Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
What's going on, guys? I'm Zack Cooper, your Splinter Cell Community Developer,
We're here outside Ubisoft Toronto
and today we are going to get our hands dirty. We are going to go inside the combat of Splinter C...
So picking up where we left off - now that
I am fully conscious again - Awesome
- You're Kevin Secours - Yes
And you are the stuntman and the combat consultant for Splinter Cell Blacklist. So talk to me
about what that means and, I guess, how you got involved.
The guys at Ubisoft had a very specific sort of vision for this game.
- The Sam Fisher that we wanted to create was being one, fluid, movement all the time.
you know, very panther-like. I was looking for someone that was trained in Kali, and
Russian Systema, and had some Krav Maga experience. - They saw some of my work, they saw the kind
of the movement stuff that we do in our styles, and they approached me and asked if I'd be interested.
I know there's obviously a lot of secrecy
involved in your resume, but if you can talk about what, I guess, you can talk about.
It's like...30-plus years of experience? Yeah, I mean, I've been in the -
- SCENE MISSING -
- it all blends together. And what are we talking about, when we talk
about martial arts for you in particular, what do you use? What arts have sort of come
together to make up Kevin Secours' art form? - It's tough, I mean started Karate, Jiu-Jitsu,
Kung-fu, Russian Systema, Kali, some Silat, Muay Thai, ground wrestling, plus a lot
of law enforcement and defensive tactics training. So just a little bit?
Now, when it does blend together, what is it that we're going to see in Splinter Cell Blacklist?
Unmatched flow. We are going to see a level
of fluidity that I believe has not been in games before.
So delving a little bit deeper into the combat: there's lethal, there's non-lethal, this
is probably foolish on me to ask, but can you maybe demonstrate some of it?
Yeah, absolutely! Some of the basics, of course, we have a basic sort of vascular restraint.
We can choke in this position. With two hands. We can choke here, suppressing the mouth.
You can find the ones you like. Listen to this one:
From there, we can get obviously into the neck breaks, so there are different ways
of using the hands; using the forearm; even using levers in this way to break. So those
are some of the basic ways to break. And then we get into hits. For non-lethal we have a
number of concussive hits: you know, the brain stem; we get into the brachial junction; getting
into antagonistic pressure with chin and shoulder hits: hitting this way, hitting this way,
hitting with the forearm. - OK
Some of the basic ones.
Let me regain some of that,
- Good - Wicked
- Math comes back,
- The knife is obviously back - It is!
- That's a pretty big deal! - Huge!
- Talk to me about the Karambit - Traditionally Sam was using more of a straight
blade style weapon, which was great, but we made the movement towards the Karambit.
This is a traditional Karambit. It's an Indonesian blade. The distinction of the Karambit, first
and foremost, is that it has this ring, into which you can insert your first finger. The
main reason for that is to facilitate retention. The inner edge can be used for hooking actions:
rending, tearing; and the outer action - because of the arch, has more of a sort of
fluid curve, and the curved blade gives you all of the same sort of impaling and stabbing
capacities as a straight blade. One of the distinctions, because of that curve, is that
it allows me to sort of use it to sort of emphasize- I could be using it to go for tendon
slices; but using it for quite good control. I can be accessing muscles in the neck,
- Of course! - Whatever the case is. So it gives you a lot
more. One of the options you're going to be seeing Sam using quite often is sort of
"can openers," where he can either use - you know, for intimidation - or actually
impaling and using it as a handle. Sam is using a marginally larger, and conventional,
size; it's still shorter than many of the battlefield Karambits, and he has serration
on the back, as well, so it gives you some different options for manipulation.
This one's obviously for mo-cap, This one's for mo-cap, which is why we have
the mo-cap markers on it, so you can see it in operation. It's all in keeping with this
notion that Sam is like a panther; so one of the traditional names for a Karambit is
"the panther's claw." It fits very well with all the stealth elements.
You probably could have demonstrated with that one on me,
We might have been able to, yeah,
We have Kevin and Eric [Johnson] working together and it becomes difficult to kind of tell who's
doing which movement at times. The first day, I remember seeing them walking side by side
and in between takes and everything, they were just training. We were trying to get
them together as much as we possibly could. That ended up helping Eric, almost with "what
would Kevin do?" ,but then they've both started to think: "what would Sam do?"
Eric is an absolute gift to this game, he's a joy. I mean, he's a student; he's passionate,
open; he's put in so much time in his tactical training, learning the craft, and, you know,
I'm not a stunt guy - I'm a defensive tactics guy that was brought in, so the first faux-pas
that I make is that I'm big into contact a lot of times. Eric doesn't shy away from it.
He goes towards it. There hasn't been an instance in this game where Eric hasn't
done something other than surprise me with how quickly he's evolving. He's embodying it.
I would say he's channeling his inner Sam Fisher. Pretty well.
"I don't want any surprises"
I had no idea what I was going to see in Kevin. I was expecting him to be trained, I was expecting
him to be controlled; I wasn't expecting him to be as creative. With Kevin I find I'll
see him do things that will change my perception of a move that I wanted to do. He'll be using
his hand behind to erase footprints when he's moving stealthily and everything,and it's
things like that that I really like, that we could bring to the animation. He brings
the action element of Fisher to the game for me.
Had enough?
So there it is. I managed to survive the day
somehow. We met the man behind the combat of Splinter Cell Blacklist. Thankfully we'll
get to communicate again in the near future. Make sure you let us know what you think
on our Facebook page, on our Twitter account, and on the official Ubisoft Forums.
Until next time...