A fight became inevitable, and we saw Sam brushing papers off of desks into guards' faces to distract them, using chairs as weapons, tipping over desks to hide behind, and generally kicking ass. As Sam moved through the stage, with only desks and walls to hide him from the prying eyes of guards, the enemy was able to zero in on his location more and more with each hacked server. Security guards wandering the multiple floor stage don't know of Sam's intentions, but they will after the first server gets hacked. The mission was to hack into four servers in an office. The second stage we saw showed an entirely different side to Conviction. and showed off the crowd gameplay as Sam Fisher weaved his way through a busy park to steal a surveillance tape. We were shown two stages in our demo of Conviction. That doesn't mean every level will focus on crowds. In our recent Splinter Cell Conviction coverage, we've written a lot about the crowds of the game and how they can be used to keep Sam Fisher's cover intact. This is usually impressive, but is this really changing the core experience if we compare with games developed for previous consoles? Rarely." Conviction is looking to change that core experience. According to Mathieu Ferland, Senior Producer for Conviction, "The first game to ship will usually focus on better graphics, or animation, or more detailed characters, or simply on more NPCs to be displayed. Ubisoft Montreal knows that we're beyond the first generation of games for today's hardware. Conviction has been developed with a "Mature" rating in mind from the get go. A fugitive can't be held back by the ESRB. Along with the old mechanics went the "Teen" rating. The shadow based style of stealth was ditched in favor of a more active and improvisational gameplay. More powerful hardware was on the horizon and simply creating the same game again with better looking graphics would not be enough. Rather than looking to further polish a critically acclaimed franchise, the team wanted to make something new. After working exclusively on refining the light and dark stealth gameplay for years, the Ubisoft Montreal Splinter Cell team went back to the drawing board.Ĭonviction has been in the makings for two years already with work beginning shortly after Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory was finished. In a way, the company is also taking itself out of its comfort zone. With Splinter Cell Conviction, Ubisoft is taking Sam Fisher out of his comfort zone.