Upon Ubisoft's presentation of Splinter Cell: Conviction and realising right from the outset I was looking at real-time gameplay, I thought back to The Bourne Conspiracy and almost laughed at the attempt that game made to realise a true sense of motion and drama ala its movie namesake. While the ideas presented in The Bourne Conspiracy were good in that they maintained proprietary segments of the license, it failed in crafting a dynamic experience that made you feel like Jason Bourne. I also remembered that in my review of that game I described an ideological vision for gameplay based on the Bourne movies and Assassin's Creed:

Every single time I fired this up to give it another chance, I could only think of how the Bourne story and mission-drive would be perfect if married to an open-world game like Assassin's Creed. The Bourne book and film formula combined with information gathering and decision-making as a result (on a far more robust level than what we saw with Assassin's Creed) would have been perfect, and given Assassin's Creed's combat and movement system are based exclusively on fast-paced movement and context sensitive action, would have kept the Bourne films' visual stamp more than intact.

Splinter Cell: Conviction offers the above and then some. But we have to remember, this isn't Jason Bourne, this is Sam Fisher, and there's a deeper drive to the game that comes in the form of story-telling both from a foundation point-of-view and for sheer ardent presentation.



Sam's daughter, Sarah Fisher, bought the farm in Splinter Cell: Double Agent, supposedly through a drink-driving accident. Sam discovers, however, that this is not the case and so turns his back on Third Echelon to hunt for her murderer and discover what their motives were.

This simple set-up creates two distinct departures from the series as you know it, in the form of a more personal and dramatic gameplay experience based on emotionally compelling narrative, and a completely stripped back Sam Fisher. Basically, he needs to kick arse and will use his bare hands and uber-skills to do so.

Sam is beyond reproach in his hunt, and our gameplay demo proved this right out of the box with the first glimpse at the newly crafted interrogation gameplay/story reveal segments, of which apparently there will only be a handful.

You've likely seen this in action in gameplay videos, but if you haven't, it's a contextual point in the game where Sam beats the crap out someone in a bathroom for information (at least for our demo purpose that's the setting). During the entire sequence you can dynamically throw your squealer around the immediate environment and cause all kinds of contextually dynamic mess. Ramming his head into the urinal, for example, takes a huge chunk out of the porcelain and it smashes to the ground. Pushing his head backwards into a wall, on the other hand, will see him leave a blood stain painted down as he slides from a standing position to sitting on the floor, complete with a damaging crack in said wall. You can ram his head into a mirror and it's contextually crack where his head hits and so on. Moreover, during all of this, as information is spilling out of Sam's ragdoll buddy, we're seeing projections on the wall setting up the story in one of the most visually inspired ways to progress narrative we've ever been privvy to.

Moving from the interrogation, to the streets of Malta and Sam has a target based on the information he gleamed from his target. This is a stunningly detailed breach sequence, which sees Sam needing to infiltrate a mansion where his daughter's killer is apparently residing. We're told this is essentially a sandbox area, and the game will deliver these to you in various quantities throughout the journey. In these sequences you have a number of different ways in which to broach the mission of infiltration. There are guards strewn about the place but Sam being Sam, has skills to pay the bills and can perform a number of stealthy take-downs (or he can just run and gun his way in – up to you). In the instance we were shown, our demoer put Sam on the other side of a ledge to shimmy across behind two guards unawares of his presence. He pulled one over the ledge, dropping him to a silent death (he actually fell into an open skip at the bottom and fell with such force the lid closed behind him. In the distance we heard a cat shriek in fear), while he silently took the other down in the shadows.



In the meantime, a projected mission objective displays across the side of the mansion you can see as you approach it. People are walking about, drinking coffee at cafe's and generally just doing their own thing. It's not really known how interactive these environments or its non-enemy denizens will be, but hopefully players will have a myriad of options when attempting to craft their own approach to gameplay – at least so far, what we've been shown and told certainly points out that this will be the likelihood.

Moving on, Sam comes to a gate and this is the first example of the much touted Mark and Execute feature. Prior to moving on towards his goal, Fisher smashed the side mirror on a car and now has a shard of the mirror with him (which even still has the "Warning Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear" warning printed on it). Using the mirror to peak under the gate, he now has all the info he needs to breach and clear as it were and this is done by marking specific targets (though you can also make parts of the environment, such as lights), then hitting the Y button to make the events happen. It's all dynamic based on the decisions you make, though we're told you need to earn marks by playing the game stealthily, but given the dynamism involved, it should promote some seriously interesting replay, provided the team have given players plenty of breaching options (instead of just stylish had-shots).

We're told the sandbox areas like this will promote various opportunities that cater to thinking outside the box for both action and stealth, which is nice to hear. What's more is the game will equally promote a more forward-thinking engagement experience by giving players all the smart tools an agent like Sam would harbor in real-life.

This is demonstrated next when Sam has breached the mansion but caused enough commotion guards are alerted to his presence. He can, however, make a break for the shadows and as soon as the line of sight with guards has been broken, you'll get a ghostly silhouette indicating where the guards will look for you (as that's the last place they saw you), which then allows for all kinds of tactical recourse, be it taking them out by flanking them, or just teasing and playing a serious cat and mouse game – whatever the choice, it made me want the game more and more to explore all of these tantalising options.



Above the new tools, I honestly can't stress enough how amazing this game looks. There must be some serious visual competition going on over at Ubisoft Montreal between the Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell teams. And this visual flair is consistently added to with the inclusion of our projected narrative moments and mission guides. The real test though, will come in just how dynamic gameplay actually is with this simplified yet more tangible shift in interaction.

The demonstration we sat through was shown in the same order at various press events and even as a developer video, which so far does not reveal how non-linear approach to the game's interactive formula will be. Though in saying that we were told there's a massive amount of scripting that will cater to a player's options, of which it appears there are many.

For more information, be sure to check out our Splinter Cell: Conviction game page and hold fast for a full video interview early next week.