In an interview with GameWatcher, Tim Jones, Head of Creative at Rebellion, divulged new information on the upcoming Sniper Elite 4, which is set to release this year. Jones has said that, now that previous hardware has finally been left behind, “[the team] are able to really go to town.”
One key upgrade that should be immediately noticeable to players is the scale of Sniper Elite 4‘s levels, which can be explored with several new abilities:
We’ve got some really awesome, big levels in this game. The smallest level in Sniper Elite 4 is actually three times bigger than the largest level in Sniper Elite 3, which should give you some type of sense as to how much bigger we are going. That offers up more options, more choice, more variety for the player, longer sniping shots as well which people are always keen for. I think sniper fans are going to be very happy this time around. We’ve also got far more abilities for players to get around the environment, more clambering, climbing, shimmying, ledges… You know, we aren’t going into Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Assassin’s Creed territory, we are keeping it a lot more low-key, more like what you would expect a determined sniper in World War 2 to deal with. It has opened up routes for the level and more options for the players as there’s a lot more verticality available as well.
In Sniper Elite 3, the poor enemy AI really hindered immersion and dragged the game’s score down in our review. Thankfully, it seems that in Sniper Elite 4 these issues have been addressed.
The AI behaves according to what the player does and they adapt their behaviour accordingly. They pay attention to things like the hierarchy, like if there’s an officer in the squad and he orders troops to move forward. If you take the officer out, his troops are more likely to cower in cover. If you injure a guy, one of the other guys, if they deem in safe enough, will run out to rescue their teammate, then pull him back under cover before resurrecting him.
The AI pays far more plausible attention to bodies this time around. Sniper Elite 3 was reasonably criticised for the fact that the AI seemed a little blasé about the fact that people were dropping around, now our AI will actually stumble across the corpse, see the problem and deal with it accordingly. You can even booby-trap corpses to deal with the AI if you felt the need to do so.
As for Sniper Elite coming to PlayStation VR or other virtual reality headsets, Jones acknowledged that “it would be exciting.”
We think about everything and all possibilities, that’s our job. Exactly what we do in the future, if we did have plans about it, I couldn’t tell you about it, I’m afraid. But you are right, it would be exciting.
It looks like Rebellion has taken past criticism on board, hopefully ensuring that Sniper Elite 4 delivers a top-notch current-gen sniper experience. Will it come to PlayStation VR? Well, I guess only time will tell!
Are you excited for Sniper Elite 4? Be sure to check out the latest gameplay videos here.
Also, if you’re interested in seeing how the previous Sniper Elite did in our review, click here.
[Source: GameWatcher]
