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Sam Fisher started off as a ghost, haunting the shadows of the early Splinter Cells, before evolving into the panther of Double Agent and Conviction, pouncing from the dark in a brutal and more savage form of stealth. In truth, though, he's always been something of a chameleon, evolving to reflect changing times and shifting appetites. Blacklist is yet another transformation - but contrary to popular belief it's largely a return to the smarter, more covert style of the original Xbox games. Not that you'd know as much from the game's first appearance at E3 last year: a thunderous run of mega-violence that left more conscientious members of the press and public reeling and that had Splinter Cell's traditional fan-base wondering exactly where their stealth game had gone. The reaction, though, didn't exactly catch developer Ubisoft Toronto by surprise.
"It was exactly what I thought it was going to be," game director Patrick Redding reflects calmly. "The game's intentionally broad, and there's an enormous amount of content that you need to summarise - how do you demo that, and how do you showcase the use of gadgets, the customisation system? The answer is you can't, and as E3's a mass-market thing we had to make a choice to be as explosive as possible. I appreciate there's going to be reverberations from the main fans, and in hindsight there may have been things we may have done differently."
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