Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent Q&A

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent is the recently announced fourth entry in the Splinter Cell franchise and takes the established franchise into uncharted territory with its dark new story. The game also marks the franchise's first appearance on the next generation of consoles, with a version being prepped for Microsoft's Xbox 360. We decided to commemorate the occasion with a look at the past and future of the series by tracking down Mathieu Ferland and Daniel Roy, vets of the franchise. Ferland currently serves as the producer for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions of Double Agent and has worked on the original Splinter Cell and Chaos Theory. Roy, associate producer for the Xbox 360 version of the game, last worked on Pandora Tomorrow. Given their familiarity with all things Splinter Cell, the pair offers some unique insights into one of Ubisoft's premier franchises.

GameSpot: Where did the inspiration for the Splinter Cell series come from?

Splinter Cell started out as a sci-fi game with no Tom Clancy connection whatsoever.

Mathieu Ferland: SC inspiration has multiple sources. Originally, it was meant to be an action game. The main character was running, doing cool moves, using sci-fi gadgets. A small team spent one year building a new concept. Then the team was given the opportunity to merge the concept into the Tom Clancy universe. The orientation has changed a lot. Even if it was still very action-oriented, every sci-fi element has been removed, replaced by realistic gadgets and movements. Because we wanted the game to be clearly different than the Rainbow Six series, we slowly have integrated some stealth ingredients. One day, we had a revelation: The programmers proposed a never-seen-before shadow system. We linked everything we had with this new light-and-shadow, hide-and-sneak concept: Splinter Cell was born.

GS: Was Tom Clancy always attached to it? Or did that license come later?

MF: Tom Clancy was validating most of the work done from the moment we decided to link the concept with his universe.

GS: Tell us about how the first game came together. What do you remember the most about its development?

MF: It is very challenging to create a new style of game from scratch. You want it to be different, but you also want it to be attractive and keep elements players are familiar with. When all the core mechanics are coming together, there is still a lot to do with the game rules so that the game makes sense and is cool to play. I remember, five months before the release of SC1, you could play the whole game in three hours... There was no tension; the pace of the game was also quite fast. We needed to change some of the game rules to build this tension and make the player care about what is going on. In the end, the balance was far from perfect, but at least the experience was cool and challenging.

GS: Sam Fisher isn't your typical action hero by game standards, due to his age; was there ever any thought to make him younger--or even young and female?

MF: We wanted to bring a lot of experience to the main character. He needed to be unique, credible, and the ultimate spy-soldier. I think that we made the right choice with Sam, although he could have looked a little younger.

GS: Looking back, what would you say were the goals of that first game in terms of the experience and the gameplay? How successful do you think you were in pulling them off?

MF: We wanted to make [this] the first game in which the interaction with environment is very important for the player. Lights and shadows were a big part of this, but also the use of many elements that impacts strategies and gameplay--things like fire extinguishers, water puddles, throwable objects, pipes, ladders, turrets, and many more. I think we succeeded well on that matter. Plus, the game looks gorgeous.

GS: Was there anything that didn't make it into the game?

MF: Of course, as always. We had to remove one level early in the process. But it was an interesting level, and we decided to produce it later as downloadable content. We also needed to remove the "pick up enemy weapon" feature, because it was impossible to calibrate the game and keep the stealth feeling.

GS: Did you expect the positive response and success with your first entry in the series?

Splinter Cell enjoyed a great showing at 2002's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

MF: We didn't know what to expect until E3 2002, where the game was hugely acclaimed. From that point, we knew we were producing something very promising, but we needed to respond and deliver to this level of expectation. Still, I never expected the game to be such a great success.

GS: What did you learn from the development of that game?

MF: I've learned that it is very hard to freeze a game concept at the moment it should be frozen in the process: at the end of the conception phase. A lot of Splinter Cell's cool features emerged in preproduction, and even in production. It is an iterative process; we would have missed the core of the game experience if we'd been too stiff with procedures.