14 DAY TRIAL // One of the stated aims that Ubisoft wanted to reach with Splinter Cell: Conviction is to make the adventures of Sam Fisher more accessible to the wider gaming crowd, more interested in quick and lethal action in the spirit of James Bond than in the slow progress punctuated by situation evaluation that was the norm for those going through Pandora Tomorrow. The team working on the game even had some idea in the spirit of the Jason Bourne character, including allowing the player to move through enemies by getting lost in a crowd and improvising gadgets.
But there's still something oddly surreal about the incredible efficiency of Fisher as a killing machine. Once he drops into cover and looks around, he immediately spots the places where he can move while still being concealed from his enemies.
Once he “marks” threats, he is perfectly able to take them all about in one quick move, which is made even weirder by the fact that one melee kill is needed to access the ability (for the sake of balance, probably). Such perfection is rarely seen, even in videogame characters. To make more sense to gamers and to allow people to relate to him, Sam Fisher needed to do just one thing: stumble around.
Perfection might be what an agent aims for but it would help the atmosphere of the game immensely if it introduced a random element to at least the move that allows to slip from one cover point to another.
Let's say that in three out of every ten cases, the character trips over something or gets distracted and, instead of being always out of sight, actually remains vulnerable in sight of the enemies. It would help to introduce a more dynamic element to the Splinter Cell: Conviction experience and would make the entire setting seem a little closer to realism.