For me, personally I always found “Sam Fisher” to be very boring one dimensional character compaired to most main characters from action games, with the mo
st obvious comparion, “Solid Snake” from the “Metal Gear” games. What I thought lacked with “Sam Fisher” wasn’t character personality as such (Sam Fisher is voiced by “Michael Ironside”, a great actor and has some decent character dialogue to boot) but it’s just the fact there isn’t never any game context/scenarios for you as the player to relate with him or learn more about him as an character.
You could argue that such elements wouldn’t translate well within the realistic cold espionage theme of the game, and player emotional involvement and character development would push away from such theme/feel. Although if compared with the yet again obvious comparion of “Metal Gear” being so over the top and melodramatic making character development and motives easier to express with the setting of such great contrasts of good vs evil. Where “Splinter cell” lacks in meaning and narrative it gains in gameplay and player functionality and interactivity with “Sam Fisher” being able to so many actions making the levels/environments multilayered and multi dimensional (game and level design is excellent in Splinter Cell games). This new “Splinter Cell” is like their “Resident Evil 4” for the series reinventing what it is but also remains to stay true to the core of what “Splinter Cell” is which is a rare compromise among games.
Another common criticism I agree with, is that Splinter Cell’s gameplay seems to rely on motion of trial and error due to the multilayered level design and the player’s access to so many game interactions/game paths (linear level progression 
point A to point B but non-linear approaches to these points). This was especially noticeable in “Double Agent” (4th title in the series released back in 2006 on Xbox 360) within the terrorist cell undercover missions which were very frustrating due having too many options which was shame as it was a great concept with the theme of infiltrating a terrorist organization from within. This problem would also occur for me within certain sections of levels where I wouldn’t know where to go, let alone know what to do once you reach your destination, walking to every corner hopeing it’s the correct location to progress the level. This is due to bad level signposting and Game “Mise-en-scene” which I spoke about in some detail in this blog (link of the post at the bottom/end of this post) You should check it out if you haven’t read it yet. Basically in a nutshell, some games lack the logic for giving the player direction throughout the game world making the player feel lost or disconnected with the game’s universe. This is also referred as the technique/computer tool “Director agent” which controls the perimeters of the camera movement for every action, the player does or every section of the game like with resident evil as a good example.
Here is another area, which I think the new “Splinter Cell” has addressed so well within it’s new cinematic direction with the mission objectives projected across the background as creative director says in the demo “One of our missions is to keep you immersed in our world and make the narrative move at a fast pace”. I think they have already achieved that not just because how cinematic and atmospheric (creative and artistic aspect of the game) but their use of the placement of the camera angles and the mission objectives in the background (design aspects using “director agents”) for signposting, giving the player direction keeping the fast pace up.
I think they been very clever with narrative and scenario for this game as I’m a
ctually interested in the main character of “Sam fisher”. They have given him a sense of life and purpose, driven towards motive. I want to invest in this story; I want to know who the guy is in the toilet was, why Sam Fisher's daughter has been killed? Why is he so pissed off? I’ve connected it straight away, I guess it was like what I was saying earlier as it's over-exaggerated and melodramatic enough translate Sam Fisher’s story and state of mind. Lots of games are using similar methods, from the use of “director agents” like “Uncharted 2”, watch the video below if you haven’t seen it yet.
“Uncharted 2” gives a great sense of life and personality through the main character and how each event has it’s own unique character animation making it exciting and fun plotting along a simple narrative/signposting for level progression giving the illusion of being real character within realistic eniviroment like action movie. The game mostly (judging by the 1st title I’ve played) uses audio as sense of signposting and character development as he would say one liners related to the current situcation like “Be careful, big drop” as you jump off edge of a cliff just like action movie which works really well. This is most common/typical use of “director agent” within action games but within the context of “Uncharted” it works as “Nathan Drake” is such interesting cool character although it’s one of cheapest tricks in the book.
Back to “Splinter Cell”, I think it’s really interesting how they come up their own way of introducing narrative and the use of “director agent”. Most impressive element of this game isn’t just the new content/context of the game but how they all fits and co-exists within the “Splinter Cell” universe without feeling awkward or forced and how it has it’s own style and own voice using narrative in a new creative way.
