Conviction "not yet perfect", says Ubi

By Johnny Minkley Published 29 May, 2008

Chance of appeal.

Following Splinter Cell: Conviction's disappointing no-show during last night's Ubidays press conference, Ubisoft has moved to quell speculation by claiming the game simply needs more "polishing".

Speaking to Eurogamer in Paris earlier today, global development boss Christine Burgess-Overmard insisted: "The team is still working on it". Nevertheless, speculation on the status of the high-profile project has been mounting after a lengthy information blackout since its unveiling a year ago, further fuelled by a recent magazine report suggesting the game was undergoing a major overhaul.

"Splinter Cell is one of our major IPs, so we don't let them go out before they're perfect, and it's not yet perfect," Burgess-Overmard explained. "So the team is polishing it so we can have a great game to offer the consumers." However, when pressed on a timeframe for the next reveal, she refused to be drawn, adding: "Not yet. When it's ready."

Splinter Cell: Conviction - at least as it was presented last year - focuses on a now-fugitive Sam Fisher stripped of his usual techy toys and forced to use crowds and his environment to avoid detection.

Picture of Johnny.

About Johnny Minkley

Eurogamer TV's Johnny Minkley is a veteran journalist with a lifelong passion for games and the games industry. He uses Twitter more than most people use air.

Read more articles from Johnny by visiting the Johnny Minkley archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (26) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Kami #1 4 years ago

    Who cares? BG&E2!

  • SteveB #2 4 years ago

    I don't blame them. The number of games these days that get ripped apart just from a screenshot is remarkable.

  • Kami #3 4 years ago

    Screenshots are funny things though. It's very hard to judge anything from one or two screenshots - tearing, clipping, framerate, lag etc are all symptomatic in some games with large crowds or large areas. And as we know, some companies have taken the term "screenshot" with some artistic licence in recent years and moved it into concept/fmv and the like.

    Still wouldn't have mattered, all I asked of Ubi for years came true this time and this would have had to have come with free naked dancing girls to even remotely register on my radar...

  • syphaa #4 4 years ago

    God knows how Ubi are going to make the SC series fresh now.
    I think they should focus on the co-op ala' Chaos Theory, that was quality!

  • Razorus #5 4 years ago

    It wasn't the screenshots that dismayed most people, it was the concept of the game. It's highly implausible and unrealistic apparently. I read an article in 360 Magazine that went into detail about it, though I can't remember what the problem was. Seems it requires a lot of polish and a gameplay concept overhaul.

  • JonFE #6 4 years ago

    The old screenshots and trailer were very interesting and fresh, in my humble opinion, so I will be disappointed if they have actually changed this design. I know that SC purists will probably disagree with me, but the franchise needed a clean start and that could be it...

  • OllyJ #7 4 years ago

    hmm, we got 1 very short next Gen SC game that to be hpnest was not as goos as chaos theory, would it be totally boring to ask for a proper next gen SC before they reinvent the wheel?

  • BadBoyBonner #8 4 years ago

    It's highly implausible and unrealistic apparently.

    Like pretending to be a statue or a moving barrel etc?

  • polaris70 #9 4 years ago

    People like me love Splinter Cell because of the Spy/Gadgets and how you use them. It doesn't make sense to me to start afresh and make the game totally different from the last ones, like some sort of Assassins Creed 21st century. If they want to start afresh then make a totally new I.P. But leave Splinter Cell alone and give us a game that we recognize and bought the series for in the first place.
    Edited by 1 at 29/05/08 @ 15:24

  • asphaltcowboy #10 4 years ago

    @polaris70: I bet you didn't even like Double Agent :p

  • polaris70 #11 4 years ago

    Double Agent was great like all the splinter cells where. Maybe the second one was a bit below par but the rest were great games. The guy going on about EA above doesn't seem to realize that EA sells shed loads of games with their updates. If EA brought out FIFA 09 with all the stars in but the game turned into a rugby game then nobody would buy the thing because FIFA is a football game, you see my point? Splinter Cell is about the gadgets and how/when you use them and about the spy atmosphere and the stealth. If you take that away then you might have a Sam Fisher game but you wont have a Splinter Celll game. If it's not broken then don't fix it!

