Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time developer Sanzaru Games reached out to animation studio Ghostbot for the game's 2D animated cinematics, and Ghostbot created an animated short that was posted on the PlayStation Blog today.
Ghostbot co-founder and director Alan Lau, who called himself "a big fan of the original [Sly Cooper] games," discussed the project in the article.
"We wanted to make sure our addition to Sly's journey respected the fun and charm of the original games. At the same time, we wanted to push the quality of the art and animation to the next level as well as bring the audience something they hadn't seen before," he said.
According to Lau, Ghostbot took pains to ensure that the look of the 2D animation "integrated with what Sanzaru was doing in 3D" in the game, saying, "We took a cue from [Sanzaru's] elaborate models, detailed environments and wonderful concept art to guide our cinematic work."
The five-and-a-half-minute short appears to take place decades prior to the game's timeline, with Sly being presented as a younger master thief on a heist where things get hairy very quickly. He runs into more than a few obstacles in his quest to pilfer a gold watch from a safe onboard another master thief's plane, including the fetching Inspector Carmelita Fox.
The short will be available to download on PlayStation Network "probably a week or two after the game launches," said Cristian Cardona, an associate product marketing manager at publisher Sony Computer Entertainment.
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time launches Feb. 5 on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita.
