Sniper Elite 3: Rebellion discusses North Africa setting, sandbox approach

Sniper Elite 3 developer Rebellion has discussed the game's North Africa setting with VG247, and has explained why it will allow for a free-form sandbox approach to situations, much like its predecessors. This time however, the locales will be even bigger thanks to the game's next-gen clout.

Speaking with us as part of an interview you can read here soon, I asked Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley if the market had started to gravitate back towards the WWII setting - given the rising popularity of Company of Heroes 2, Red Orchestra 2 and its ilk - and if modern and near-future settings were starting to stagnate.

"These trends are cyclical," he replied. "A few years back it seemed the industry was obsessed with WW2 shooters. Maybe it’ll swing that way again. We don’t concern ourselves with trying to follow a trend: we are just striving to make the best WW2 sniper experience possible - for ourselves, and for those people out there who love the genre as much as us.

"Sniper Elite 3 takes place among the varied exotic locales of the North African theatre of WW2 which has not been extensively explored in games but was actually historically pivotal to the whole conflict."

The move away from the collapsed streets of war-torn Berlin will certainly give the studio more scope to create wider terrain. It should be perfect for Rebellion's desire to give players multiple ways to pull off those stylish, long-range kills.

Kingsley said of Sniper Elite 3's sandbox focus, "We want you to feel you’re dealing with scenarios that are believable and that you can genuinely make meaningful choices on how to tackle them. If you are sniping at the enemy from a concealed position, that should play out in a plausible fashion: the enemy won’t spot you immediately and even when they do figure out which direction they are being shot at from, they will still have to figure out how to flush you out.

"We don’t want sniping encounters to degenerate into predictable duck-shoots where all the AI are shooting directly at you while popping in and out of cover. Encounters with the enemy will be convincing and tense, and we will give you both the space and the tools to tackle them with whatever balance of stealth and gunplay suits you best."

Stay tuned for our full Sniper Elite 3 interview with Kingsley on VG247 soon, where we discuss the game's next-gen development, PS4 and much more.