A portion of a SPOnG interview with Ubisoft's Laurent Malville...

SPOnG: With this renewed approach, and particularly with the new Sam Fisher performance capture... do you see Blacklist as something of a refresh, or reassertion, of what Splinter Cell is as a franchise?

Laurent Malville: It’s a good question. How would I describe it? I’m on the design side, so I’m really more attached to the mechanics. Generally, I would say that to move the series forward and have Blacklist be the biggest Splinter Cell ever made, we needed to do some work on our storytelling for sure. That’s why we invested in the performance capture facility.

I would say it’s a refresh of sorts, yes. Although not necessarily a reboot, because there are elements of Conviction - and previous games in the series - that will return here and will be familiar to fans. In terms of design and gameplay, this refresh boiled down to player choice. The player is in charge. Sam is the leader of Fourth Echelon, and the player should feel the exact same way when playing this game.