PR: I think that you hit the nail on the head. With Archer and Kestrel, are they a throwback to the old-school Splinter Cell games because they do have the support of their agencies? Or is it some sort of hybrid gameplay? What were you going for? Part of the story and drama in Splinter Cell games is that Sam is no longer with the agency and is running around on his own.
At that point, we broached this notion of, "What if we have agents that were working for rival agencies that were working together?" It would create this interesting dynamic. It doesn't have to be in the U.S., it doesn't have to be in Malta as his story starts. Once we looked at what we were trying to do with Conviction, what we were trying to do with mechanics like Mark and Execute, Last Known Position, and all of these predatory tools for stalking the AI, we realized that co-op was 1) the way to go, and 2) because Sam's story is so personal, it's so much about his personal vendetta, if you will, that in a way, co-op afforded us an opportunity to get back to that core classic Splinter Cell framework of a secret agent on a mission with the backing of an organization.Ī little bit later after that, there was the idea that this has already been done before, so what can we bring to it that's new and fresh? For one thing, if we take the notion that we could be telling a story that is connected to Sam's but perhaps not happening at the same time, then that opens the door for us to have essentially adventures taking place in a totally different geographic location than where Sam's going to be. We tossed around a lot of different ideas about how co-op and multiplayer could work. WP: Is that how the two new multiplayer characters came into being, rather than having you play as Sam Fisher? As soon as we started talking about that in the context of single-player, in the context of Sam Fisher, then the next logical step was, "Fine, how do we do that in a multiplayer context?"
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We wanted to make it a little more dynamic and try to make the players feel like they could move in and out of stealth and action a little more fluidly. We wanted to make it a lot less about sitting up in a tree for six hours, watching one guy patrol around. We knew that we had this important idea that we wanted to try and communicate about stealth-action gameplay. As part of the second phase of development, there was a revisiting of both single-player and multiplayer, but it was really done in tandem. As you know, Conviction went through a couple of different phases of development. Really, the origins of multiplayer were pretty early on in the process. Our creative director, Max Beland, has been responsible for ensuring that the whole package is consistent, whether it's single- or multiplayer. PR: Basically, it's one team that's been working on the whole game, and then we obviously have dedicated resources focusing on the multiplayer part of it, but it's all been developed under the same creative vision. WP: How did the multiplayer come into this? Was this a situation where the team was working on single-player and you decided you wanted to add multiplayer? Were you working on multiplayer separately and then brought it into a single-player game? I'm Patrick Redding, and I'm the game director for multiplayer on Splinter Cell: Conviction. WP: Who has the honor to speak with us? State your name, rank and occupation! Now a renegade, Fisher finds himself in a race against time to thwart a deadly terrorist plot that threatens millions. An investigation into his daughter’s death unwittingly leads former agent Sam Fisher to discover he’s been betrayed by his prior agency, the Third Echelon.