  • ruttyboy #12 4 years ago

    @ JSPOOLE

    What a bizarre accusation. You seem to have confused 'people' in the general sense with the specific 'people' who have commented on this thread.
    Edited by 1 at 29/05/08 @ 15:56

  • Britesparc Verified Creative, ITV #13 4 years ago

    Apparently all future Tom Clancy games are going to exist in a post-EndWar world, so I have a funny feeling they'll be retooling the game to fit that criteria.

  • The-Bodybuilder #14 4 years ago

    After the Too Human fiasco, who can blame them?

  • The-Bodybuilder #15 4 years ago

    >"would it be totally boring to ask for a proper next gen SC before they reinvent the wheel?

    YES. The SC of old peaked at CT. Nothing could be done to add to it, other than rehashing the same game, but with next gen graphics.
    Yet it seems like that's what people want.

  • The-Bodybuilder #16 4 years ago

    @ polaris.

    But what if this new version is a better game?

  • polaris70 #17 4 years ago

    I hope the next game is the best game ever made, but if it doesn't have sticky-cams then it's not Splinter Cell :)

  • systems #18 4 years ago

    The Splinter Cell games should be about modern military-based stealth. As long as it includes the typical SC features it'll be fine. I just hope they don't try to follow trends to much and make it into "Call of Assassin's Creed 4". I've a terrible feeling it's going to become indistinguishable from the Hitman series.

    We want stealth, hacking, gadgets, grabbing people and split-jumps. Case closed.

  • daz_john_smith #19 4 years ago

    I liked what I saw of Conviction way back when footage was last released. I think a change was necessary just like with Resi 4. What I saw of Conviction reminded me of the Bourne movies, I hope they don't stray too far from that.
    Edited by 1 at 29/05/08 @ 16:23

  • YourMessageHere #20 4 years ago

    How many more times can you play the exact same game without getting bored, or thinking it's getting stale?

    Others can obviously do this significantly more than you. There is more to this than just gameplay; I enjoyed the stories, the level design and especially the way the co-op campaign worked alongside the SP campaign in CT. Besides, that exact same criticism can be levelled at Mario, at Gran Turismo, at Halo, and any other series of games with similar gameplay and settings, or films or books with similar plots; people buy media from a franchise because they expect certain characteristics from them, and finding them gone is not an unreasonable cause for annoyance. Sometimes things like this get tired, but I immediately wanted more after CT, and was sorely disappointed by DA. I would much rather see more SC that was like the earlier games than taking something that's refined itself to a level of brilliance and changing it simply for its own sake, as happened with DA.

  • Kami #21 4 years ago

    Resident Evil is a very good case in point though of a double-edged sword.

    The Resident Evil format may have by CVx become stale, but CVx still had enough scares and was well-designed enough to force the survival aspect. By Dead Aim and eventually RE4, the series had become a little more focused on the action. Still very well designed, but I don't really consider them "horror" games any longer. They are action adventures. There's nothing survival about it, the ammo is plentiful, the scares are minimal, the challenge watered down a touch. In reinventing a franchise, for the better or worse, there is often the extreme danger of "missing the point" and leaving the genre you had helped shape behind in favour of different mechanics.

    Splinter Cell is in such a position. It would be very easy to abandon the old style in favour of something a little more gritty, or real, or polished. But in doing so, does it abandon the genre it used to fit into and that people enjoyed?

    The games should be awesome - Conviction and RE5 should be excellent - but let's not beat about the bush here. They're leaving their respective genres for something a little different. It worked for Resident Evil. It'll likely work for Conviction. But they're not what they used to be. They have changed, and they leave behind gaps in their previous genres that will eventually be filled by fresh blood, or by old titles coming back into play. This is both a good thing in that new blood will take it's place, and bad in that fans of the genres being abandoned may end up feeling a little cheated...

