The Original Splinter Cell Conviction

Well, hello there! Today I want to talk about the early version of Splinter Cell Conviction. The game we have today, the short and, in my opinion, sweet 5 hour campaign and awesome coop campaign I never got to finish was actually cobbled together in a pretty short amount of time.

Story

Early on, the game would have featured a homeless Sam Fisher featuring dirty clothes, long hair, messy beard. The man is distraught by the events that transpired during Double Agent, mainly the death of his daughter and the fact that he had to kill his boss and closest friend, Lambert. The death of Lambert also brought on the wrath of Third Echelon, the secret government agency he used to work for, unto him, forcing him into the life of a fugitive. The whole story would have revolved around clearing his name and dismantling a conspiracy which took control of Third Echelon. Some of the story beats survived into the final version, mainly Sam being a fugitive, albeit in the final game he is living incognito in Malta, and the conspiracy of Third Echelon being the main focus.

Gameplay

This one is interesting, and pretty ironic for Ubisoft. The game would have been set into several hubs, one of which would have been Washington DC. Yes, Ubisoft moving a linear game to a more open world formula (Ghost Recon wants to know your location). It would have featured the social stealth aspects of Assassin's Creed, brawler style combat, as you wouldn't really have access to guns, and lots of physics interaction. Stuff, like picking up a chair and chucking it at an enemy or throwing someone through a window. Pretty cool, but not very stealthy. This concept got scrapped, mostly because they thought it leaned too much into the Assassin's Creed style (which is the only kind of open world they are putting out these days), but, again, certain aspects of the game were kept in the final version, like the park near Washington monument being a pretty big and open area in which a few agents are hunting you down.

Technology

The game kept its engine the same throughout development, the Lead Engine, an Unreal Engine 2.5 heavily modified by Ubisoft for the Splinter Cell series. It features the light and shadow technology which Splinter Cell is famous for, and really holds up to this day in my opinion. They tweaked it for bigger levels in for both Conviction versions, glimpses of this can be seen during the park and White House levels, and some pretty big crowds can be seen in the aforementioned park and in Malta.

All in all, the concept of this game was pretty interesting, but it wouldn't have really worked for the overall series, so, in a way, I'm glad it got scrapped (and maybe some ideas made it into other Ubisoft games, because they are just too familiar).

Images: cover, 1, 2, 3

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