Devil May Cry Forums

Yes. My love for it has diminished with the arrival of Blacklist and the changes it brought to the main character, Sam Fisher, but I still have hope for it. I also can barely wait for the live-action film adaptation to drift out of that development hell and pop up onto the silver screen.

On the contrary, I too am a huge fan and the game that made me kind of upset was Conviction, but not for Sam Fisher, whose change in personality made sense and frankly, he was more badass than ever, rather for its gameplay that dumbed down stealth.

Instead, Blacklist saved what the franchise could have become had they gone... "full Conviction". The focus on stealth returned, gadgets make gameplay more varied than ever and Sam reacquired some of his dark humor.

In other words, Blacklist was a savior and the best SC to date as I see it, probably right there with Chaos Theory.

I sense a discussion here, and the whole 140 character limitation thing - really cramps my style. We'll take this to PM.

No, I didn't want to start one. It's just, you gave your point of view, me mine. End of story.

Instead of a long winded discussion, let's talk about maybe something lighter. What about the whole VA change matter? Did it touch you? I've heard they did it cause Ironside himself didn't want to reprise his role as Sam.

I felt like they could have easily tackled that by ending Sam's character arc in Conviction and keeping Ironside as the voice in the new protagonist's ear. What I'm saying is; yes, it did touch me. I felt like Ironside provided a type of intensity and range in Sam's voice that BASICALLY gave the character personality.

You probably understand, as a longtime fan of the game, that Splinter Cell is no Metal Gear. It doesn't rely on face close ups and the protagonist gravelly uttering "IT CAN'T BE!". It relies on tonal shifts, and I'll be damned if Ironside wasn't an expert on that. Moreover, Sam's supposed to be 56. The dude who voiced him was 32. I have no idea what Ubisoft was thinking.

And I wasn't going in a long-winded discussion. It's just that I had to share my views in one swoop, and this character limitation thing is really restricting in that regard.

I can relate more than you think. You know, here in Italy, every SC game has always been dubbed in Italian (like all media for that matter), and our historical Sam Fisher, Luca Ward, was missing in Double Agent and Conviction, but thankfully returned in Blacklist.

I've always identified Sam with Luca's voice (and not gonna lie, overall I even prefer him to Ironside, believe it or not), so I see what you mean, although his substitute was good too.

You can hear Luca's Sam here if you want (2:55 - 3:20): https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3s9vRmFmpCs

In my opinion nobody even comes close to Ironside, but I'd be lying if I said this Luca guy isn't one cool dude with one cool voice. A foreign dub which I enjoy is also the Japanese one. The dude who voices Sam is the same VA for Kurama (Nine-Tails) from the Narutoverse. Pretty neat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPSdr51Oe6w, you can hear him here, starting 0:05.

Unfortunately that was a line from a trailer, not gameplay, otherwise you'd have heard how Luca understands perfectly the emotions he should convey in every scene. Ironside is great, but when I see him in the booth, I dunno, it's like he wants to convey the wrong emotion.

For example, when I saw him doing an interrogation line, where Sam should be calm and menacing, he's like, angry instead, showing his teeth as he utters the line (result is still amazing, but still, a minor complaint of mine). When I see Luca in the booth doing the same kind of line, he IS calm and menacing too.

That, coupled with the fact that he possesses a range of tones like Ironside's (he listens to him when he dubs after all, has to match him) and his warm godlike voice makes me prefer Luca, but they're so close anyway.

It's like preferring pizza to lasagne. I prefer pizza, but just by a tiny bit. You know what I mean?

Yep, I can understand that. And yeah, he seems to have a habit of gritting his teeth occasionally. You can even notice that in his casual interviews, like the one he had in Strombo. My prevailing theory is that he's so used to playing psychos/disturbed villains in his live-action outings that it's sort of stuck with him.

What also makes me adore Ironside is that he played a major part in turning Sam Fisher into what he is. The initial concept of Sam Fisher was a cliched, mainstream, military protagonist. He read the material, thought there could be some tweaks here and there, and that's how the Sam Fisher we know (or at least used to know) came to life.