The latest Splinter Cell game – Splinter Cell: Blacklist – may have had a difficult time dealing with fan expectations since the game’s release, resulting in not the sort of popularity that Ubisoft has enjoyed with previous games in the series, but not for lack of trying. According to one of the game's developers, Ubisoft did a good job with in-game balancing to make sure it was accessible to newcomers.
That's what James Everett explained to Games Industry International, saying, "At a root level, at a gameplay level, we took nothing away. We just made everything easier to get at, and we made it feel better. I think if you take the things people love and you find a way to amp them up without diluting them, I think that's probably your best bet," Everett stated.
Blacklist had a bit of a tough time since its announcement, as a number of fans pondered whether the game would remain true to its original stealth gameplay nature, or whether it would try to attract a larger audience by deviating away from its roots.
However, according to Everett, those kinds of apprehensions are only expected as far as fan behavior is concerned: "There aren't a lot of games in those genres, and the fans of anything are very excited and committed to the things they love. So if someone says they're going to come over and do something in this thing you love, if your initial reaction is a little bit concerned, that's understandable.
“Because you know you're not going to get a huge number of games that cater to the things you love so much, so you want every one of those games to be great," he added.
Reacting to comparisons made between Blacklist and other third-person shooters, Everett emphasized the shooting mechanics in the game, saying that even if players decided to approach it with an all-guns-blazing technique, they would have still found a challenge by encountering tougher enemies like heavy infantry.
“The heavy character was brutally hard if you run straight in like a shooter," Everett said. "We needed that moment of something hard to shake people loose a little bit from maybe how they're used to playing a standard third-person game."
That kind of an encounter, according to Everett, “was intended to make it clear to those same players that there were different ways to think about combat in Blacklist, about flanking opponents, or using gadgets to fool the enemy AI.”
Splinter Cell: Blacklist arrived this past summer for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, and PC.
