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Splinter Cell: Conviction
Ubisoft’s controversial stealth sequel forms the backbone of its games today
By Jeremy Peel
Developer/publisher-Ubisoft (Ubisoft Montreal)
Format-PC, OnLive, Xbox 360
Release-2010
Good hunters use the whole animal. That’s what we’re told apocryphally, at least – that the greatest tribute the killer can pay the beast, short of not killing it in the first place, is to waste nothing from snout to hoof.
If that’s true, then Ubisoft is an excellent hunter, and Splinter Cell: Conviction its most honoured prize. There’s no part of the 2010 Clancy thriller that hasn’t been reused by the company in some way since. To Watch Dogs, Ubisoft gave the low cover that turns stealth into a line-of-sight maze game; to The Division, the button prompt that sends a protagonist rushing from one piece of cover to the next in a single, dirt-hugging animation; to Ghost Recon Wildlands, the mark-and-execute command that drops multiple targets simultaneously; and to Assassin’s Creed Unity, the silhouette that conveys your last known position, a translucent on-screen chess piece to factor into your plans.
That’s before you take into account all the games made beyond Ubisoft’s borders. Conviction’s mechanics have travelled outward from Montreal, penetrating the walls of game studios all over the world, like the sonic pulses of Sam Fisher’s sonar goggles. As a result, though Splinter Cell has been dormant for nearly eight years, its mechanics feel very much in vogue.
Any game historian can tell you, however, that there is no such thing as an origin point, only older and older influences. For Conviction, the key progenitor was Rainbow Six: Vegas, which game director Maxime Béland had led a few years prior. Updating a hardcore tactical shooter for the age of Gears Of War had been no easy task, but Béland split the difference, building Vegas around a cover system that pinned the protagonist to the nearest wall with a squeeze of the left trigger. When Béland moved on to Conviction, the cover key came too. It kept its prominent button mapping, and became central to the experience: this was to be the first-ever cover sneaker. Rather than bullets, players would be dodging sightlines, putting thick plaster between themselves and the searching eyes of private military murderers.