Ubisoft confident of new Splinter Cell direction

[DC RID3R]

Mathieu Ferland, producer of the 5th installment of Splinter Cell believes the the teams' decision to take an entirely different approach to the game will be well recieved by fans. Ferland thinks that ditching much of its light-and-shadow gameplay will be vindicated by player reaction despite the risk of changing the games identity.
"We've been working very closely with the fans from the beginning," Ferland told GamesIndustry.biz. "Their first reaction was, 'What's going on? Where's Sam?' And then they discovered these new possibilities, this new mechanic and they said, 'That looks awesome. I want to play it.'"

However, the producer admitted that Ubisoft could return to past values if things go wrong with Conviction, the fifth game in the series.

"It's not a one-way direction," he confirmed. "You can always go back and do different things, having Sam in a new position, or a different character to explore light-and-shadow gameplay."

News source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=25358

[Xenogears V]

The road is still long to reach the levels of Metal Gear!.

[The_Eggman_1972]

So no more same sh$t different day then...Yeah right..

[redwolf]

The road is still long to reach the levels of Metal Gear!.
story...yes. gameplay...never ;)

[loliix]

The road is still long to reach the levels of Metal Gear!.The gameplay is totally different, being SC geared towards "believable" and MGS towards story telling. It's two different genres within the stealth games.

MGS never did any well outside the Playstation brand and GameCube remake (it was already on PC and XBOX), unlike Splinter Cell that always has good results and fans regardless of platform.
MGS defines Playstation, so all Playstation fans should be proud of it, but we are not blind.

[sigma8]

SC with no stealth? But with crowds? Oh, and less buttons. Awesome. They should make a "special atari 2600 joystick edition".

Heck, just make the game use only one button. No directional controls, no other buttons. Just a single one. It will be context sensitive for everything:

while stopped: run
while running: stop
while stopped near a bad guy: attack
while running near a bad guy: reverse flying drop kick OR elbow to face (depending on distance)

how to steer?
When a story-pertinent enemy is near, he will blip on a radar screen. Hit the button while the alert is up to have Sam lock onto and begin to approach the enemy.

I wonder when they will start trying to do this? Context sensitivity has its place, but I don't like when it replaces actual legitimate decision making.

Also, wtf is it with crowds? Shouldn't they wait to see until Assassin's Creed sells well or flops?

[mystic54]

Moving away from what works has always been risky, but its the 5th installment so might as well give it a shot. If you don't eventually your going to get yelled at for it always being the same.

[aic007]

Surprised that no one has mentioned this yet, the games combat and style is based off of Assasins Creed just set slightly in the future. Its the same going through crowds, brawling type of techniques being used in AC.

I love Splinter Cell and will check this out but I hope it isn't AC in the 21st century, that would be pretty lame, and lazy.

[Scorpion3]

No matter what they do, something tells me it's going to be great since Ubisoft Montreal is making it. Anyone who knows SC will agree, SC1 was from them, Pandora Tomorrow was Hong Kong, Chaos Theory was Montreal, and DA was Honk Kong. The best games are by far the first and 3'rd, the other 2 were just rehashes of the other 2 games, except DA sucked ass and Chaos Theory was awesome.

[sigma8]

Surprised that no one has mentioned this yet, the games combat and style is based off of Assasins Creed
And I'm unsurprised that you failed to notice it WAS mentioned. I mentioned Assassin's Creed already.

[snipersnake]

good good!

hopefully this time around, we dont have to play the game in black and white, rendering our bravias and aquos useless.

[Scorpion3]

good good!

hopefully this time around, we dont have to play the game in black and white, rendering our bravias and aquos useless.

It's the only problem I ever had with SC. They made the games beautiful on PC and Xbox yet it was so dark you couldn't tell because you had your NVGs on constantly.

[aic007]

And I'm unsurprised that you failed to notice it WAS mentioned. I mentioned Assassin's Creed already.

Glad that I can unsurprise you, I will try and make it my lifes duty to keep you fullfilled with unsurprises.

Sorry, but after that atari joystick comment, I lost all interest in the rest of your post.

[Scorpion3]

story...yes. gameplay...never ;)

Agreed, MG(S) has always had an outstanding story but Splinter Cell has always had more gameplay, though MGS3 got really close to having as much Gameplay quality as SC:PT. The story for SC will always be less intresting, but more realistic because it goes by what the world is going through. DA was about Terrorists, CT was about Korea and their Nuclear Capabilities, Conviction will probably be about Iran or something. Sounds stupid, but it's at least realistic for such a game.