Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction is the fifth installment in the Splinter Cell video game series released in April 2010. The game was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, developers of Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and the sixth generation versions of Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Key members of the Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas team, such as creative director Maxime Béland, also worked on the game.
Splinter Cell: Conviction introduces a number of new gameplay features to the series, one of which is the "Mark and Execute" feature, which allows the player to mark specific targets, such as enemies or objects, and shoot them when they burst through a door or window. The player can choose to prioritize these targets, so that, for example, he could distract one guard by shooting out a light in his vicinity and then take out another guard. Another new feature is the "Last Known Position", which occurs when the player breaks the line of sight of an alerted guard. This creates a visual silhouette of where the guard thinks Sam is, allowing the player to strategically flank his enemies. Main target subjects can use the player's abilities against them. The player can be taken hostage by the subject in co-op mode; the hostage's partner can neutralize the subject by shooting them or grabbing them off his teammate.
Other new features include the ability to interrogate characters in real-time and use objects in the surrounding environment against them. Several other features, such as blending into crowds, improvising gadgets, and interaction with the environment, were announced, which according to creative director Maxime Beland would have given the game "a lot of Bourne Identity influence", but were scrapped after the development team decided that going in this direction would be taking too much of a risk. The environment is also used to project mission objectives and key plot points onto walls in order to keep the player immersed in the gameplay during the narrative.
One of Ubisoft's stated goals for Conviction was to make the game more accessible. According to Beland, Chaos Theory is "very hardcore", which turned off many players and disillusioned people from the fantasy of being Sam Fisher. Beland contrasted the earlier games in the series with works containing James Bond or Jason Bourne, who "run fast, they don’t make noise, they kill one, two, three or four guys super quickly" and stated that Conviction delivers a similarly dynamic experience with a emphasis on action.
Introduction
Ten days prior to the apprehension of Sam Fisher, Third Echelon Agent Archer and Voron agent Kestrel are deployed to Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg,Russia to halt rogue elements of the Russian military from selling advanced warheads on the black market. Intelligence from Andriy Kobin has pointed Archer and Kestrel to drug and human trafficker Valentin Lesovsky as the broker for the sale. Archer and Kestrel are to terminate Lesovsky and his associate, Boris Sychev, as well as gaining Lesovsky's contact list.
Archer and Kestrel are later deployed to the Russian embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan to gather intelligence on an arms deal conducted by former Russian GRU colonel Leonid Bhykov. Archer and Kestrel observe the arms deal and learn that Bhykov betrays Tagizade and orders his men to kill Tagizade. Archer and Kestrel prevent the destruction of the weapons crates, learning that the weapons Bhykov was going to sell were Block II JDAM missile guidance kits. Archer and Kestrel make their way to the banquet area to interrogate Bhykov. Archer and Kestrel learn that Bhykov was working with Major General Kerzakov, and that Kerzakov was in the Yastreb Complex, an underground fortress situated underneath Moscow's Red Square.
Single Player
Sneaking aboard a supply truck, Archer and Kestrel infiltrate the Mozdok Proving Grounds in North Ossetia. They manage to secure the EMP devices with the help of Kobin. However, during the middle of extraction via transport plane, Tom Reed contacts Archer on his earpiece and orders him to kill Kestrel. Kestrel however learns of the order from reading Archer's OPSAT device, forcing him to act in self-defense. Archer or Kestrel manage to kill one another, only for the guilt-ridden survivor to be executed by Kobin.
After having disappeared, Sam Fisher is remotely located and contacted by former Third Echelon colleague Anna "Grim" Grímsdóttir in a marketplace situated in Valetta, Malta. He is warned that a group of hitmen have located him. Sam dispatches them and interrogates the leader, Dimitri Gramkos, learning that drug runner Andriy Kobin was responsible for the death of his daughter, Sarah. Sam learns that Kobin is present in his mansion, a re-purposed museum. Upon infiltrating the mansion, Sam interrogates Kobin and learns that the situation was "bigger than his daughter," prior to being captured by Third Echelon agents.
