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toblix

Splinter Cell: Blacklist

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Challenge: Watch this gameplay preview and still intend to buy this game. After 1 minute and 40 seconds, when Sam Fisher drives a knife into a guy's shoulder and the game prompts you to waggle LS to twist an answer out of him, I stopped watching. There's a fucking marginal chance there's going to be a valuable ethical context around these scenes – my guess is they'll just be even more tasteless versions of the beat-an-aswer-out-of-em-up sequences in Conviction.

I remember the first Splinter Cell game, when you played this cool old guy who snuck around, created diversions and knocked people out. Now? I would be fucking embarrassed to be seen playing this garbage.

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Challenge: Watch this gameplay previewand still intend to buy this game. After 1 minute and 40 seconds, when Sam Fisher drives a knife into a guy's shoulder and the game prompts you to waggle LS to twist an answer out of him, I stopped watching. There's a fucking marginal chance there's going to be a valuable ethical context around these scenes – my guess is they'll just be even more tasteless versions of the beat-an-aswer-out-of-em-up sequences in Conviction.

You couldn't be more wrong:

post-6617-0-74887900-1345226921_thumb.jpg

(The torture is mandatory of course)

EDIT: Basically Assassin's Creed with (modern) guns and brutal torture.

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The only way I'm able to play through stuff like this is on a meta level - as commentary on the horrible shit that most video games are. As it stands I don't think I could make it through Blacklist and in fact I turned off the video at about the point you did. Imagine being the person whose job it is to make sure "wiggle LT to twist a knife into this guy's arm" turns up on the screen. I don't know how I'd do that without just stopping and saying "what am I doing? Is this what I am making?"

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post-6617-0-74887900-1345226921_thumb.jpg

I'm not completely sure if this makes it better or worse, but I'm pretty sure it makes it worse.

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I'm not completely if that makes it better or worse, but I'm pretty sure it just makes it worse.

The only way I'm able to play through stuff like this is on a meta level - as commentary on the horrible shit that most video games are. As it stands I don't think I could make it through Blacklist and in fact I turned off the video at about the point you did. Imagine being the person whose job it is to make sure "wiggle LT to twist a knife into this guy's arm" turns up on the screen. I don't know how I'd do that without just stopping and saying "what am I doing? Is this what I am making?"

Yeah, I find myself thinking like that more and more when I play games. I think it started when I watched some developer diaries for that terrible visceral game, whatever it was called. The developers were all super-excited about the (ah, Dante's Inferno, I think it was, the one where tits fired lasers or more tits or something) level of creepy, disturbing shit they put everywhere. What made me pause was this one guy who all excited-like explained how his computer was full of pictures of dead people and corpses and diseases. This made me wonder about all sorts of things about video game development. I know getting a job in the industry is hard, and you can't pick and choose, but there has got to be so many people who come to work every day making guns and death animations, wound textures,
and more, and they're like «oh boy, I'm so SUPER-EXCITED to be working on this title!» and then after they get home, late at night, exhausted by crunch mode and fake enthusiasm and all the shame, and in my mind's eye I see them sitting alone in their little apartment, by a little desk with a little lamp, drawing beautiful indie game sprites or strumming haunting indie game music on their little guitar.

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Minor Max Payne 3 spoiler below:

In the final mission, as you approach a wounded enemy, Max mutters "So I guess I'd become what they wanted me to be. A killer." Then you are given a choice (?) of executing the poor bastard or letting him suffer. After the credits, I immediately checked the statistics: I had killed 1397 people during my playthrough. It's hard to appreciate being given a choice between life and death for a man who is actually missing limbs after that level of carnage.

A choice between killing and sparing a guy who will in any case spend the rest of his life in agony because of you, when you are forced to kill most of the "regular enemies" you encounter throughout the game, feels like a bad joke to be honest. Somehow this joke is very popular with video game designers, though.

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I've been playing through Conviction and can safely say, pushing the envelope and being very angry seems to be a staple of the franchise of late. You're asked to beat a woman up in the second mission for example. (it's a requirement to proceed). I guess the writers are trying to drive home the fact that the protagonist is unhinged, but since none of his actions are questioned either in gameplay or in story other than lip-service, it doesn't come across as clearly as it does in games likes Spec Ops.

