Splinter Cell Conviction revealed

By Robert Purchese Published 17 May, 2007

It's completely different.

The next game in the Splinter Cell series will be called Conviction, and it will be heading to Xbox 360 and PC at the end of the year.

Details of the fifth Sam Fisher outing were rumoured earlier this month, and it seems Ubisoft has decided not to wait until its Ubidays event to reveal the title.

This time around everything will be different, according to IGN, despite Double Agent's critical success. So the original Ubisoft Montreal team has been called back on board to turn it all on its head.

"[Double Agent] was good, but repetitive over time," Mathieu Ferland, senior producer for the game, told IGN. "After three games we decided to make a big turnaround in the franchise."

Sam Fisher is now a fugitive, pursued by the very government he once served. And to survive he'll need to create an underground network of allies to help him out. But he'll be without all the flashy gizmos he's used to, and will have to rely on using his surroundings and quick thinking over night-vision goggles and remote cameras.

Stealth will still be a key feature, but it's more than simply lurking in darkness. Losing yourself in a crowd and creating distractions will be important, as will using your surroundings as makeshift weapons.

Which all sounds rather similar to Assassin's Creed - the other title in development at Ubisoft Montreal. It seems Sam Fisher will now more closely resemble Jason Bourne than James Bond.

"Improvisation is a concept we wanted to bring to the gamers, as we felt it was one of the strongest shared elements of all spy agents. They have to be able to deal with anything, anytime, anywhere - [but] faster, smarter," Ferland added.

All of which has our appetite truly whetted. Expect more information to crop up soon, as we get ever closer to the looming Ubidays bonanza.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (30) Latest comment 5 years ago

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

  • morriss #1 5 years ago

    Lovely. Future Classic this one! ;)

  • Raid #2 5 years ago

    "Sam Fisher is now a fugitive, pursued by the very government he once served. And to survive he'll need to create an underground network of allies to help him out. But he'll be without all the flashy gizmos he's used to, and will have to rely on using his surroundings and quick thinking over night-vision goggles and remote cameras."

    Isn't that *exactly* how they announced the last one?

  • Triggerhappytel #3 5 years ago

    *Yawn*

    They are well and truly strangling this series by releasing so many in such quick succession.


    Plus - they might as well call it Splinter Cell: we want to be just like 24 and Prison Break. Fans of US TV, are you Ubi...?

  • Tricky #4 5 years ago

    Isn't this going to be using the Unreal 3 engine?

  • The-Bodybuilder #5 5 years ago

    My eyes are on these.
    If successful, then it will be a future classic, and an example of how next gen power can be used for more than just shiny graphics.

  • The-Bodybuilder #6 5 years ago

    >"Plus - they might as well call it Splinter Cell: we want to be just like 24 and Prison Break. Fans of US TV, are you Ubi...? "

    Is that such a bad thing?
    People moan when a series gets stale. They are trying to do something different, and people still moan.

    I just can't see what's so "meh" about the concept. Whether they achieve it is something else, but not the concept itself.

    This place is so bloddy depressing.

  • SBfistfun #7 5 years ago

    "[Double Agent] was good, but repetitive over time," Mathieu Ferland, senior producer for the game, told IGN."

    Would have been nice for him to mention this when it was released.......

  • souljacker2000 #8 5 years ago

    Sounds immense... definitely future classic built on pokemon engine

  • JackyB #9 5 years ago

    SBfistfun - lol. I was just about to buy Double agent. Might not bother now!

  • Physically_Insane #10 5 years ago

    is it me or does this sound exactly the same as double agent?

  • IAmBatman #11 5 years ago

    Double Agent is well worth the £20 you can get it for now.

  • mattigan #12 5 years ago

    I thought double agent was ace!!

  • The-Bodybuilder #13 5 years ago

    >"is it me or does this sound exactly the same as double agent?"

    The premise was that he worked for both the agency and the terrorist.
    Now he's an out and out fugitive.

    I've always wanted an enemy of the state-type game. This sounds right up my alley. A thriller, like alan wake.

  • Tricky #14 5 years ago

    Double Agent was a great game - the multiplayer was a laugh too. Well, actually it was more an exercise in extreme tension, but you get the idea.

  • souljacker2000 #15 5 years ago

    £20 bargain

    / legs it down to nearest game shop

  • brooza #16 5 years ago

    Wasn't this all in Edge?