    Or I could be talking utter arse.

    Wouldn't be the first time.

  • SomaticSense #22 4 years ago

    ""Splinter Cell is one of our major IPs, so we don't let them go out before they're perfect, and it's not yet perfect," Burgess-Overmard explained."

    Don't let that stop you Ubi. Hasn't been recently....

  • Kami #23 4 years ago

    JSPOOLE, Resident Evil has always been a little more open. A huge science lab under an old abandoned mansion, or a police station? Puh-lease. At least RE3 had the balls to finally admit it was survival horror and despite being spread across Raccoon City, for me the game was more of a challenge and more claustrophobic than it's predecessors or any titles that have followed.

    I also agree that Conviction will focus on a different stealth aspect, I didn't mean to belittle it but it may still alienate people who have been fans to this point. It's a different stance. A newer angle. Fans may be the ones left in the cold.

    But you are right, things do and should evolve. But in the case of Resident Evil, the evolution has taken it far from its original roots and as I said, it's not a survival horror series now, it's an action game through and through. Conviction is evolving, but in the evolution there is always the risk that to make it work, they need to deviate from the path once treaded and well-worn by their own feet. That may be what they are trying to work on now though, because let's be honest here - we saw THREE different RE4's in its development (I still loved the ghosty mansion idea but that's because it was kind of fitting with the series), Conviction when it turns up may be absolutely nothing like the idea we saw before.

    Anyways. We're dancing around the point here, Conviction is under wraps because they clearly want to make sure when we see it again we "get" the point. And I'm sure we will. But at the end of the day, they could have had this game being shown by naked playmates covered in baby oil and BG&E2 would still have blown it out of the water (I so did not just type that, did I?).

    Tht's how big the BG&E2 bombshell is. But if anything, this is a good thing for Conviction... BG&E2 has been a bombshell announcement. Conviction may have been lost in comparison to the teaser. When we next see this game, it'll probably get a far more serious look-in than it would have gotten if it were to have been shown right now.

  • local_celebrity #24 4 years ago

    This is what I reckon has happened.

    They've taken one look at GTA IV....and shat their pants.

    Go on, have another look at the trailer for this game. It's like GTA IV, but without the scale or ambition. Or the weapons.

    The character just seems to meander around the same bit of scenery, having hand-to-hand dust ups with cops.


  • davisorle #25 4 years ago

    @local_celebrity
    You can't be seriously comparing to me Splinter Cell with GTA 4 which even for it's own genre was crap for me.. Not just graphically behind for this time around but also lacking a lot of crap since GTA is another huge IP don't you think? Personally I find GTA too dissapointing and that's my opinion. Nothing much to offer.

    Conviction just needs time. If it thats what it takes to make another geat game I don't care. If it comes out crapy though then I care.

  • MiY4MOTO #26 4 years ago

    @ JSPOOLE

    I agree, I do find it odd (and it must be frustrating as hell for developers) when you get the 2 schools of thought regarding sequels;

    ie; Oh no! They be changing teh formula! or How can they get away with releasing the same game year in year out?

    Personally I admired what Ubisoft dared to do with the Splinter Cell franchise & I thought that the game looked great and sounded interesting enough. I've liked them so far & have played through them all, but it was getting a little bit samey.

    Sometimes a franchise needs a kick-start. Hell, it worked for the James Bond films, it worked for Resident Evil (although for me it peaked with RE:CV on the DC, controversial I know) and I think if they take their time and get it right it could work for Splinter Cell.

    I wish Rockstar would have dared to do something a little different with GTA:IV, as good as it was, it was just rather than more of the same... Hopefully that'll be the next one... Either that or I'll wait for APB, and pray for a Crackdown 2.