We traveled to Ubisoft Toronto earlier this week to preview the young studio’s first title,
Splinter Cell Blacklist. The presentation and hands-on demo were strictly focused on the single-player experience, aimed to highlight the new offerings Ubisoft aims to deliver with the franchise’s sixth installment.
Ubisoft Toronto is now the home of the
Splinter Cell franchise going forward and even though the studio is brand new, it was staffed with senior team members from around the company and industry. The presentation began with Creative Director Maxime Beland and Game Director Patrick Redding introducing the game to journalists in a room surrounded with PCs setup with a playable demo of the game, all featuring a Sam Fisher desktop background, Xbox 360 controllers and
SteelSeries headsets.
The introductory hands-off demo first began however, with a sizzle reel comprised of real-life footage of terrorist attacks, foreign occupation, riots, etc., emphasizing the state of the world, with an intimidating voiceover. The end of the video reached a climax with the mysterious and powerful phrase “We are The Engineers.” The video represents the “opening salvo” of the Engineers’ agenda and serves an introduction to the narrative of
Splinter Cell Blacklist.
The Engineers are a new international shadow terror network that formed in response to the fact that the United States has a presence in two-thirds of the world’s nations. It’s backed by unknown parties who for their own interests, need the U.S. to pull their troops out, and is led by one “super terrorist” figure modeled after the infamous political terrorist
Carlos the Jackal. They have an ultimatum with set deadlines, backed with an organized series of escalating terror attacks (“The Blacklist”).
In response to the crisis, President Patricia Caldwell – who dismantled corrupt Third Echelon after the events of
Splinter Cell: Conviction – covertly puts together a new organization that’s, as Redding describes,
“blacker than black, very small, extremely mobile, self-financing, utterly deniable and will be able to go after the organizers of the Blacklist behind-the scenes while she deals with the more public reaction.” And the one man qualified to lead such a team? Sam Fisher.
The core team we saw from the demo includes familiar faces Anna “Grim” GrÃmsdóttir, a staple of the franchise and Fisher’s old handler; Isaac Briggs, an ex-CIA operative who joins Fisher on the field; Charlie Cole, the tech nerd who helps with weapon and gadget mods. At least one other character joins team in an unexpected capacity, and we expect there could be a few other guest members along the way.
The creative drive behind
Splinter Cell Blacklist was to get Fisher back in his iconic special ops suit and back in the field, but in a way fans haven’t seen before. Many of the game design choices, new features, Fisher’s new role as a team leader instead of lone wolf – and even the redesigned Sam Fisher character – are all evidence of this.
The first and most exciting feature of the game is how it rewards player choice in terms of play style.
Splinter Cell Blacklist caters to true stealth players and fans of the original
Splinter Cell, but it also allows (and actively rewards) gameplay styles from players who may have entered the franchise with the last installment,
Conviction, and shooter fans who may jump in as newbies for
Blacklist. It does this by rewarding three styles of play. Where stealth games like
Hitman: Absolution often punish players for taking a non-stealth approach,
Splinter Cell embraces it with a dynamic scoring system that ranks players on three different playstyles:
Ghosts are the players who traverse an area and complete objectives without anyone knowing they’re even there. Assault is for the run and gun players who suit up with bigger weapons and heavier armor for direct confrontation. We’re told that players likely start playing one of these two styles but as they master each, they become more of a panther, someone who can lethally and quietly take out opponents in the most efficient way possible. The game is able to reward points based on metrics involving lethal vs. nonlethal play, detected vs. undetected, etc.
Digging down another level on the player choice front,
Splinter Cell Blacklist offers the most customization options the franchise has seen yet. Players can choose their own weapon and gadget loadouts, but they can also customize parts of their ops suit, including the color and shape of the iconic tri-lit goggles. Different weapon mods and armor components affect stats differently so players can suit up Fisher for combat or stealth based on preference. More and more items are unlocked throughout the game based on side-missions and purchased upgrades.
Players acquire new customization options using money earned from missions. Fourth Echelon is self-financed and money can be earned not only through the story campaign, but through the co-op and competitive multiplayer modes which are integrated into the main story as well. The money is shared between all the modes and can also be spent on upgrading the Paladin, the mobile base of operations for Fisher and his team. Some of these upgrades, like the Cockpit and Infirmary for instance, directly affect gameplay adding a radar to the HUD or improved health regeneration, respectively.
This is where we need to point out that
Splinter Cell Blacklist appears to mesh together many of the core design principles of the Tom Clancy brand and the
Mass Effect games. And by that we mean, Sam Fisher is startlingly similar to Commander Shepard in his goals and function. The Paladin is just like the Normandy, and like BioWare’s sci-fi series,
Blacklist lets the player walk around the craft, chat with teammates for additional story details and side-quests, and even upgrade the transport.
Even the galaxy map from Mass Effect is replicated with the
Splinter Cell Blacklist’s SMI (Strategic Mission Interface), a large and pretty touchscreen and the centerpiece of the Paladin. On the SMI, players can see available missions. Choosing one activates in-game cutscenes featuring the characters interacting where the player can then choose a loadout before hitting the ground.
It’s a smart design choice and something radically different from any Tom Clancy game before it. Fans of the series and/or the
Ghost Recon and
Rainbow Six games know the feeling of a lost sense of purpose in between the separated and seemingly disconnected missions, and
Blacklist’s Paladin (essentially a hub system) keeps players actively involved with the story.
