the team introduced the aircraft hub and the strategic mission interface, a player menu. According to Ubisoft Toronto founder Jade Raymond, the series had become too grueling and complicated for modern gamers, and its popularity had suffered relative to Ubisoft flagship franchises such as Assassin's Creed and Far Cry. The Toronto studio hoped to introduce the franchise to a broader audience, while remaining tactical and hardcore for long-term series fans. It introduced a perfectionist mode, significantly increasing the game's difficulty by removing some of Fisher's abilities. The team also introduced accessible, action-oriented gameplay segments which would suit new players, crafting open-ended levels which could be reached with different approaches to broaden the variety of play. The developers re-worked the controls to increase gameplay fluidity, allowing players to automatically leap over objects and traverse a simplified environment. During Blacklist development, its team faced a variety of challenges. The first was to create stealth which was satisfying and fun for players. According to the team, players gain satisfaction from stealth with freedom and choices which allow them to develop a plan. Players must experiment, with each decision having consequences. Game director Patrick Redding compared it to the development of an ecosystem; the team designed a dynamic artificial intelligence which would react differently to players' actions, making levels feel alive and adding randomness. Encouraging the "panther" style of play (aggressive stealth), the team incorporated elements from the original Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (where one mistake would abort a mission) and Conviction (where stealth seamlessly becomes combat). This approach, the team thought, could help players to feel like elite, silent predators. Series veteran Michael Ironside did not reprise his role as the voice of Sam Fisher. His part was played by Eric Johnson, who also performed the motion capture. In a Blacklist developer diary, Ironside said that he was passing the torch to another actor. According to Ubisoft executives the change was made to take advantage of new performance-capture technology to enrich the game experience, and Ironside assisted Johnson with the role. Elias Toufexis, voice and performance-capture actor for Andriy Kobin in Splinter Cell: Conviction, said that he would return for the new game. Unlike Conviction, the game would have no interactive torture sequences. Instead, players could choose whether to kill or incapacitate a target after interrogation. The system was not complex, and it was hoped that players would choose based on instinct. According