Splinter Cell Conviction Q&A Feature

For the past five years, top Third Echelon splinter cell Sam Fisher has been exploiting the shadows to sneak around the world, gathering intelligence and diffusing volatile National Security situations. But all that is about to change in Splinter Cell Conviction, the fifth instalment in the series to date, due to arrive on Xbox 360 and PC in the fourth quarter of the year.

Although the exact background details to the game remain under lock and key in a nuclear bunker deep in the heart of Ubisoft Montreal's studio, it's been revealed that Fisher finds himself framed for a crime - with a corrupt Third Echelon tasked with hunting the now hoodie-wearing former agent out of the shadows. TVG recently spoke with Thomas Geffroyd, Game Manager at Ubisoft Montreal about the series' fifth outing to find out more... TVG: Work on Splinter Cell: Conviction began two years ago, just after the team in Montreal completed production on Chaos Theory. Was the idea of introducing such a dramatic change in gameplay dynamic there right from the start, and how was it developed into the demo that's been shown recently? Well, work began a little before the end of Chaos Theory. The concept was already there, and we started working on the Chaos Theory engine to look into ways of how we could implement the dynamic environments on the Xbox 360.

TVG: So the engine in Conviction is a more refined version of the one used in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory?

I would say that it was ninety percent based on Unreal [Engine] 2. We're still on Unreal Engine 2 in places, but there's not much left you can do with it now. We basically built the engine from scratch around the gameplay, the physics, and also the bridge between the different systems, which has been a real challenge for us. Because of the animations, the AI, it really helped to have our own engine called LEAD - all of components are named after metals.

TVG: The change in gameplay dynamic out of the series' trademark shadows is quite dramatic; what prompted the decision? Was it more an attempt to refresh the franchise, or simply because somebody had a strong idea?

It was a little bit of both. Making games takes money, and we have to sell them so we can make more games. To be honest, we wanted some fun because after all of these years of playing with light and shadows we've mastered it - they're beautifully styled games, and all of the components that we wanted were all there in the first one. It was time for us to have a change in order to move forward, and dynamic environments with a third-person view to us was something like the ultimate challenge. We had to ask whether we could technically do it, and it was our Technical Director who managed to develop the technology that could support the experience.

So it's three things: basically it provide us with a challenge, to rejuvenate ourselves, and the chance to rejuvenate the franchise itself. For most gamers, Splinter Cell wasn't a stealth game, it was light and shadow gameplay. To us, light and shadow, though amazing at the time, was a very binary experience - you were either in the light or in the dark. That's why there were all of those athletic skills like climbing up pipes, and using a building's architecture - it was a way of complimenting the light and dark, and was means for players to move.

Now, we want to do a stealth game, but stealth is the art of going around unnoticed. It's not something else, that's how it is. So as soon as you take that into consideration, and that Splinter Cell is a stealth game, there are many ways to go unnoticed. You can create diversions, you can go amongst the crowd - you have so many ways to do it. We believe that we're going to be true to the franchise; we're going to be even truer to Sam. I think that we now have the Sam we intended to have back in 2001 when we created him, because WE [Ubisoft Montreal] created him. When you spend six years working with the same guy on your screen every day, you start to build up an idea about the character, and appreciate him, and there are those on the team who appreciate Sam a lot. We wanted it to be possible to create the position of where we know what he's thinking and how he behaves, and not just being a man that does things because he's been told to - the name Conviction comes from Sam's own conviction. So that's about it for what motivated us to take the risk with this new direction.

TVG: How do you feel fans of the series will react to such a dramatic change in gameplay?

I think that they're more intolerant regarding gameplay, and the impact that the changes will have on gameplay. But what we hope is that in the end they will understand - when they get their hands on the game - that what we did in the first game was very innovative. We put a lot of passion into the gameplay, and that's something that we're doing [with Conviction]. They've got to trust us and come with us; we're even better than we were six years ago. We've had time to learn the machines and we're pushing ourselves to create the best experience. I think it was a balance between taking a risk and making something really amazing, and we've decided to make something really amazing - and we're doing everything we can. If you look at Splinter Cell, everything's already been done before; we wanted to create new gameplay just like we did; that's our challenge. We want to create some new gameplay. We want gamers, when they've finished playing Conviction to look around at other games and feel something.

If you take Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and play a couple of levels and then jump onto a different game, any other game, the first thing that you want to do is look in the shadows because you feel safe. I'm really happy because after playing Conviction, I find myself looking for objects and things dotted around the environment to use - I stop and think "Oh right, it's not that type of game". We want to change the perception of the environment and see it as the inventory; the inventory isn't a little picture that shows what you have, but it's what you have to hand.