The hands-on demo included the last two-thirds of the first mission of the game, which takes place after the first Blacklist attack, and the first two-thirds of a mission from the middle of the game. The first mission (‘CIA Safehouse’) takes place during the daytime in an urban area of Benghazi, one of the largest cities in Libya.
Fisher’s objective here is to extract an informant, a (very familiar) weapons dealer who’s turned himself in, fearing that he sold weapons to the Blacklist organization and that they’re coming for him. The level takes place mostly outdoors on rooftops where enemies are scattered, seemingly intentionally to let players get accustomed to the controls. There are waypoints to direct Sam, but the correct path isn’t always clear so that players aren’t being dragged along by the hand.
Unlike Ubisoft’s latest major release,
Far Cry 3, and the original
Splinter Cell, players cannot toss objects or rocks to lure enemies to a certain location. Instead, Fisher can “whistle” to call them to him (“Better with Kinect”) or use a secondary function on sticky cameras to lure them towards those. Using tech is encouraged for players willing to be patient and embrace the Ghost/Panther playstyles, as there were a bountiful amount of ammo piles to restock weapons and gear.
Learning to track the systemic AI patterns of movement is also key, no matter the playstyle, and the ‘Mark and Execute’ feature comes in most handy for that purpose. This feature returns from
Conviction and lets players acquire marks through melee takedowns or precision kills. Enemies that are tagged can then be instantly taken down when needed at the push of a button, so long as they’re in line of sight and the player has accumulated the marks. The animations and slow-mo effects on these look awesome.
Another similarity to
Mass Effect is the weapon wheel. Holding down ‘Up’ on the directional pad pauses the game and lets the player choose from Sam’s equipped arsenal – and there are a lot of weapons and gadgets that can be carried. It also lets the player choose between lethal and nonlethal takedowns. Each weapon supports a different amount of marks, with the silenced pistols granting the most. For this reason, there was never a good reason in our demo to use any of the two-handed weapons since it makes tracking enemies more difficult. Again, it’s odd that
Far Cry 3′s untrained protagonist can track unlimited enemies on screen using just his camera to mark them whereas super agent Sam Fisher cannot. It’s obviously a different game, a different genre, and it’s an understandable issue of balance, but the comparison is inevitable.
Splinter Cell players should be making use of the different vision modes through his iconic goggles (i.e. thermal optics) and the game is built for that.
What does throw a wrench in Fisher’s tech are the new enemy types. In the two missions we could play, there were techs who are able to jam Fisher’s optics, forcing players to locate enemies the old fashion way. Some of these characters can deploy drones, while other enemies include snipers and dogs. The dog in the first mission for example, was very noisy and in the way. Do I shoot it? Jump down and strike from above with a melee attack? I like dogs so I tossed sleeping gas grenade at it. Kill terrorists, not canines. That’s my Sam Fisher.
The end of the first mission included a short segment where the player must protect the weapons dealer (quasi-spoiler: It’s Andriy Kobin returning from
Conviction, played by Elias Toufexis) and there didn’t seem to be a way to complete it without straight-up gunning the attackers down. That gunfight added to my Assault score when my playthrough would otherwise have been scored nearly all Ghost.
The second level (‘Abandoned Mill’), was more complicated. It begins outdoors at night, during a rainstorm, then moves into a dark, grungy interior setting where combat is far more intimate. This level was more open in the beginning and provided a better example of how players can approach a given situation or area in multiple ways. Like the first mission, the overall level designs are linear, but getting from point A to C doesn’t always involve the same B, so to speak. As for the indoor second half of the mission, playing with the tri-rotor drone and sticky cameras proved incredibly useful as I positioned Sam Fisher outside of windows and when inside, destroyed light sources to hide in the shadows. The lights on Fisher’s suit glow to signify he’s well-hidden.
While the demo only offered an out-of-context and incomplete look at the story, and we still don’t know the details behind the co-op and Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer, it did successfully showcase what Ubisoft Toronto is trying to do with gameplay, player choice and mission structure.
What genre(s) the
Splinter Cell franchise sits in may have been blurred in recent years but
Blacklist addresses this by letting players decide for themselves.
Splinter Cell Blacklist is shaping up to offer an incredibly dynamic and
diverse stealth game (and action for those who want it) and for players looking for that experience, Blacklist will reward them well. The jury’s still out on whether longtime fans will rally behind the new Sam Fisher since Michael Ironside is no longer involved, but new actor Eric Johnson nails the physicality and presence of the character.
Part of our time at
Ubisoft Toronto was spent touring the studio and exploring the motion capture facility, used to improve the animations and story moments of
Blacklist. Players will notice the difference with the cutscenes (rendered in-game) and action movements as Fisher traverses obstacles and takes down enemies up close. We can’t determine from the demo how human Ubisoft can make Fisher and much of that will depend on the story, the writing and the performance of Johnson. It’s too difficult to gauge based on two segments of two missions, especially with the game promising so much more, but we’re very optimistic.
What we can confirm is that Blacklist is on track to be the biggest game in the series, offering the most changes, the most added detail and the most gameplay features. Stay tuned for more as we learn about how the co-op missions factor into the campaign and whether or not that means there are restrictions on if players can play them with friends at anytime from the outset.
Splinter Cell Blacklist launches on August 20, 2013 for PC, PS3 3 and Xbox 360. Fans can pre-order the
Paladin Collector’s Edition for $169.99 today.