Can't say I'm too bothered by it because it all still feels extremely gamey: even the brutality of smashing interrogation victims' heads into urinals is folded neatly into the conventions of game world exploration and possibility space. It's really fun to look around the environment and discover spots that the devs set up to reward you with an interrogation animation.

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I don't know if Conviction really paints Sam as all that unhinged. It's been a while since I played the campaign so I may be forgetting details, but as I recall it he's just a man with extreme skills put into an extreme situation. Actually it has a great deal in common with the film Taken, or its ilk. As you said, his actions are not really questioned, because it's implicit that everything he's doing is both justified by the ends (the safety of his daughter) and those he's doing it to (conspirators, killers, arms dealers... scumbags of a number of stripes).

Minor spoilers follow.

Even in the situation you're referencing, when you're "asked to beat a woman up"... the game actually goes to pains to make it as justifiable as possible. Firstly, she literally just before set you up to be captured and tortured yourself (though she rescues you from the latter fate), you're "beating her up" in the time-honoured film style of a fake escape made to look good, she has to provoke you into it, and even when you do it, Sam clearly holds back. He slaps her open handed twice, while by comparison the men he interrogates during the game get full closed fist punches, their heads slammed into walls, urinals, sinks, smashed through bottles, and are generally dragged around by their throats. Also if I remember correctly there is much, much less interactivity - it might be as little as one button press for the entire scene? That suggests that Ubisoft was giving you as the player an extra layer of justification by making this more something Sam did than something you did.

Over all Conviction is much closer to an Enemy of the State situation, if anyone remembers that film. Technically the actions of the protagonist are criminal and even morally reprehensible, but in the end he's (at least portrayed to be) the good guy under enormous pressure from large organisations full of treacherous individuals. It might be the game Sam Fisher crosses fully into anti-hero, might be, but he's still definitely a hero of some sort. From what I've seen of Blacklist, he seems to be crossing more into genuinely neutral mercenary territory... but we haven't seen all the justification yet, I suppose.

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I'll have to finish up conviction in its entirety to really have a good idea of what the game is trying to do/say. But from what I've played so far, I don't think there is a big leap in outright brutality from Conviction to what we've seen from Blacklist. Just seems to be the general mood of the franchise. Maybe unhinged is the wrong way to put it.

I like your comparisons to Taken and Enemy of the State. Perhaps a comparison to 24 is also apt. Especially as 24 is also driven by the protagonist doing extreme things to protect his daughter.

Also as to the beating up Grim, section. Maybe the game tries to justify it but there's still elements of sadism as you hit her even more than you need to because your character is angry. There's some pleasure in the character of causing injury in others. And we take pleasure in that, just as we take pleasure out of films like Taken. It's gross-out fun to hear bones break and bad guys scream as they are dispatched in ways above and beyond necessity. It would seems Conviction is tapping into that and Blacklist surely will as well.

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The difference between Conviction and Blacklist for me is literally the "waggle the thumbstick to torture" prompt. I don't have a problem with brutal violence, even interactive brutal violence, as long as it's not real people getting actually hurt. What made me turn off the video was the juxtaposition of the clinical, value-judgment-free language of the onscreen button prompt with the action it was prompting you to do: literally twist the knife, via analog stick. That the game was asking you to do this with the straightest possible face is what made me unhappy. Button prompts in games are, barring anything cute the game does, as close to the literal word of god as you can get. They tell you the truth, and nothing but the truth. This is what made Portal 2's "press spacebar to jump" joke so hilarious, and it's also why the no-nonsense "twist a fucking knife into this guy's shoulder" thing in the Blacklight video irritating to me. The voice of authority from on high has appeared and is giving you the pure, unadulterated truth, and what is is truth? TORTURE THIS MAN. I don't remember the prompts in Conviction being quite as blatant "hit X to torture" and they certainly weren't "twist your analog stick to twist the knife!" Instead it was just "press X near an object to watch Sam 'Unhinged' Fisher push this person into it!"

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I dunno, seems like a matter of degree to me. The button to beat grim did say: "Hit grim" or something close. I really don't see a huge distinction except perhaps in degree of brutality. Both of these games definitely seem to press the player to do things they're not comfortable with in order to get certain points across. That's not a bad thing necessarily, Walking Dead has many of these moments.

