During Sniper Elite 5’s third level, players guide protagonist Karl Fairburne up a ledge overlooking a German-occupied fort on the French coastline, modeled after the real-life Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. Tasked with eliminating a Nazi intelligence officer, the player comes face-to-face with the first of many strategy choices during the level: they can either infiltrate via the low marshland, which is sparsely occupied but more visible to enemy snipers; or they can head across a bridge, where both cover and enemies are more plentiful.
Those sorts of choices, which can drastically alter player experience, have become central to the Sniper Elite series’ tactical, methodical gameplay since its last entry. SE5 devs Rebellion Developments aimed to deepen player choice even further in their fifth installment. Game ZXC sat down with studio design lead Jordan Woodward to talk about how the devs learned from their community and implemented features to create an even more immersive special forces experience.
Sniper Elite 5 Builds Out the Series’ Deep Player Choice Options
The team at Rebellion took notes from Sniper Elite’s last installment when working on SE5, Woodward said. As the “first real sandbox-style game” in the series, the devs learned a lot about refining player choices. The team studied player data from Sniper Elite 4 and monitored feedback from the community, he said.In SE5, Rebellion wanted to offer the player choices “wherever possible,” Woodward said.
“We want them to be able to decide what side missions they take on, the routes they will take through the map, whether they are stealthy or ‘go loud’ and everything in between.”
It’s not just gameplay mechanics that introduce expanded options for players, Woodward said. SE5’smaps are the biggest yet in the series, and each offers unique routes and positioning options to experiment with. The game’s maps feature more patrolling enemy vehicles with improved AI, more heavy weaponry emplacements to encounter, and more stashed weapons for Karl to use, such as rocket launchers or suppressed rifles.
SE5 also implements a new traversal system that “unlocks even more possibilities for the player,” Woodward said. Players can use creeping vines that grow on buildings, up cliff faces, and inside ruins to discover flanking routes, sniper nests, or hidden items.
Giving players the option to uncover the map at their own pace also opens up new opportunities, Woodward said. “The more you explore the map, the more information and intelligence you will gather that will enable you to play in even more ways.”
Sniper Elite 5’s Game World is Just as Important to an Immersive Experience
While SE5 gives players a cornucopia of options for kicking the Germans out of France, none of that would be as believable without an immersive game world. Woodward said that the team took a number of research trips to France to get a feel for what the game world should look like. According to Woodword, the devs gathered “tens of thousands of images and videos that would help to bring the game world to life.”
Rebellion also started using photogrammetry, a process by which a three-dimensional object is rendered using overlapping two-dimensional photographs, to build in-game assets for SE5, Woodward said. The team’s photos from France were used as photogrammetry references.
“We took photogrammetry references of pretty much everything from different types of grasses, walls and small objects, all the way up to huge tanks and heavy weaponry. The results are worth it.”
Using photogrammetry from real-life references was “incredibly important and help to create a greater feel of authenticity,” Woodward said. “We wanted every location to scream France and be as realistic as possible, and hopefully, we have achieved that.” Rebellion’s commitment to authenticity “extends to everything in the game,” he said, “from uniforms, vehicles, scenery and, of course, the weapons.”
Like any Sniper Elite game, the realism of SE5’s gunplay is a central pillar. Rebellion refined the game’s weapon mechanics to create a more realistic sniping experience, Woodward said. “Players will have to consider all kinds of factors before taking their vital shot, including bullet drop, the wind, ammunition type and audible distance.”
Sniper Elite is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
