Splinter Cell: Blacklist will make gamers question right and wrong

Ubisoft wants to push the morality of the battlefield in next year’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist.

Speaking to Game Informer, the title’s creative director Maxime Beland said Sam Fisher will be faced with morally ambiguous choices in how he deals with his enemies and the men he interrogates.

Blacklist pits Fisher against a terrorist group demanding that the US withdraw its forces from various global hotspots – and the development team want layers to think about the repercussions of the actions as the real military does.

"We love the idea of putting the player in those situations that [real soldiers] are going through," said Beland.

"It’s not a question sometimes of doing the right thing or the wrong thing. Sometimes it’s I need to do the wrong or the wrong-er. What do I do? There’s no good option. What if you f*** up?

"The interrogations are a bit of that. We want to put the player into situations that are like the one [we showed] at E3; the guy just told you everything you needed to know. You’re done. You’re good. You’re Sam Fischer. This guy is finished. Are you going to kill him?

"What we agreed upon after lots of interesting discussions was if you want to have true morality in a game, you cannot link it to mechanics or to a system. Because the player will play the system; he’s not going to play the true world choice.

"If we told you that if you’re the good guy, you’re going to get this, and if you’re the bad guy, you’re going to get that, you’re not thinking ‘what am I doing here?’.

"I think it’s cool to make people reflect on it and hopefully grow as humans a little bit. Because we’ve got some guys everywhere in the world that are making those decisions every day for us."