I think the use of prompt in terms of shock value is a common trend in this generation of games. The analog sticks were used to great 'success' in God of War 3 when you're asked to gouge a dude's eyes out. That motion is a lot closer to the act the prompt is representing too.

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Challenge: Watch this gameplay previewand still intend to buy this game. After 1 minute and 40 seconds, when Sam Fisher drives a knife into a guy's shoulder and the game prompts you to waggle LS to twist an answer out of him, I stopped watching. There's a fucking marginal chance there's going to be a valuable ethical context around these scenes – my guess is they'll just be even more tasteless versions of the beat-an-aswer-out-of-em-up sequences in Conviction.

I remember the first Splinter Cell game, when you played this cool old guy who snuck around, created diversions and knocked people out. Now? I would be fucking embarrassed to be seen playing this garbage.

And they cut the torture scene: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-01-30-splinter-cell-blacklists-torture-scene-is-cut

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I wonder if it's at all to do with Kathryn Bigelow getting raked over the coals for not explicitly condemning torture in Zero Dark Thirty.

I'm pretty sure it was her also condoning that torture was effective at all, which seems contentious at best. Not too mention people going "WTF?" to the video.

Ubisoft just needs to ditch their old franchises, Splinter Cell is about as worn down as can be at this point. I want to see more stuff like Watchdogs, or a Pirates/Master and Commander type game hewn from the boat portions of AC3.

After all, successful video game franchises, over a really long haul, appear to be at least partially based on characters. EG Mario, Master Chief, etc. If you keep switching characters, don't have strong ones, or etc. then people don't have anything but a hollow title to attach to the series. Without "Real" Sam Fisher and his "are you gonna say monkey"? Dark humor I don't see Splinter Cell even holding onto as much as it's now mostly empty fanbase even might have.

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Without "Real" Sam Fisher and his "are you gonna say monkey"? Dark humor I don't see Splinter Cell even holding onto as much as it's now mostly empty fanbase even might have.

Oh man, I forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me. I loved that line.

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I just think Ubisoft missed the fact that some people, generally the sort of people who would play a Splinter Cell game, would rather play a stealth game than an action game. Chasing that Call of Duty audience, I guess.

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I just think Ubisoft missed the fact that some people, generally the sort of people who would play a Splinter Cell game, would rather play a stealth game than an action game. Chasing that Call of Duty audience, I guess.

The Call of Duty crowd is confirmed to have tons of money. How much money does the Splinter Cell crowd have? Unknown. Do the math, guys.

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i thought the last splinter cell was a lot of fun, although instantly forgettable :wacko: I think i really enjoyed it. The game plays more like a linear story driven action game. Even though it likes to paint the illusion of choice with multiple paths, the game ultimately just played like uncharted 2 with a little more hiding in steam vents

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I got rather bored of it (Conviction) halfway through and stopped. The coop was really great though. (though me and my friend got bored of that too). It's just not a very interesting world to engage with. It's playing 24, the game.

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Whoa, nobody has bought and played this? It's out, people! I saw some of the GB quick look, and it seems like they've managed to finish the process of turning it into something for everyone. Apparently you're in a plane that has lots of computers showing you the various missions, some of which are single player, some co-op, some both; it shows daily/weekly missions that give earnings bonuses (!) and you can upgrade your plane. Missions can be completed in three ways (silent and non-lethal, silent and killing everyone, and just killing everyone,) and each level can be completed once in each "path" for maximum earnings (probably.) As I was watching them trying to figure out how to do a challenge, someone tweeted that the game actually lets you torture a Guantanamo prisoner. Now, that's something that could probably be successfully portrayed in a game, and it could be done in a meaningful and interested way, but judging by everything I know and have seen, you're probably just beating the living shit out of some fucking towelhead in cool ways for the codes to the satellite.

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Super heavily scripted intro that I keep fucking up :tdown:

Fisher looks like mass effect man/generic douche

I've just updated my cockpit

This door requires a coop buddy

This door requires a coop buddy

This door requires a coop buddy

Fuck this game

Ok so I've just finished the first proper mission (^ that was a side mission, which I might just avoid from now on) haven't tortured anyone yet BUT I have rescued someone who was being tortured.

You get points for getting past enemies completely undetected! Huzzah. And you now what points mean? Fisher can buy himself some new gloves!

I'm going to try and play a mostly non lethal play through from here on out

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