Lately I’ve given Splinter Cell: Blacklist some flack for going just a bit too far in the violence department – specifically, torture. I’m not here to talk about that today (you can read that article here), but instead I’m going to share with you a short interview with Scott Lee, the Art Director on the project.
Usually I find these types of interviews absolutely painful, with marketing people blathering on about things they hardly understand, in a manner which conveys nothing more than “our game is awesome, please pre-order it immediately”. Scott doesn’t do that, and not only that… but the talk is actually quite interesting. He tells us a little bit about the technology that powers Blacklist, and specifically about their new “Through the Lens” system.
Art Director Scott Lee Talks Technology in Blacklist
I remember Kane and Lynch 2 using a similar system, where the camera would exist as a physical entity in the world and looked a bit like a low resolution YouTube video, but this looks a whole lot better. The various sources of list, from sun rays to moon beams, play wonderfully off the roving camera, and the droplets of rain running down the camera look excellent as well. What I’ll really be curious to see is the way the blood effects look, though. I’m really hoping there isn’t some over the top blood bath splashing across the camera.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist is still quite some time away, and though I have my reservations about the violence, and would really like to see more in the way of, oh… I don’t know, something original, I’m still interested in seeing how the game progresses, especially in terms of the technology. As far as I’m concerned, Conviction was a bit of a train wreck in terms of how it handled light and shadows, with the screen becoming de-saturated so again… I’m interested to see how they decide to handle that here.
Blacklist Release Date?
I’m somewhat skeptical of this release date, but supposedly we’ll see it hitting store shelves on April 1st, 2013. You can pre-order the game online for $59.96 USD through Amazon. It’s available for Xbox360 and PS3, but sadly… no mention of the PC yet.
Well they have a long time to go still in development, and during that time I kind of hope they decide to put in some graphic options to allow people to turn those camera effects off. They look pretty distracting and I