Maxime Béland, creative director for Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist video game, is packing a lot into the next big installment in the Sam Fisher covert operative title. He’s bringing back Fisher’s cool black operations suit, his curved blade, and new technologies like an assassination drone.
The Splinter Cell series is a long-running one, and making fans happy isn’t easy. While the last game, Splinter Cell: Conviction, focused on Fisher as a “panther,” or killing from the shadows, this new game allows for different play styles, which includes the “ghost” method of operating in complete stealth or engaging in an all-out assault. Fisher also moves up into a leadership role in the new Fourth Echelon covert operations agency. Béland describes Fisher as “moving from lone wolf to leader of the pack.”
Béland said that the team wanted to make Fisher more fluid and agile, like he is always one step ahead of his enemies, with head butts and take-downs. Fisher will have all sorts of high-tech gear and plenty of help from his companions who are always flying above him in a mobile command post as he executes missions on the ground.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist will debut on Aug. 20 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
Our video interview with Béland is below.
Maxime Béland talks about the fluid Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell Blacklist from VentureBeat on Vimeo.