The Forbidden City

Lore & Background

The Forbidden City, known in Chinese as the Gugong, served as the imperial residence for twenty-four emperors across the Ming and Qing dynasties. Its walls once kept out commoners, but in Sly 3 the Cooper crew treats the perimeter as little more than a suggestion. The level's design channels the real complex's axial symmetry and stacked courtyards into a playground of ledges, rooftops, and interior halls that reward vertical traversal.

Within the game's narrative, the heist at the Forbidden City is one of several global targets the Cooper gang pursues as they work through the Thieves' Guild's operations. The level's tone balances the reverence of a living museum with the irreverent slapstick of a raccoon, a beaver, and a basset hound slipping past guards and security systems in a place that has, for six centuries, been off-limits to everyone but the emperor.

The Forbidden City level benefits from Sly 3's expanded toolkit—grappling hooks, the jetboard, and Bentley's gadget spreads—giving players multiple routes through the palace grounds. The result is a stage that feels less like a single linear path and more like a puzzle box wrapped in lacquer and gilded tile.

In Their Own Story

The lanterns along the eastern corridor flickered as a shadow peeled itself off the red wall. Sly adjusted his mask, felt the cool stone beneath his claws, and glanced back at Bentley, who was already tapping a frequency into a small device. "You sure about this, Sly?" the beaver muttered, ears flat. "This place has been locked to the outside world for six hundred years." Sly grinned. "That's what makes it a job." Above them, the golden tiles of the roof caught the last of the sunset, and somewhere deep in the palace, a lock that had never been opened waited for a raccoon who had no intention of respecting its history.

Reader's Guide

The Forbidden City level opens on the outer courtyard, where broad red walls and sweeping tiled rooftops establish the palette: deep vermillion, imperial gold, and the grey of weathered stone. Lanterns hang in clusters along the colonnades, and the ground is a patchwork of flagstone and gravel paths.

The heist target sits deep in the inner palace, but the route to it is a vertical and horizontal puzzle. Players traverse the outer walls using the grappling hook, drop through open courtyard gaps, and cross narrow roof ridgelines where a misstep sends Sly tumbling back to a checkpoint. Interior halls feature sliding panels and hidden alcoves that require Bentley's gadgets to open or Murray's brute-force takedowns to clear.

Environmental hazards include patrolling guards with limited sight cones, tripwire-style security beams that trigger alarms, and a few sections where the jetboard is needed to cross open spaces between elevated platforms. The wind is subtle but present on exposed rooftops, nudging Sly's movement and making precise jumps slightly harder.

Collectibles are tucked into the architecture's details: gaskets hidden behind decorative screen panels, diamonds embedded in the undersides of overhanging eaves, and a hidden cache accessible only by a specific grappling-hook chain from a side corridor. The level rewards players who explore the secondary paths through the palace gardens rather than rushing the main axis.

Did You Know?

• The Forbidden City is a real UNESCO World Heritage Site in Beijing that served as the imperial palace for the Ming and Qing dynasties.
• Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves was developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.
• The level's multi-tiered courtyard layout mirrors the real complex's strict axial symmetry, with the main hall at the center of nested courtyards.
• Sly 3 introduced the jetboard and expanded grappling-hook mechanics that the Forbidden City level makes use of for vertical traversal.