During the International Game Developer's panel at GDC, you mentioned that the Metal Gear series had been an influence on you and on other people on the Splinter Cell team. Can you describe how it was an influence?

Metal Gear is a stealth action game. Every game that has ever used that idea owes its existence to the success of Metal Gear. Other people have done it better since, in my opinion, and we now have a deeper understanding of the gamespace that a stealth mechanic can create, but all of us analytical types who understand it now could probably never have conceived it and sold it to a publisher in the first place. Without Metal Gear, there would be no stealth games. So it's not really that I feel we were "influenced" by it, but rather that we owe the existence of our game to those who were brave enough to take the first step and to open up the new genre for us to create in.

What other games have influenced you as a designer?

The Looking Glass games like System Shock, and Thief and the Ion Storm games—Deus Ex (and Thief 3 which they inherited from LG) have been huge influences. Specifically when I talk about games that offer a deeper stealth mechanic, I am thinking of these games. These games also offer the player a way to meaningfully express himself, and I learned a lot from that.

What other games have impressed you as a designer?

I don't want to start a giant list, but any game that offers me a way to play intentionally, any game that lets me use my understanding of the game's systems to approach and solve the problems of the game in a meaningful and creative way.

At this year's GDC, many sessions concentrated on the use and role of narrative in videogames. As a videogame writer and designer, what are your feelings on how narrative can and should be used in interactive media?

Wow. That's a humongous question. To try and state it as simply as possible; narrative in games ought to be used to encourage and reward intentional play—as described above. The narrative of a game should be structured in such a way as to allow the player to feel more or better feelings of agency in the world. The narrative should be structured in order to validate and reflect, and provide additional layers of meaning to the player's actions and decisions. I'm sorry that's such an abstract answer—here's a hypothetical example:

If the game offers me the option of trying to save someone from a really dangerous situation, or leaving them there to die, the narrative needs to flavor the decision I make in that situation, regardless of what I choose to do. If I confront the challenge and rescue the person, the narrative needs to reward that decision by telling me directly, or indirectly that I am a hero. If I leave the person there to die, the narrative needs to reward that decision by telling me, either directly or indirectly, that I made a hard decision about a life, and that the thing I chose to do instead was, regrettably, more important. It needs to validate my decision—not punish me for it. This can add a rich (and more traditional) emotional layer to the emotions that are already prevalent in games and the feelings we already get from simple system-interaction.

Related to the previous question, what are your feelings on cutscenes/cinematics and the role that they play?

Time to get away from those. We're not very good at it anyway. We should leave linear storytelling and CG animation to those who do it better. I don't care how good your cutscenes are, I'd rather watch a 20 second commercial spot for a Pixar film than the very best cutscenes we have ever offered. The only use for cinematics and cutscenes is to provide a narrative framework and a context that justifies the action of the game. But we are increasingly coming to the point where we don't need this anymore—we can deliver almost everything we need to do this in the interactive space now, and our goal should be to move toward doing exclusively that.