Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist is a 2013 action-adventure stealth game developed by Ubisoft Toronto and published by Ubisoft. The game is the sequel to Splinter Cell: Conviction and the seventh installment of the Splinter Cell series. Players control Sam Fisher, a highly trained operative working for the Fourth Echelon, in a mission to stop the Engineers, a group of terrorists which is trying to coerce the United States into recalling all of its troops stationed abroad. The gameplay is similar to its predecessors, with players tasked with completing objectives and defeating enemies. Blacklist marks the return of the asymmetrical multiplayer mode Spies vs. Mercs, which was introduced in Pandora Tomorrow.
Blacklist is the first title developed by Ubisoft Toronto, a studio founded by Ubisoft in 2009. The game was directed by Maxime Béland, who had worked on Conviction. The game endeavors to combine elements of its predecessors, including the action focus of Conviction and the stealth focus of the older games. To prepare for this game, Béland studied reviews and feature lists of the latter. Blacklist is the first Splinter Cell game starring Eric Johnson as Sam Fisher, since Michael Ironside, who voiced the character in previous games, was unable to reprise his role after being diagnosed with cancer. The later-announced Wii U version was developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, which also developed the game's multiplayer.
Announced at E3 2012, Blacklist was released for PlayStation 3, Windows, Wii U, and Xbox 360 in August 2013. The game received generally positive reviews from critics when it was released, with praise for its level design, story, gameplay, combat, soundtrack and multiplayer mode. However, criticism was directed at its graphics, lack of challenge, and ending. Further criticism was also directed from some fans toward the choice to cast Johnson as Fisher instead of Ironside. The game underperformed commercially, selling two million units within three months of its release.
Gameplay
In Blacklist, players assume control of series protagonist Sam Fisher as he seeks to stop a terrorist group called the Engineers. The gameplay emphasizes stealth, and utilizes the third-person perspective. During the game, players can rotate its camera, run, crouch and leap over obstacles. Since Blacklist intended to continue the "aggressive stealth" of Conviction while retaining the traditional stealth features of the older games, it combines action and stealth, and allows players to use different approaches and methods to complete objectives and defeat enemies. Players can complete levels without being noticed by any enemy by methods such as taking cover or scaling ledges. If the player chooses to kill enemies, other enemies are alerted when they see their companions' dead bodies. To avoid this, players can hide corpses. Fisher can also create a strategically advantageous dark environment by destroying nearby lights, and is equipped with customizable night-vision and sonar goggles to detect enemies in darkness and see through walls. He also has the Tri-Rotor, a compact surveillance drone which can spy on enemies, create distractions, give electric shocks, and self-destruct to kill enemies.Players can play a more aggressive run-and-gun game by using gadgets and weapons to eliminate enemies. They can interact with environmental objects, such as ledges and zip-lines, to navigate levels. Conviction mark-and-execute system returns in Blacklist, with refinements and additions to allow players to mark several targets. When they attack, they can kill all marked targets instantly. Improvements made the system work more fluidly. A variety of enemies are encountered in the game, following the protagonist and alerting their companions. Players have the option to kill them, leave them untouched, or incapacitate them, and the game classifies their choices in one of three categories: Ghost, Panther, and Assault. Although the game has interrogation sequences involving questioning targets, it does not feature Conviction interactive torture scenes. Players can still decide whether to spare their targets or kill them after interrogation,
The Paladin is the game's hub. Between missions, players can interact with crew members on the ship and view the game's objectives. Crew members also offer the protagonist side missions to complete. Before a mission Fisher can deploy the strategic mission interface, allowing players to see enemy positions and plan attacks and routes. Players can also use the interface to access multiplayer modes and missions. When players kill targets and complete objectives, experience points named "Ghost Points" and money are awarded to buy weapons, and upgrade the Paladin airship and Sam's suit and equipment; the upgrades improve efficiency in completing missions. Experience gained depends on the difficulty level and how the game is played; the greater the stealth, the greater the reward. According to Ubisoft Toronto, the system, known as "universal economy", was intended to satisfy players; every action has a corresponding reward.
Blacklist has platform-specific features, including voice integration with Xbox 360's Kinect peripheral which allows players to distract enemies before attacking them or to call in an air strike. In the Wii U version, the Gamepad controller's touchscreen is an interface, accessing gadgets and other features from the protagonist's arm-mounted computer, and incorporating screen and motion controls to highlight enemies with thermal vision when using Killing in Motion. The Wii U version was not shipped with the game's cooperative mode.
