At the 2012 E3 gaming convention I was able to sit in for a behind the doors demo presentation of the upcoming Microsoft game, Splinter Cell: Blacklist.
It was the same demo featured at the Microsoft Press Conference only it included knife interrogations and a UAV directly controlled by the player.
After the demo, I pulled aside Scott Lee, the art director for Splinter Cell: Blacklist, for an exclusive interview about the upcoming and highly anticipated Splinter Cell game.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist interview with art director Scott Lee:
Maroon and Gamer: How has the art style changed from Splinter Cell: Conviction to Splinter Cell: Blacklist?
Scott Lee: We have done a lot of work on the graphic features along with the gameplay features you can see from the demo. For me personally, it was really be about product updates. In the AAA game space it’s all about being better than the next guy. We worked really hard in the last two years to update our engine and to bring the graphics to the level of the best of them.
M&G: I know that in Conviction, when you were in the shadows the screen would go black and white. Will that be returning?
SL: I wasn’t a big fan of it to be honest with you. We have removed it. We actually have a new visual indicator for stealth gameplay. We haven’t revealed it here because the demo is a daytime map obviously but we’ll have more news to come. It looks great by the way [laughs]
M&G: I noticed that you guys included some things that were in the previous Splinter Cell games that were not in Conviction. Was that your mission? To go back and include things that the fans wanted?
SL: Absolutely. We listen to the fans and we, ourselves are huge fans and a lot of us are new to the company. We brought the suit back and we wanted Sam (the main character) to be the stealth action hero he always was. It was fully our intention to bring everything back.
M&G: One more question before I let you go. Will Michael Ironside be coming back to voice Sam Fisher in Blacklist?
SL: Michael Ironisde has officially passed the torch. There is a video online introducing the new actor. His name is Eric Johnson. And the reason why we did this was because we introduced a new technology that incorporates motion capture and voice-overs, similar to the film Avatar, which means that we needed someone more physically capable of doing all of the mocap (motion capture or motion tracking) and voice work. Eric received Michael Ironside’s endorsement.
Reach the reporter at shfawcet@asu.edu.
