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The hotly anticipated Splinter Cell: Conviction will “move the stealth genre forward”, Ubisoft Montreal has claimed.
Conviction, due out on Xbox 360 and PC in April, is the latest in the successful stealth-focused Splinter Cell series.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com, creative director Max Beland had some choice words for the stealth genre, and said Conviction was an attempt to broaden the appeal of the Splinter Cell series with stealth gameplay that was “more dynamic”.
“For Conviction what we wanted to do was make the stealth genre move forward,” he said.
“The stealth genre hadn’t moved much since its creation. It was always about hiding in the shadows, being very slow, taking your time, looking at the patrols of the guys, almost memorising the patrols, then like, oh, there’s a camera here, so I need to… So it was a very passive gameplay. It was a very difficult gameplay. And it was very challenging. A lot of people liked it, but a lot of people were scared of it. They were scared of the stealth genre because it was not permissive. You made one little mistake and that’s it, you’re out. Game over. Try again.”
Conviction incorporates action elements into traditional stealth gameplay to form a more cinematic experience than we’ve seen from the genre. Through the use of a new projection system, objectives and cutscenes are displayed on environment walls, lending the game a breathless pace akin to the Bourne movies.
“There is a market for very hardcore stealth games,” Beland said. “I was talking with friends and people at Ubisoft, and the fantasy of playing Sam Fisher, this badass elite spy agent, reaches a lot more people than the amount of people that actually play it. A lot of people are attracted by Sam. They’re attracted by the promise, by the fantasy of being this badass guy who hides in the shadows and does all of these things, but when people grabbed the controller and played the more restrictive and hardcore stealth game, they were like, wow, this is difficult. I need to really take my time. I need to study the patrols. The fantasy was reaching a s*** load of people, but the gameplay, the way the fantasy was delivered to players, it was very hardcore. We went from a lot of people who are interested, to a smaller part who actually play it.”
He added: “We’re in the business of making and selling games. My mandate on Conviction when I joined the project was that: how do we reach more people? If we’ve got ten players who are attracted by the fantasy of playing Sam Fisher, and right now we only have two who actually play it and buy it, how do we bring that to five? How do we bring that to eight? That’s how we started brainstorming about how can we make stealth something that’s more dynamic.”
To see how the game is shaping up, head over to our Splinter Cell: Conviction game page.