    There's a 6-8 page feature on it!

  • space_ace #17 5 years ago

    sc1 was a revolutionary game with its use of shadows as the purest combination of graphics and gameplay.

    they keep getting away from that and resembling all the rest.

  • Darren #18 5 years ago

    Double Agent was a disappointment on the 360, I always thought the Xbox version, by a different team at Ubisoft, was by far the better game. Hopefully they're the ones coding Conviction... :)

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #19 5 years ago

    It's going to be built on the SCDA engine.

  • Vin #20 5 years ago

    "Double Agent was a disappointment on the 360, I always thought the Xbox version, by a different team at Ubisoft, was by far the better game. Hopefully they're the ones coding Conviction... :)"

    DA Xbox was developed by Ubi Montreal.

    Conviction sounds like a Bourne game in Splinter Cell clothing. Fucking lush.

  • Eighthours #21 5 years ago

    It's going to be built on the SCDA engine.

    And I heard that the engine was new.

  • BBIAJ #22 5 years ago

    I thought the only Ubi game thus far to us Unreal 3 Engine was Rainbow Six: Vegas, and all the rest, GR:AW, Splinter Cell, were all using very advanced builds of the Unreal 2 Engine?

  • azwipe #23 5 years ago

    none of these games even have antialiasing. really annoying that this 'next gen' engine lacks one of the most important graphics features. I found Chaos Theory a much better looking game than Double Agent on PC. And a better game, for that matter.

  • dudefella #24 5 years ago

    Thank the lord. Double Agent was a MASSIVE disappointment. This cannot be overstated.

  • TheUnionFrag #25 5 years ago

    As long as his underground allies don't net him access to an SC-20K and sticky cameras. Never really got that . . . everyone else in the JBA had "normal" terrorist guns. Why was Fisher given a special modular weapon that can do just about anything he wants it to? HE WAS A GODDAMN TERRORIST! [FYI I nuked the ship, killed Hisham and enjoyed shooting Dr. Aswat in the face].

    Anyway - make it a teeensy bit more realistic in that regard, and I'll pay for and enjoy it. Concept sounds awesome, especially since Assassin's Creed doesn't look that great to me and I need something to sate my desire for stealth.

  • TheJanitor #26 5 years ago

    sounds like crap

  • JaysonG #27 5 years ago

    Prison Break-esque splinter cell would be class Sam already looks a bit like Michael and Linc's older smarter tougher brother

  • Meho #28 5 years ago

    I actually liked (next gen) DA quite a bit because it ditched the 'dark is your friend' approach that nearly put me to sleep during Chaos Theory and tried to do something new. It's far from being a perfect game (the ending was superbly underwhelming for instance) but for a change, it tried to make you think and strategise rather than just lurk in the darkness and wait for silent kills. Also, any SC game where I don't spend 70% of the time using night vision goggles gets thumbs up from me. What's the use of hyperadvanced graphics if I get to look at green, grainy images all the time? Anyway, DA was still only halfway there because it stuck to most of the mechanics established by the old games and as a result not all of the good ideas went equally well. But some of them did. I still don't understand why people slag off JBA HQ missions because for me those were the hilights of the game. They gave you freedom and they gave you tension and you could actually make a plan and then go implement it, rather than just breeze from one scripted event to the other.

    It did have a horrible save system and a totally useless tutorial, tho...

    Conviction seems to be going further into the direction of 'let's do something new' and it's supposed to be using crowd mechanics to conceal Sam Fisher rather than just huide him in the dark, it's supposed to ditch the corridor-crawl approach in favour of improvisation (at least this is what UBI reps say over there on IGN). I know half of this will be untrue and half of it poorly implemented but some of it might actually be new and fresh. Splinter Cell never had the wild, imaginative approach of MGS series (you knew someone had to mention it sooner or later) but they are trying to go into different directions and I appreciate that.

  • Bluetooth #29 5 years ago

    Meho: what ending? All I remember were credits.

  • davisorle #30 5 years ago

    This better be good. DA was nice and the graphics as well but something was missing. Not too much excitement on playing it. It was just nice to play. I hope the new one is good. And don't be judging from what it sounds like. If you bought DA most of you talking shit you mast have realised that a game is never what you expect it to be from what it sounds. Lets just wait and see.