Sam heads to White Box Technologies and witnesses multiple scientists being murdered by Black Arrow operatives. Fisher saves one of the scientists and learns that Lucius Galliard hired Black Arrow to provide security, and that a Black Arrow officer known as Robertson has been collecting and disposing of experimental data with EMP countermeasures. On the way to Robertson's office, Sam gets a short phone call, facillated by Grim, from Sarah, revealing that she is still alive. Sam then reaches Robertson's office and downloads the data for Grim's analysts to study. He later triggers an EMP to prevent Black Arrow's tracing of the download in order to maintain Grim's cover, which also kills Robertson.
Later, Sam infiltrates the Third Echelon headquarters to recover equipment from a Third Echelon employee named Fryman) and retrieve information from Reed's office. Instead of finding Reed, Sam re-encounters Kobin and interrogates him again. Sam learns that Reed was working with Megiddo to smuggle EMP technology into the United States, and activate the technology as cover to assassinate Caldwell and have the Vice President take over the position since he was "in Megiddo's pocket." As a result of facilitating the assassination, Reed would then be promoted within the higher ranks of the government and be considered a hero. Kobin later reveals that he never knew anything about Sarah and only provided a false body to stage her death, urging him to ask Grim as she knew the whole story. Sam confronts Grim (via video communication) with the information he learned, and is urged to listen to an audio recording of former Director Irving Lambert made shortly before his death in New York. Sam learns that Lambert had found out that there was a mole in Third Echelon who planned to use Sarah as leverage against Sam and therefore, compromise him. In order to protect both of them, he staged Sarah's death as a car accident and secured a similar looking body from Kobin, in order to take her 'off the playing field' and allow Sam to to do his job. Despite this, Lambert concludes that he wasn't able to locate the mole, and that his efforts may have been in vain.
Upon entering the Oval Office, Reed prepares to execute Sam and the president. It is revealed that Caldwell was going to shut down Third Echelon and leave America vulnerable without its intelligence services, telling Sam that the president believed that all the sacrifices Sam and agents like him made weren't necessary anymore. To prevent this, Reed planned to frame Sam for assassinating the president, as supposed proof to the country that Third Echelon was still needed. As Reed gets close to Sam, Sam disarms Reed and he and Grim kill Reed's Third Echelon escorts. Sam interrogates Reed while U.S. Army soldiers extract Caldwell. It is then revealed that Reed was the mole Lambert was looking for; and depending on the players choice, Sam or Grim execute Reed. If Grim executes Reed, Grim confides in Sam that he is the only person that she can trust, but Sam says that he no longer wants to be a part of this and leaves.
The story then returns to the present tense, with the interrogation of Victor Coste concluding. Victor states that Sams last conversation with him revolved around the importance of "always having to come back for family," and how Sam finished that same conversation by saying he loves Vic "like a brother." As Victor finishes his statement, an explosion places the facility on alert, implying that Sam is assaulting the base.
Development
However, the game missed its initial launch date, and on May 19, 2008, Xbox World 360 magazine reported that Splinter Cell: Conviction was "officially on hold" and that the game had been taken "back to the drawing board". While Ubisoft never confirmed this, they announced that the game had been pushed back to the 2009-10 fiscal year.
The game resurfaced at E3 2009, with a completely new visual style and a more casual-looking Sam. The developers confirmed that the "new" Conviction had been in development since early 2008, commenting that "the gameplay has evolved a lot" and "the visual direction is simply much better".
The game was given a November 2009 release date at E3, but was later pushed back to the first quarter of 2010. After initially announcing a release date of February 23, 2010, Ubisoft delayed the game again until April 2010. On February 4, 2010, Ubisoft officially announced that the game will be released on April 13, 2010 for Xbox 360.
On March 18, 2010, the demo was released for Xbox 360. The demo includes an interrogation scene, and a gameplay scene which allows the player to fully get a grasp of the game's new features.
