Sniper Elite: Resistance Preview: The Potential of Propaganda
After a hands-on session at Gamescom, we spoke with head of design Jordan Woodward about Sniper Elite: Resistance’s new Propaganda mode and more.
Posted 3 months ago
It's difficult to judge a new Sniper Elite game through a half-hour play session. If we were to be uncharitable, there was nothing we saw in our hands-on time with Sniper Elite: Resistance at Gamescom that, protagonist swap aside, couldn’t have come from the excellent Sniper Elite 5. But that’s largely because the core concept of these games has already been honed to a helmet-piercing focus of stealth-and-scope satisfaction. What interested us far more was what we didn’t get to see: new modes and systems detailed in a subsequent chat with Jordan Woodward, head of design at developer Rebellion.
Quietly does it...
©Rebellion / Restart
To anyone concerned about too much shake-up to a successful formula: don’t be. Sniper Elite: Resistance appears to be quite literally sticking to its guns through the core campaign. This time, events will follow Harry Hawker, friend and oftentimes co-op partner to usual series protagonist Karl Fairburne. Running parallel to the affairs of Sniper Elite 5, Resistance tracks the British agent as he teams up with French cells to undermine the development of a Nazi superweapon.
“We wanted to explore a new character, a new personality,” says Woodward. “And also we felt, with France being such a large country, and with D-Day being such a large event, there was so much more to tell within that setting. Sniper Elite: Resistance allowed us to tell more of a behind-enemy-lines storyline utilizing the French Resistance, embedding with them. And also different settings such as in the south of France, around the Alps.”
Our gameplay segment saw us sneaking into a castle town, now home to a Nazi encampment. Our mission was to recover files left by another agent – the home of which Gestapo thugs had recently been sent to raid. If you’ve played Sniper Elite 5, you’ll be familiar with what that entailed: Scale some vines here, knock out a guard there, and line up that headshot just in time to be drowned out by the ring of a church bell. While the initial approach to the castle walls was fairly linear, once inside, we were free to discover our own route through and over the cobblestoned streets as we closed in on our objective.
Our playtest offered plenty of room to find your own path to the objective.
©Rebellion / Restart
Of course, we couldn’t complete our Gamescom trial without also ensuring that the trademark bone-crunching and vessel-bursting bullet cam was up to standard. That aforementioned church would offer just the vantage point. Scaling its belfry, we trained our crosshair on the scalp of the first unfortunate soldier we spotted below. A click of the trigger and yep, this is still very much Sniper Elite, X-Ray cam and all.
Familiar stuff, though just as entertaining as ever. A slew of new environments to sleuth through before chaos inevitably erupts is nothing to complain about. But what else is Resistance looking to offer? Here, Woodward was ready to touch on Propaganda. Not the kind you’ll hear spouted from in-game loudspeakers, mind, but a new and compact mode for the series.
“Propaganda [levels] are short, five-, 10-, 15-minute mini-missions launched from within the main campaign mission,” explains Woodward. “They’re focused around a sniping, stealth, or combat challenge. … You’re playing as a local resistance member, not Harry Hawker, and they all have their own mini plotline.
“Depending on your playstyle, you can play them for an hour, an hour and a half, even three hours if people are playing really slowly and quietly. I’m looking forward to people taking part in these quicker missions and experiences where they can get a little bite of Sniper Elite. If they don’t have enough time to commit to a full mission, they can still jump in and try to beat their scores, min-max their playstyles, and beat them in different ways.”
Spoilers: It doesn't end well for this chap.
©Rebellion / Restart
Multiplayer, too, is receiving special attention. Sniper Elite 5’s stellar Invasion mode returns, with Woodward stating that the team has tried to incorporate level design which grants hunting Jäger players more counter-vantage points over the main objectives. Hawkers will need to keep their eyes peeled for that telltale scope glint. In addition, Resistance will bring “a whole new suite of multiplayer maps” for modes including no cross, team deathmatch, and deathmatch.
With Rebellion’s new IP Atomfall bravely venturing into uncharted genres and themes for the studio, it was hard not to wonder if the well of World War 2 escapades and Nazi blueprints that has watered this series for so long was close to running dry. Not so, according to Woodward, who believes that we’re likely to enjoy placing our crosshairs on 1940s helmets for plenty of time to come.
“I still think there’s so much to explore there,” Woodward says. “Just with the history of what actually happened, and what could have happened. So I don’t think we struggle. It’s so rich, and within the development team there are so many niche historical facts and so many people who are almost experts on history at this point because of the amount of research we put in.”
Our thanks to Jordan Woodward for taking the time to speak with us. Sniper Elite Resistance is planned for release in 2025.
