He discovers that everything is dysfunctional-it's not working as it used to-and at some point, Sam will have to do something that will be perceived as very bad, even if it's not. 'The high-level story after Double Agent,' says Ferland, 'is two years have passed, and there's something that goes wrong with an old friend of Sam's, and he decides to go back to Third Echelon Splinter Cell's top-secret arm of the National Security Agency. Otherwise, it'll seem forced-or, perhaps, feel like a whole new, different game. For the first time since the original Splinter Cell, we're changing the core mechanics, the core gameplay.'īut from a fiction point of view, you can't just muck up the gameplay without good reason.

We decided to change, to renew the brand. We thought that the gameplay was a bit repetitive over time. 'You were given orders, you were told what to do-it was a very cool experience, but this has created a lack of differentiation between each game. 'We realized that with the previous Splinter Cells.there was a lack of emotional attachment with the characters,' says Senior Producer Mathieu Ferland.

Let's look at this new game from the developer's perspective and from a gameplay point of view-then we'll let you know what we think. So Double Agent, despite still being a great game, ended up being more of the same: more hiding in the dark, more climbing up pipes, and more sneaking up on no-do-gooders from behind and putting them down for an extended naptime.Ĭonviction, however, is running with the idea of a 'franchise reinvention' so fast that you may not even recognize it as a Splinter Cell game. Sure, Fisher spent some time in jail in that fourth chapter of the stealthy series, but it was only for one half-baked level (as a 'prisoner,' he still had some of his high-tech gadgets, for chrissakes).

But Splinter Cell: Double Agent didn't deliver on that unspoken promise. After all, you don't show our favorite government secret agent in a mug shot unless you're planning on flipping the script inside out. THE FAMILIAR SLEEK BLACK CATSUIT and all-purpose vision headgear (with the famous, iconic three glowing green circles) were nowhere to be seen, replaced by a Creamsicle-orange prison jumpsuit and 5 o'clock (plus overtime) shadow-Sam Fisher seemed to be in for a franchise reinvention.

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