Interview - Splinter Cell: Conviction

At E3 2009, nobody with a pair of eyes could deny that Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction looked utterly flooring – and it appears to play just as well. Sam Fisher is back and frankly, we're almost positive this will be his finest, most original adventure yet.

After an extended behind-closed-doors demo, we sat down with Conviction's Creative Director, Maxime Béland, for an in-depth discussion on where the game' concept began, where it's going, the level of immersion and a handful of very cool points on what still needs to be done before Maxime and team will be satisfied. He also drops a few hints about Sam's next steps after the E3 mission – so read on!

IGN AU: Take me back to 2005, if you can. You're on the cusp of starting this project – you have a teaser video; the old style of designs. How much has the idea evolved and how much has stayed in place since then?

Maxime Béland: Well, I think the concept we have now is definitely an evolution of Splinter Cell, right? What I'm most excited about is that we're changing what people think about stealth games. We're changing the way we play them, the way we design them and the way the players are going to play them.

I want players to feel that they are Sam Fisher. He's the best elite agent in the world; he's not like me in real life – I am me in real life – I'm slow when I walk, I can't climb pipes – I wanna be that guy! What I tell the team is, I want the player to feel like a predator, not a grandmother.

But it's so much stealth. All the references, moves – I don't know if you saw Vantage Point, but the scene when he's going up the stairs and he puts on the mask, and then he's killing guys with the mirror – Pew-pew-pew! Super-fast, super-silent - but dynamic.

IGN AU: Vantage Point is a really good example – but what other inspiration points did you have going into this iteration?

Maxime Béland: The three 'JB's – James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer. And for me, a personal one is 'Man on Fire'. It's a guy who has nothing to lose; it's interesting for us, now that Sam has lost his daughter. I love what they did with the subtitles – when he was asking a guy questions in Spanish, the subtitles – call them 'alive subtitles' – the would move and get bigger. That was the original idea we had for the projected objectives. Also, what they did was overlap two shots at the same time – there's a guy in the car, but in the window, there's what he's talking about.

It fits with making games, because we want to make games where people are always inside the game. I love the games that have a shitload of cinematics, but it's not necessary. I started as a game designer, I love interactivity and I want the player to be in control as much as possible. Now, with the storytelling technology we have – the projected objectives, the projected movies – they're super-interesting and sexy.

And it's an actual light, you know, that's projecting them. When you're in front, it moves across your body. It's super cool.

IGN AU: Does it surprise you that people haven't really done this yet in games? Well, Grand Theft Auto IV's title credits – but that's it.

Maxime Béland: We've had the idea for more than a year; we iterated and iterated, and four or five months ago we got the black and white grainy filter – and it was like "Okay, we got it." And every time I was watching a new game, I was like "they better not have it, the better not have it!" [laughs]

Now, GTA IV's intro – that was a cinematic! I don't care! If people do it in cinematics, I don't care! But in-game… [laughs] That's important. I want to do it while you're in control, because you're playing a game. Interrogation's the same – we could show you it, but why not just play it?

IGN AU: Don't just show me – let me do it myself.

Maxime Béland: Exactly.

IGN AU: You have this beautifully context-sensitive environment now, and we've seen some wonderful examples of how Sam interacts with it – the bathroom interrogation stuff is hugely impressive. Is it as densely context-sensitive throughout the rest of the game? Or did you ramp it up for the E3 demo?

Maxime Béland: We're building every interrogation sequence to be like that – of course, right? What's cool is, we have this base technology where, if you're holding a guy and you're not close to anything, Sam can just boom - head-butt. He can also detect horizontal and vertical surfaces, so if you bring him towards just a normal wall, he'll bash on that. If you bring him to a horizontal surface, the same thing will happen.

So you have the generic stuff, and that always works. And then, from there, you can look at where you are – okay, 'breakable', 'breakable', 'special animation' – all mo-capped – and the guys are having a blast with that too.