Splinter Cell: Blacklist: spiderbots, morality and shotguns in the Clancy-verse

At the beginning of Splinter Cell: Blacklist you walk along a corridor littered with dying men, your colleagues finishing them off with occasional bullet fire. The men die and the narrative strides on into a different space. But in that corridor there was a rare, blink-and-you'll-miss-it twinge of discomfort over the actions onscreen.

Wired.co.uk decided to ask Ubisoft Toronto game designer Maxime Béland about how he approaches making a game that involves shooting representations of other human beings. After all, prior to Splinter Cell, he worked on three of the Rainbow Six franchise.

"I think the number one thing is respect," said Béland after a taking some time to think. "We're not giving you $5,000 more if you do a headshot and there's blood everywhere. We didn't go in and put blood everywhere. We're doing it realistically. I think what's great with our game is that it's up to the player. When you're playing Sam [Fisher] if you want to kill no-one you can."

The game rewards a non-lethal playthrough with an achievement. "If you complete the whole game with a full 100 percent non-lethal playthrough you get an achievement. So your question I will throw back to you and other gamers. How are you playing the game? If you feel bad about killing people you don't have to."

That moment aside, the game settles into familiar action-adventure territory with a side order of sneaking about. You're Sam Fisher who, this time around, is the leader of special ops unit The Fourth Echelon. Sam Fisher now has an office and a team but, because of the whole "being Sam Fisher" thing that office is a tech-crammed plane called the Paladin.

"It's a playable hub space for the player," explained Béland. "After each mission you go back to the plane, you can talk to the different characters, unlock co-op content, you can grab the phone and call your daughter if you want. You can customise the plane, upgrade it."

At the centre of the plane is the strategic mission interface (SMI) which presents as a map of the world in real time showing all the options available to the player. The idea here is to function as a menu that will tempt players into trying the different modes on offer in Blacklist. "You'll see solo missions, co-op missions, friends online and what they're doing. If they're joinable -- say a friend is playing a co-op map by himself -- you click and join. There's this idea of blurring the lines between modes."

One of these modes is "spies vs mercs" which takes the form of first person vs third person as the spies attempt to execute successful hacks while the mercs (mercenaries) try to take them down as quickly as possible. The basic concept as Béland explains it is a squad of Sam Fishers being pitted against a squad of Rainbow Six operatives.

The game also has a transversal economy system where money earned in any game mode funnels back to Sam who can spend it as he chooses. According to Béland, the idea is to always be rewarding time spent playing in the game world. A companion app seeks to develop these repeat visits to the Tom Clancy-verse further.

"We've released what we call Splinter Cell: Blacklist Spider-Bot. It's an app on iOS and it's going to be released on android soon. Right now there's only one game in it but it will end up being three games all featuring the spider-bot -- this little robot Sam can control."

The spider-bots in question were originally part of the main game but didn't make it into the final cut. "It was cool to be able to be this spider robot able to navigate everywhere and climb the walls. It really changed the perspective of how you saw the Splinter Cell world because suddenly everything was big. You could go at the feet of an enemy and see him like it's a wide angle lens!"
The points or currency you make on your tablet or smartphone are then transferred into the main game if you link the accounts via Uplay. In terms of spending this cash, you're looking at upgrades on technology, equipment, armour and so on.

"If you think Sam is a more brutal person who needs to take out everybody and make noise you can customise your Sam; buy gear to give better bullet protection, buy super powerful two-handed weapons, frag grenades. If you think Sam is the guy who's never seen and doesn't make any noise then buy boots to reduce the noise you make when you run, buy sleeping gas grenades to take out the guys non lethally. It's Sam, but your Sam."

Similarly the game monitors your playstyle keeping an eye on who your Sam manifests as. There are three categories his behaviour falls into. One is Ghost (non-lethal), another is Panther (stealth killing) and the last is Assault (bullety death for all).

With the awareness of these three distinct styles Wired.co.uk asked whether the Ubisoft team was considering something along the lines of a class-based Splinter Cell. "I used to play D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) and at some point my friends and I switched to GURPS (Generic Universal Roleplaying System)," said Beland. "One of the major differences is D&D is all about classes and GURPS is all about no classes but you need to make decisions. You need to spend points.

"I think Blacklist is a lot more like a GURPS system. If you want boots that don't make noise but have a crazy shotgun when you need it you can. We're not forcing you to go down a tech tree of stealth or Panther or Ghost. You mix and match what you want."
So what's Béland's Sam like?

"I'm a Panther. I like to take out guys and do it without getting detected. It's fluid and its beautiful in a way. When you're able to take out a lot of guys quickly it feels like a combo you're doing which feels rewarding. Splinter Cell is about thinking before you act."