Lucas
Versantvoort / April 3, 2015
Anyone remotely interested in
the stealth genre will be familiar with the Splinter Cell series. You play as
Sam Fisher, a Splinter Cell, working for a secret subdivision of the NSA, Third
Echelon. With the most recent outing, Blacklist, the series now consists of
seven games with more to come, if developer Ubisoft’s penchant for sequels is
any indication. Note the slight sarcasm in that sentence. Indeed, I would be
lying if I said I didn’t particularly love the most recent Splinter Cell games,
particularly Conviction and Blacklist. While gameplay footage completely turned
me off from Conviction, I did play and enjoy Blacklist for what it was. But if
there’s one thing that game isn’t, it’s Splinter Cell. I’d like to compare the
‘old’ Splinter Cells with the two newest and try to indicate precisely where,
in my opinion, the series flew off the rails.
Sure, the end of the Tehran mission where you’re bombing
Iranian Special Forces with a drone springs to mind, but that’s just a symptom.
In actuality, it’s the combination of faster gameplay and (the impact this has
on) level design. For some reason, a reason that probably has something to do
with wanting to attract the Call of Duty fanboys, Ubisoft deemed it wise to quicken
the pace of Conviction and eventually Blacklist. It does make Blacklist fun to
play in a way. You feel like a tiger waiting to pounce on one—or
several-targets and quickly leap into the shadows again. You might quickly take
out one target and escape and lay a trap for any pursuers. When these kind of
events follow up on each other in rapid succession, the game feels exciting and
alive. However, this fast-paced action comes at a cost: the game doesn’t feel
like Splinter Cell anymore: you’re less Sam Fisher, more Jason Bourne. Because
you’re faster and more agile and lethal, the risk of getting caught loses its
potency. If someone saw you in the older Splinter Cell games, chances were
you’d quickly die unless you ran away. Staying hidden was the way to go. In
Conviction and Blacklist, you’re constantly marking targets and if you’re
spotted, Fisher automatically kills any marked and visible opponents at the
push of a button. The importance of the player character’s weakness when pitted
against NPC opponents in a stealth game cannot be overstated. The key
characteristic of stealth games is staying hidden. If you’re caught, the
punishment dished out by npc’s should be appropriately severe. Conviction and
Blacklist, in their quest to turn the series into a strange stealth/action
hybrid, lack this stress factor due to Sam’s increased combat skills. Ubisoft
would of course refer to the fact that Blacklist allows you to play in three
different styles: Assault (aggressive), Ghost (complete stealth) and Panther (a
hybrid of the two). To the game’s credit, the level design does indeed allow
for these differing playstyles, but the problem lies in the fact that the
Assault playstyle is always open to you. If you fail at ‘ghosting’ you can
quickly shift to a different playstyle by shooting those who’ve spotted you,
although chances are you’ll have chosen to replay the mission by now. The point
is that the ready access of an aggressive playstyle robs ghosting of its
necessity. When the going gets tough, you always know—at least
subconsciously—you could revert to a more aggressive playstyle. Needless to
say, this reduces the stress of sneaking by a pretty substantial margin.
I also feel that the fast-paced style of Conviction and
Blacklist have a profoundly damaging effect on the level design. It’s an effect
that’s hard to pinpoint, but think, for instance, of the importance of
running/sliding from cover to cover in Blacklist. The gameplay relies so much
on it that it forces the level design to consider the possible cover spots more
than creating a ‘real place.’ This becomes particularly evident whenever you
realize cover’s a little too conveniently placed to easily allow you to slide
from one point to the other. The game forces this style of gameplay on you by
making a lot of the missions take place during daytime. In the older Splinter
Cells, however, the emphasis wasn’t on timed sprints from cover to cover, but
on patience and lighting. Also, by slowing down the pace, you were allowed the
opportunity to bask in the ambience, to really take in the love and care that
went into creating the places (not just ‘levels’) you were wandering into. Whereas
in Blacklist I had the feeling I was being forced to rush through a level, the
feeling that I should actually be progressing faster, the older Splinter Cells
allowed you to take your time. Also, the better lighting and emphasis on
nighttime missions meant the focus wasn’t on crouching behind cover, but on
taking stock of the your surroundings and utilizing everything at your disposal
to progress from point A to point B unseen. Crucially, I never had the feeling
of being dropped into a ‘real place’ in Blacklist, whereas I vividly remember
the carefully built-up atmosphere in the older Splinter Cells: the sounds of
choppers in Chaos Theory’s NY mission, the red skies of Hokkaido, the sounds of
war in the Seoul mission, the emphasis on NPC chatter, Pandora Tomorrow’s
immersive airport design, infiltrating the CIA headquarters; the list goes on.
My point isn’t that the newer Splinter Cells are
unplayable, though Conviction tries really hard to convince me, it’s just that
I find they lack that certain something, what defined Splinter Cell for me: an
immersive, slow-paced, stealthy trek through what felt like an actual, lived-in
location. I understand that all series need to evolve to prevent stagnation,
but I definitely feel the newer games are miles removed from what makes
Splinter Cell ‘Splinter Cell.’
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