TVG: Feeding into that, one of the elements of Splinter Cell in the past was the range of gadgets on offer to Sam. What access does he have to weapons and gadgets in Conviction; is it all stripped back?

We're going to have gadgets but the end product will focus on creating diversions; we're going to be using the Black Market so it gives us some freedom to have some fancy stuff - not that we're ready to announced them at the moment, we're stilling balancing everything to see how they all fit. But they'll be modified gadgets or weapons, which gives us more freedom to explore equipment that doesn't exist; it's less constraining than what we had before...

TVG: ...Allowing you to be more imaginative than before...

Exactly, and also to be more focused on the way that we distribute them. In past, Sam had the gadgets and weapons at the beginning of a mission, and it was up to the player if they wanted to use them or not, some players were only using two gadgets throughout the game. How many players were using the Sticky Shockers and shooting them into water? There are so many other things that you could do too. Not so many players went around discovering them, so with gadgets now we're going give them to players and push them to use them and have fun with them, and make sure that they experience everything that we provide.

TVG: Splinter Cell: Conviction isn't the only next-gen title from Ubisoft to utilise the crowd as part of the gameplay, it's something that Assassin's Creed will also be using. Can you explain how they use the game's population differently?

Well using crowds is just a next-generation component; there is nothing that we can do about that. If you look at Dead Rising you had a huge crowd; it wasn't doing anything, but the crowd is there - is it like Assassin's Creed? I doubt it. The thing is how you handle the crowd and what you do with it; we've pushed the AI of the crowd a lot. You can have a very specific kind of AI linked to an individual in the crowd which Sam can follow, and after a while they will look at you while they're talking; they'll make groups, and you can do little things to leverage that in the gameplay. When you create a panic, usually they'll [the crowd] move outside a certain area, and you can leverage that if you want to observe a scene and blend in with the crowd and view it like a regular person in a real incident. There are so many ways that you can use the crowd, and we're still implementing other elements. Assassin's [Creed] has a different approach, which is still very efficient for that type of gameplay where you use the crowd as a navigational system. It's really good, I play it almost every week - this isn't the same approach, and it's not the same way to way. It's all about gameplay.

TVG: One of the things about using crowd in the gameplay is the issue of 'clumping', where the same looking people keep on cropping up time and time again. What is being done to ensure that this will be kept to a minimum in Conviction?

It's not a particularly sexy term, but what we use is like a LEGO system. We have all of the different components and the system just runs along and mixes them. Based on that, we also have [body] morphology so people can be tall or short, tall or fat - we can very different kinds of people. We have three hundred characters per level so I hadn't seen two people together twice in the build that we have. It's rich enough to do that already; we're working hard to make sure that there's enough of a variety not to break the immersion.

TVG: Ubisoft Montreal was responsible for the first and third Splinter Cells, now it's working on the fifth. Can we expect that Ubisoft Shanghai [developer of Pandora Tomorrow and Double Agent] will be working on the sixth instalment in the series?

Absolutely not, it's always been about a matter of getting the right idea for a Splinter Cell game, and pushing for it at the right time. It's not about getting a business system, it's more about getting an idea and working on it. It's true that we pushed for it [Conviction] to be done at Montreal, because we felt it was more comfortable for us as fathers of the franchise for the game to 'come home', especially with the change in direction of the series. We wanted to ensure that it maintained its integrity.

TVG: Conviction is coming out on Xbox 360 and PC; is it a 'true' exclusive or will we see a delayed release on PlayStation3?

No, it's exclusive to Xbox 360 and PC.

TVG: Do you feel that despite the release of Double Agent last, Conviction is the first true next-generation Splinter Cell?

Yes and no. What I would say is that Conviction is the first massive turn in the franchise. I think that the beginning of the turn was in Double Agent with the development of Sam. Then you had some pretty amazing graphics in Double Agent, and the pace was a little more active; it had some nice little ingredients in there. Visually it was absolutely next-gen, however next-gen isn't just about the visuals, and that's why we're addressing the gameplay because we felt it was time to create some new gameplay, and use the technology not just for eye-candy but for deeper meaning.

I would say that Conviction is the first true new Splinter Cell, but Double Agent was already next-gen in a way.

TVG: And you're not talking about Multiplayer in Conviction for now?

I will give you one clue: The crowd will be online - it's going to be very paranoid.

TVG would like to thank Thomas Geffroyd from Ubisoft Montreal for taking the time to speak to us. We'll have more on Splinter Cell: Conviction shortly; the game itself will be out during the fourth quarter of 2007 on Xbox 360 and PC.