooper - This happily married couple operate in Manhattan where their ancestors worked to prevent greedy Mafia bosses getting their hands on trafficked goods during the era of prohibition. They continue to this day working on similar heists, seeing to it that illegal goods being shipped around new York end up being sent to the authorities rather than to the gangs. The two of them pose as night club entertainers during heists to gather Intel from the underworld.

Their secret technique is Soundbite - where they use sound to help in thieving, from cracking safes, confusing guards, disabling security systems and even changing the air around them to achieve tremendous features. Ritz's cane is a modified version of her microphone whilst Chrysler's is a modified jazz instrument.

Vladmir Khopar - Hailing from Russia, Vladmir is a raccoon of few words to those he doesn't trust. Having lived on a diet of nothing but turnips, raw sturgeon and Russian tonics, his body is a powerhouse, but thanks to years in the circus, he has the strength of an ox and the nimbleness of a limber tree frog. His ancestors used to break out refugees from gulags and camps during some of Russia's darker days, most of the time no one even knowing it was him.

Vladmir came up with the Cooper Cocktails technique. He has brewed potions that allow him to change in size, so his muscles don't interfere with his work. He also has developed a brew where he can take the form of whoever he wants, which kind of explains how he broke so many people out of prison camps. Although, one side effect of his potion caused his fur to discolour to an olive green. His cane is a giant sledgehammer.

Tom James Cooper - Coming from a long line of Coopers basing themselves in London, England, James is friendly, chipper kind of individual, albeit a little sarcastic at times. He and his ancestors operated in London since the industrial revolution, usually working to keep industrialists who didn't treat their workers well in their place and helping the less fortunate.

The signature technique of this Cooper line is the Shadow Sneak. Originally designed in London during the industrial revolution, the Coopers used to hide in the shadows by cloaking themselves with soot and could blend in anywhere dark. Since then, it's been refined somewhat, allowing him to practically become a shadow, crawling into hard to reach areas and hitching a ride on other shadows. James' cane is a modified Infantry Officers sword.

Antonio Cooper (The Great Cooperoni) - Antonio is the kind of thief who doesn't tolerate nonsense. He comes from an ancestry that settled in Rome since the Renaissance and has remained there helping ensure that some of the greatest treasures in the city remain where they rightfully belong. He tries his best to live in the footsteps of one of the first Coopers to settle in Italy, by thieving with ingenuity and innovation rather than luck ("They'll remember you because you were smarter than them").

His technique is the "Heli-Cooper" technique. He can already catch breezes and strong air currents to glide and use his cane to hover, but also he can use heat and electrical energy to also hover, allowing him to cross hazardous areas. His cane is a brass staff that he "acquired" from the Vatican. As far as they know, they still have the original.

Ishmael Khopari - Descended from the original line based in Egypt, Ishmael and his ancestors used to carry out some of the most impossible heists, robbing tombs that were already sealed, from the inside. He comes across as down to Earth and learned, there isn't a single tomb in Egypt that he hasn't helped in raiding. However, he is strongly spiritual and will not tolerate a mummy's body being desecrated.

The line of Ishmael Khopari learned a technique as a reward from an ancient spirit whose tomb was desecrated, by returning the stolen canopic jars. The Mummy of Cooper technique allows him to become "undead" for a short time. In this state, he is invulnerable to all harm, including environmental damage. Whilst not able to use their techniques, it allows for some daring feats the living cannot pull off. His cane shaped similar to a was.