Splinter Cell 3: PC .. .Preview

It's official: normal mapping is now a trend. Not a bad one, considering the amount of detail it allows, but Splinter Cell 3 is the latest big name title to implement it. As such, character faces are extremely realistic with a bit of a shine to them, and guns look glossy and stand out amongst the environments. Similar graphics improvements show up on the ground, with shiny, reflective floors and frosty glass windows.
At Ubisoft's E3 booth, Splinter Cell 3 is on display in a theater where attendees can watch Ubisoft employees play through various portions of the game. But unlike most presentations, this one involves audience participation -- after the initial portion of the demo, the audience gets to vote for what leading man Sam Fisher does next. One situation might be to break an enemy's neck, while another could be to clear a room. Once the audience makes its choice, they watch the selected scene, though these choices branch so you would have to go to the theater multiple times to see every part of the demonstration.

Some of these choices lead to very impressive scenes. In one, we saw Sam kick down a door, knocking down a guard in the process, and then pull out his gun and take out that guard's partner (gunfire from the SC 20K sounds and looks to have a much stronger feel than any gun in a previous SC game as well). In another, we saw Sam hang from a ledge until he was right below a guard. Then in a smooth animation, Sam leapt up and pulled the guard over the railing, causing the guard to fall to his death as Sam remained safely on the ledge.

The ledge grab is one of many new animations for Sam; he also has more gradual walking animations, the ability to put his hand behind a candle and blow it out, a new-style hostage grab, the ability to sneak up behind a guy near a ledge and push him off the side, new up close knife attacks, the ability to grab a guard's head and snap his neck while hanging from a pipe by your legs, a knife slice that lets you cut your way through cloth walls to create new paths, a way to grab enemies through that same cloth, and the ability to open doors slowly so as not to give away your position.

Towards the end of the demonstration, Ubisoft brought up the cooperative multiplayer portion of the game, which introduced a few new animations of its own. In this mode, players can prop each other up to get over a high wall and even set up a rope so one player can sneak down into a room, Mission Impossible-style, and then use a computer behind an enemy's back.

The co-op game will be a completely separate quest from the single-player game. The general locations in both modes may cross over, but the level designs will be completely different and offer more ways for players to work together. Both the single-player and cooperative modes will be slightly longer than the quests from previous games. We suspect there may be a competitive multiplayer element to the game as well, but Ubisoft is not talking about that aspect in particular at this point.

Other changes to the overall structure include new weapons such as a shotgun that will be useful in extraction situations where stealth doesn't matter, a new weapon selection interface in middle of screen. The game will be out this year on the PC, with announcements for console versions coming soon.


Release date: Fall, 2004