Splinter Cell Conviction Makes You A ‘Predator’

Max Beland, Splinter Cell: Conviction's Creative Director, has shed some light on the rather dramatic revision of the Splinter Cell series.

Supposedly, the decline in sales for the previous series has been attributed to the difficulty of Fisher’s escapades:

"We had a clear player fantasy that we wanted to continue to deliver, but it was clear that we weren't delivering it properly or well enough since people were not sticking to it."

"They were not finishing the games we were making and the sales were stagnating. If you look at the sales of Splinter Cell 1 versus Splinter Cell 4, they go a little bit down. So, our fantasy was good but we needed to approach it differently."

"Splinter Cell: Conviction is the end result and also why the series has taken the biggest leap seen to date”

"We're going to make stealth something you want to use. We want you to be a predator, not a grandmother. Being a grandmother before kind of forced you to be stealth. You need to hide in the shadows because if you're seen, they shoot you and you're dead. But what if we make the shadows something that's interesting and makes you powerful and you use as a tactical tool against your enemies. So that's how we're able to approach our franchise differently while staying true to the values."

Grandmother is a bit of a daft analogy but whatever, let’s hope they’ve latched on to the right issues and have made the right changes.