Jonesy
Related Links:
My previous blog post about “Mise en scene” within games –
http://jonesyvison.blogspot.com/2008/07/good-bad-and-ugly-final-scene.html
Article by “Sande Chen” who worked wrote and designed “The Witcher” which is about what “Director agents” are - http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3736/towards_more_meaningful_games_a_.php
7 comments:
i think it's a nice point about director agents and i didn't realise that such small 'pointers' work so well to establish a sense of participation within the game, your character being aware of his/her environment, really adds incremental impact to this experience, maybe revealing traits or distinctive actions
i find it interesting that splinter cell conviction has such an elegent solution to divulging information and backstory in contrast to the minimalist TRICO, and both are impressive in their own way(!!)
This has kitchen conversation written all over it.
I'd agree that what we've seen in splinter cell is interesting if not impressive by creative merits. What I find really shocking is why no developers have opened this box sooner. Story telling is such a rewarding piece when done well in the appropriate titles, it a shame that more developers are not looking outside the box for more of solutions.
It's time the 'cutscene' died a lonely and horrific death. Long live innovation.
Conviction isn't out yet, so its too early for me to comment on if things work or dont. I have been playing Chaos Theory recently, and I didnt remember how driven the story was by listening to the NPC's. I think the first time I played it I missed that, because I was more interested in getting past / killing them. That said the story has always been the weakest part of Splintercell for me too. Ubisoft seem to be going for the revenge theme from the movie Taken this time round (Thats the parallel I drew from the E3 video), so at least there should be some emotion involved. I think it was a copout before to have 5 voices in your ear (as it refers to in the video) because it makes you feel like a tool when youre playing. Just obeying orders. They tried to address that in Double Agent, but all they gave you was two orders for the price of one. It will be interesting to see the character of Sam Fish flesh out. Previously, you get glimpses and short anagdotes about him and his past, but nothing compelling. I'm really looking forward to this game, because in my opinion, there hasnt been a bad Splintercell game yet.
I'm really liking Ubisoft this generation. Even with their biggest, most successful franchises they aren't afraid to rip out the guts and build them up again from scratch, take risks and experiment with new ideas. I've never played, or been interested in playing a Splinter Cell game before, but the live demonstration of Conviction totally has me intrigued.
I was playing "Double Agent" last night, I forgot how Mechanical and unforgiving the gameplay is, you have to plan your route and to stay to it, shoot "guy A", hide this body then strangle "Guy B" at this point otherwise the alarm will go off and the mission is over. I'm sure there is reason why this certain scenario is setup this way to fit the context of the story, but like "Michael" says you are so busy trying to learn patterns/ways of the level rather than taking in the story/details presented to you around the levels. This is an area what "Metal Gear" does better is it allows the player to understand all the scenarios in a story context so you always accept it as apart of the story despite what you have to do whereas with splinter cell at this scenario I felt it was silly and unlogical because of the lack of understanding of the story context to go with it. I really look forward to this new one as I thought "double agent" felt like last gen game and this new one could really push Boundaries for stealth games and narrative go with it which hopefully doesn't 45 min cutscenes like "MGS 4".
Admittedly I’m a Splinter Cell virgin, so I don’t know how much I can contribute to the discussion about the newest game. But I will say that a change of direction for an IP is always a good thing.
I do agree though that more games need to find different ways to tell a story rather than just trigger a cut scene. The more questions that get raised about a characters life or back story help a player get more emotionally involved and they will want to play the game to get the answers.
I can imagine that Splinter Cell was born out of a concept rather than an idea for a story. Which is fair enough, but for those kinds of games, you do need the story to give some purpose as to what you’re doing. It’s cool to have some kind of open-ended approach to the gameplay but it needs a story behind it to give a purpose to the gameplay.
personally, not my cup of tea on games. i feel all three of them feed off eachother interms of narrative, and game controls. The only difference i would have to say for the originals is that gears of war was an arcade/action base audience, tomb raider was an oldskool platformer, and metal gear controls were very much a big part of snake's personality. here we have uncharted 2, (spooled from the 3 games i mentioned and infact points a huge finger at the release date of these games) is just a billy bob joe nobody really cares about - doing funny aladdin acrobats. the reason why i dont play for example splinter cell, because i can take my pick from the bunch. -- Now if you give me for example virtual on OT, zelda ocarina of time and crazy taxi. i can tell you what makes these games original and unique. -- there's a big reason why old games stay in their time, and it's alittle exhausting to see them being reincarnated with extra hours of CG cut scenes. i beg this industry to gain some new inspiration.
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