Multiplayer
The "Spies vs. Mercs" competitive mode introduced in Pandora Tomorrow again appears in Blacklist. An asymmetrical multiplayer mode, it pits two teams against each other. Spies, in third-person perspective, are equipped with smoke grenades and flashbangs and are tasked with hacking computer stations heavily guarded by mercenaries. Spies have more versatile movements as they can also climb onto rooftops, hide inside air vents and scale ledges. Mercenaries, in first person, can access lethal and longer-range weapons despite being unable to stealth-kill enemies or move very fast. The mode has two varieties: Classic, supporting teams of 2v2, and Blacklist, supporting 4v4 action. This mode features a progressive leveling system, allowing players to customise and upgrade the two character classes.Blacklist also has a co-operative multiplayer mode, where each mission can be accessed by talking with the crew of the Paladin. Crew members offer a variety of missions and requirements for completing them, and players play as Fisher or his colleague Briggs; both have the same abilities. The mark-and-execute system works slightly differently in the cooperative mode, with enemies wearing helmets require both players to mark them before they can be killed. The cooperative mode has a total of 14 missions, with split-screen play supported. In addition to co-op and Spies vs. Mercs, Blacklist has other multiplayer modes including Uplink control, Team Deathmatch, and Extraction.
The game's multiplayer functionality was set to be shut down on September 1, 2022. The date was later delayed to October 1, 2022.
Synopsis
Characters
Blacklist again features Sam Fisher, a former Third Echelon Splinter Cell who is now the spymaster and commander of the newly installed Fourth Echelon. The game also sees the return of Fisher's old ally, Anna "Grim" Grímsdóttir, and new characters such as Isaac Briggs and Charlie Cole. Several supporting characters from Conviction reappear, including Victor Coste, Patricia Caldwell, and Andriy Kobin, as well as interactive telephone conversations with Sarah Fisher.Plot
Two years after Third Echelon is dissolved, Sam Fisher takes up work as a contractor for Paladin 9 Security – a mercenary contractor run by his friend Victor Coste. While assigned to a USAF base in Guam, a military force assaults the installation, neutralizing its commander and hundreds of its members, while heavily injuring Coste. A faction known as the "Engineers" publicly declare their responsibility for the operation, announcing it will launch a retaliation on the United States until it recalls its troops deployed abroad. U.S. President Caldwell appoint Sam and his colleagues – tech specialist Charlie Cole, CIA operative Isaac Briggs, and technical analyst Anna Grímsdóttir – in to Fourth Echelon, a new top secret black-ops unit which conducts out of a converted military cargo plane known as "the Paladin".Fourth Echelon traces the weapons used in the Guam operation to arms supplier Andriy Kobin, a former target of Sam's in Benghazi. Through him, the group trace his buyers to Iraq, whereupon Sam learns that the Engineers' leader is Majid Sadiq, a former MI6 agent. Learning an operation is targeting Chicago, Sam breaks into the site of the confrontation and prevents the operation's success. Fourth Echelon traces the supplier to Iran-affiliated mercenary broker Reza Nouri, whom Sam extracts from Paraguay before a team of Iranian Qods Force commandos can kill him. Nouri willingly supplies information that leads Fourth Echelon to finding evidence linking the Engineers as an Iranian outfit. However, while seeking further evidence to support this, from within the Qods Force headquarters in Tehran, Sam finds the Engineers falsely implicated Iran in the attacks, in order to raise tensions between Iran and the United States.
After successfully stopping another operation in Philadelphia, pushing the Engineers to increase their efforts, Sam and Briggs move to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp when Fourth Echelon learns that Nouri is providing misleading information to the CIA to reawaken the United States's hostility towards Iran. Through interrogation and torture of Nouri, he reveals that Sadiq sought to distract the US government from an imminent assault on the Gulf Coast's fuel supply.
Sam is forced to protect the Paladin when Sadiq's groups launch an assault on Fourth Echelon, allowing the Engineers to use a commandeered tanker to capture the Sabine Pass LNG terminal. After guarding the Paladin and combating the fire at the terminal, Sam finds out that the strikes were aimed at coercing the US president to start continuity-of-government procedures – Sadiq's goal was to retrieve government data files by arranging for their transfer to a secure bunker under the Denver International Airport, by having COG procedures activated by his operation.
Opposing Caldwell's orders, Fourth Echelon breaks into the bunker as Sadiq's sleeper agents take control of the facility and its personnel, including the Secretary of Defense. Before the Secretary agrees to requests to transfer the files to Sadiq, Briggs kills him, but is promptly detained along with several others. Sam, disguised as a detainee, helps Delta Force snipers to kill Sadiq's men, before injuring Sadiq after a fight, as he attempts to pull back using the Paladin. Sadiq states that his death will lead the United States into war with nations that supported the Engineers, while his trial will lead to the country's secrets being leaked. Sam opts to confine him, with Caldwell publicly cover up Sadiq's imprisonment by falsely announcing his death. In a post-credits scene, while Fourth Echelon continues its work, a recovered Coste joins Sam, as they prepare to torture Sadiq.