What Splinter Cell MUST Learn From Metal Gear Solid 5

You're Pretty Good

Let's be honest, the exploration in a Splinter Cell is a bit... stale.

Until Conviction and Blacklist, Fisher was not the most spritely of secret agents. Oh sure, he could climb with the best of them and do a wicked splits jump between two conveniently walls when needed to. But outside of that, Sam moves like a man trying not to make noise as he gets up to go for a pee at 3am.

Alright, the element of stealth is necessary around guards, but in more pressing areas he wasn't the nimblest of beans.

By comparison, Venom Snake has a more... organic feel to him. Being able to sprint, dive into cover and crawl through various entry points is a joy to play. Sneaking into a command center is a thing of beauty, as is escaping by climbing your way out to your exfiltration point.

Remove the preset, "You can only climb this bit of wall" linearity often found in Splinter Cell games and allow players to be more creative, and I guarantee they'll thank you for it. Look at recent games over the years like Dishonoured and Deus Ex utilising stealth from a first person perspective, or Uncharted and the Tomb Raider reboots for third person climbing.

Incorporate those two elements together and we could have something beautiful. We know it was capable, as Blacklist opened up those doors a tad. But go one further, remove the "press X to climb here" prompts and let us explore what's climbable. Let us try doing split jumps, overheard climbing or hanging upside from a variety of obstacles, not just preset times the game determines.

But that's just the means of exploration covered. What about when it comes to handling yourself in combat?