Splinter Cell: Blacklist ps3 screensTrue, you are kind of watching the game play itself at these points but the visual payoff is a gratifying reward for the work it takes to get there. It makes Splinter Cell’s old template feel far more current, with a hugely increased flow and speed run/challenge-style bursts of pace. Satisfying sequences of climbing, scoping, running and executing can unfurl effortlessly. Or as Redding puts it, “Once in a while the stars align and you get that perfect moment where you can just go ‘bang bang bang’, chain a bunch of moves together and dive out a window and disappear”. It’s all part of updating Splinter Cell to ensure an eleven year old series with six installments under its belt doesn’t feel old. “In terms of stealth action we’ve always wrestled with how do we stay fresh,” says Redding. “How do we evolve it and keep it something that mainstream players are interested in”.
Interestingly part of that evolution involves the unusual admittance that, “Stealth is not a nice thing”. Redding explains: “The majority of people know there’s a manageable period of time in which they’re either going to have to be patient or undetected or careful. It’s how you segment the action. You want to keep that loop, you don’t want that loop to run for half an hour or an hour, you want it to run for 5 or 10 minutes at a time to allow players to move into the next area and engage in some exploration. Games like Hitman, Dishonored and the Batman Arkham games are a good reflection of that approach and so we took those lessons to heart”.
Part of perfecting that loop is also getting the balance right. “What players don’t like is arbitrary or unfair failure,” Redding points out. “Nobody wants to feel like they’ve blundered. What you want to feel like is that you arrive in a situation and you can see why it’s challenging, where the threats are, and where you can take a calculated risk to get through a certain area”.
