The team wants to find new ways to spice up gameplay

Jan 15, 2014 10:42 GMT  ·  By

The development team at Ubisoft working on Splinter Cell says that the franchise is in a constant state of evolution and that the features seen in last year’s Blacklist might not be part of the new installment coming on next-gen consoles.

Kristjan Zadziuk, who leads the animation department at the Toronto studio, tells The Official Xbox Magazine that, “If you look at them, there’s no two Splinter Cells that are the same. They’ve all evolved and adapted. That, to me, is what makes it really exciting. We’re getting closer to what that game is, and maybe it isn’t necessarily about Splinter Cell being a 15-16 million Call of Duty-type best-seller.”

He says that Splinter Cell will probably never be as consistent as Assassin’s Creed, another Ubisoft long-term franchise.

Zadziuk adds, “Far Cry 3 is such an expansive game, so they’re trying to find you an organic way of giving you a map. That wouldn’t work for Splinter Cell – there’d be no point in Sam climbing to the top of a tower and pressing a button.”

At the same time, the development team is not worried about picking up a feature from another Ubisoft game as long as it makes sense from a gameplay point of view.

The animation director says that the active sprint makes sense for Sam Fisher because it allows the character to be faster and get away from enemies when he needs to.

Blacklist was well received by fans of Splinter Cell, but some of the hardcore players complained that it was too easy for gamers to shoot their way out of every situation.

The team explained that they simply wanted to give players the freedom to approach each challenge in their own way.

No official announcement has been made about a new Splinter Cell for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.