I'm pretty excited about this game, even if no one else is, so I whipped up a quick preview since it hasn't been covered on this site yet.
The Splinter Cell franchise has always been one of my personal favorites in my gaming history. Not only because it introduced a completely new style of gameplay, but because I myself wrote a book which followed the same ethics of using stealth over firepower. The series has been widely acclaimed and highly successful, even though some had questioned why the developers chose to introduce the main character at such an age.
This new episode in the action-packed stealth series takes place months after Sam Fisher's daughter, Sarah, was killed in a tragic car accident. “After months of psychological depression,” says Daniel Roy, associate producer for the Xbox 360 version of Double Agent, “he accepts an unusual assignment from Irving Lambert and goes undercover inside an American terrorist organization operating on American soil.” The rest of the game details are scarce, though in the official trailer, it confirms Michael Ironside's reprising role as protagonist Fisher, although other casting roles haven't been mentioned.
It's easily a very risky move for Ubisoft to set the character in such a difficult position, as the game takes a completely new turn and the plot throws everything else you've achieved in the previous games away and landing you in between your loyalty to the NSA and building
trust from the terrorist organization you've managed to infiltrate.
There are many new gameplay features, including a sort of skydiving mini-game on certain levels. If Sam's parachute fails to open, it requires you to try to deploy it using the same type of mechanism used for the game's lock-picking feature. In one mission, Sam is forced to dive into freezing water to avoid detection and resurface at another point before drowning. Sam's wardrobe has also been expanded to adapt to the versatility of many of the game's new environments, including an urban Kinshasa level reminiscent of “Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter”, in which the player is also given a somewhat pointless pair of sunglasses, which act in the same way as the night and thermal goggles from the previous games.
SC:DA appears to be the most versatile game of the franchise yet. Enemies are spawned at different points each time you play through a level, and certain events may occur in a different manner. Most of the missions present you with multiple ways to complete objectives, making it even more fun to toy with different ideas and increasing the replay value. Additionally, some missions might be completely missed the first time around, as everything you do in the game affects the progress later on, leading to multiple endings and completely new missions you might not be able to play the next time around depending on the choices you make in the game. For instance, in one early level of the game, Sam is ordered to kill a helpless prisoner the terrorists had captured. You're immediately given a decision to kill him yourself, or refuse, at which point one of the other thugs will carry out the order. While particular choiced might not make as big of an impact in the later game as these, some will affect the rest of the game and, as mentioned, eliminate certain levels entirely.
The game is confirmed for PS2, Xbox, PC, GameCube, and Xbox 360 releases in September of this year, with more info coming soon.
Visit the flash site
here, and check the official trailers at GameSpot
here. (Credit to GameSpot for the screenshots and the interview)
-Dillon Chrisco, LOL unemployed
Note: This is the rough draft and I haven't had a chance to proofread it, so there's probably some typos.