The Persistence of Legacy: How Past Events Forge Present Attitudes (and Should). [Part I: the Cooper Legacy.]

"I'm glad you made this retrospective. Here are all my criticisms of it:

 

1. I knew you'd reference the work of B-Mask by the end of it. I did appreciate the Bentley voice; you had me fooled, but only for about three seconds. Yet the hours I had wasted watching Will's analysis might have been better spent had he not burdened his interpretation with his own pretensions, some of which I'm glad that you at least depart from, even if it's to the opposite extreme. (At least the Taurus/Capricorn dynamic proves to be a thing in fact.)

2. The part you both agree on, both between yourselves and with the likes of Zeke from Powercell, is that the central theme of the third game is "letting go" and disidentifying with one's past, both personal and cultural. I cannot overstress the fallacy in such a line of thinking, though I can't deny this theme was probably intended by the writers (which accounts for why the ending disappointed me, as well as most of this installment). Central questions about "Honour Among Thieves" were not at all resolved, barely and awkwardly alluded to. I'll give you credit for acknowledging some of the less than honourable missions in this game (e.g. 21:44-22:07) as well as that the focus shifted from the thieving to the minigames.

This only further proves the point, however, that departing from tradition was in many ways a bad idea, both for the developers as well as for their mascot. Your analysis would have us vilify the evil Dr. M, but not for what his means were but his ends. Yet those are noble ends, at least so far as he presents some of the necessary questions that the Gang resolves, however awkwardly and feebly. The ending felt farfetched and unrealistic, not because it was cartoony, but because it felt so *irresponsible*. I couldn't live with faking mental illness to impress a lover; neither would I want to live with officers of law abandoning their duties out of passion. In the real world, personal accountability is huge, and truly evil people tend to be the ones who lack it, not who hold their enemies responsible.

Here B-Mask also has a problem understanding characters in other media, (most notably the character of Chuck McGill) and he is not alone; this theory of "detachment" is a common one for modern people, and it is the reason that so many classic stories tend to suffer when they're handled by contemporary writers (*Star Trek*, *Star Wars*, *Dr. Who*, *Lord of the Rings*, and Marvel Comics, just to name a few). Tradition, legacy, and lore still matter, just as does consistency in how we live our lives and pay respect to those that others lived. I would have never even found your channel were it not for your nostalgia for these classics.

Clearly, we cannot escape the consequences either of our actions nor of others. *Sly Raccoon* was great in the beginning since it recognized a legacy in both its narrative and its design. **That** was the part I took away from it that stood the test of time, since it *acknowledges* the test of time as something to be stood and understood. There were no happy endings, only satisfying moments. I believe that should be kept alive, despite the fact this series has been over for a while now."

**[({R.G.)}]**


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