New Splinter Cell Blacklist trailer showcases key gameplay

Hey hey PS Blog fans. I’m Zack Cooper, the Community Developer for Splinter Cell, and I’m stoked to get the chance to speak with you guys about our latest trailer for Blacklist – “Stalk. Strike. Silence.”

I’m not sure how much you’ve been following the game’s development, so I just want to take a quick moment to bring you up to speed on the overall direction of Blacklist. If you’re a Splinter Cell fan, you know that there’s a rich history to the franchise. The idea behind Blacklist is to embrace those roots – by bringing back most of the core elements – and merge them with the advanced gameplay and graphical evolution of the more recent Splinter Cell games.

We’re also bringing back that sweet, dark, geopolitical drama that Tom Clancy fans are familiar with. In Splinter Cell Blacklist, the high-level storyline basically centers on the notion of a group of rogue nations coming together to create a terror ultimatum; they’ve had enough of the American occupancy on their land. This collective institutes a countdown, warning the United States to back off… or else.

That ‘or else’ involves specific threats to American interests. That’s where Sam Fisher, now the leader of his newly formed Fourth Echelon unit, their airborne command center – the Paladin – and the classic Splinter Cell globe-trotting come into play.

Looking at this trailer in particular, we wanted to re-establish Sam for both our existing fans and those who may not be as familiar with the character.

You may already know that the core objective for a Splinter Cell is to get in, handle business, get out, and leave without a trace. The way of ‘the ghost’ is still very much still a part of Blacklist; that really tense, no-contact, no-detection way to play… but there’s also something incredibly satisfying about getting your hands dirty now as well.

Splinter Cell fans can attest to the first key element of this trailer, and likely, correlate that to why they responded so well to the classic games in the first place. There is really nothing quite like the ‘Stalk.’ Seeing your target… and planning how you want to deal with it.

Sometimes you want to be quick and efficient; others you drag it out a little more… just for the thrill of it. Do you bring the fear to their doorstep by letting them know you’re there, or do you put them down, without them having any knowledge of what transpired?

The ‘strike’ is that execution phase. Lethally or non-lethally, Sam Fisher is a deadly weapon. He’s got all the tools to do what needs to be done, often before the enemy even knows what hit them.

What follows is the ‘silence.’ That soothing hush as the dust settles with your threat now in the past tense – one way or another.

That is the sound of Sam Fisher…