A ton has changed since Splinter Cell: Conviction first showed its face. In fact, its almost an entirely new game. Back in 2006, Sam was a bristly, unshaven, beast-man. 2007 saw him getting a shave and more casual demeanor. Then the game gets shelved for a year to undergo an overhaul. Now, Sam Fisher is mad as hell, and he isn't going to take it anymore. If your daughter had been killed, I bet you'd be pretty pissed off and your mind bent for revenge. For the fifth installment of the Splinter Cell franchise, Ubisoft Montreal has chosen a reinvention of sorts and a welcome change of pace for the franchise. Sam Fisher is walking out on his long-time bosses at Third Echelon (despite threats from up the command chain) and going rogue to unravel the connections between Third Echelon and his daughter Sarah's death from a supposed drunk driving accident.



Sam is much more willing to throw down a can of whoop-ass this time around, which is good because the rogue nature of his new existence has left him without all the cool gadgets he could rely on in the past. All the emphasis on stealth and shadow play are intact, but now Sam has been liberated from the rules of government bureaucracy and has a stronger purpose, he isn't afraid to crack a few heads to get the job done.

This leads to the new "mark & execute" feature. After raking up a string of stealth kills, you are rewarded with the opportunity to mark and execute other targets (which can be a big help in tight spots) automatically after manually targeting them from cover. It can also be used to take out foes (as the demo showed) when you can use the environment (such as a chandelier in this case) to crush a group instead of alerting the rest by downing one by yourself. You've also got the new ability to create a silhouette of yourself while in cover after escaping perusing enemies upon getting spotted. This marks your last known location, also known as the spot the other guys are going to be looking for you. It makes the job of setting up traps or escape routes much more intuitive. You last major new ability (at least in the demo) is using the environment to interrogate enemies. Nearly anything is usable or trashable. Want to up the intensity and smash a thug's head into a door to get him to talk? Cool. Rather use the bathroom urinal? No prob. It all combines to push the badass meter up a few notches.



Conviction is one of the few big budget titles at the show that wasn't running on Unreal Engine 3. It was actually running on LEAD, which is a heavily modified Unreal Engine 2.5. Frankly, you would never know the tech was inferior, especially considering what Ubisoft has managed to achieve in terms of narrative and objective based visual innovations. Everything takes place in-game. There are no pre-rendered cut-scenes. Story sequences and objectives are told via projected videos/images on the surrounding environment. It's a great way to keep you moving through the narrative and your goals without abruptly taking you out of the experience.

"Exclusivity" is a word rarely heard coming from third parties anymore, but Conviction looks to be one of the best examples of a system selling exclusive in a while. Keep a look out for it exclusively on Microsoft platforms (the other being PCs) this Winter.