Splinter Cell: Conviction News Round-Up Page 2

30 Nov 2009 at 17:20:23 by Tim McDonald

The other character mentioned in the Dossiers section is – of course – Fisher himself. Raven, for whatever reason, knows very little about our favourite super-spy. In fact, all of the useful little things like occupation, affiliation, and birth details are “Unknown” with the only real information being “Name: Samuel” and “Surname: Fisher.”

The text does provide another plot link, though. “About Sam Fisher, little is known. We drew attention to him, after he came into contact with former agents of the crow Ruslan Lyupulem. We know that he is a former Navy Commando, recruited by the NSA in the program Splinter Cell and engage [sic] in various covert operations. Dangerous.”

Taking that with a few grains of salt because of translation issues, it's perfectly likely that “the crow Ruslan Lyupulem” actually means a Raven operative named Ruslan Lyupulem, but it's impossible to discern whether Fisher came into contact with agents working for Ruslan, or whether it would translate better as “former Raven agent Ruslan Lyupluem.” Either way, barring an insignificant datastick from the original Splinter Cell bearing the name “Ruslan,” this is likely to be a new character.

The other sections contain information that's considerably less concrete, but still intriguing. The third section - “Weapons” - details an SC-3000 rifle, which doesn't sound like the SC-20k Fisher used to use. It's unclear whether this is an older version (17,000 older, presumably) or newer (3-series) but this would likely indicate who's going to get their hands on it. If it's newer, we'd imagine that it's what Third Echelon operatives will be using. If it's older, then it's possible that Fisher will get his hands on some older, more readily-available technology to replace his SC-20k. As we know he'll be able to loot weapons from enemies, though, this seems a little less likely.

The fourth section, “Security,” shows a video camera feed. Not much can be gleaned from this, although it likely shows off one of the Raven safehouses or offices. It's in Russia, certainly, and it might be linked to the coordinates gleaned from the page source code – showing it to be at 19 Nevsky Prospect, in St. Petersburg – but barring a giant globe insignia on the floor and what looks like a lobby in the process of being set up, it's hard to say. It's possible that this will be one of the game levels, or it could well end up being Fisher's safehouse, depending on how things play out with Raven.

The fifth and final section, titled Intelligence, contains a brief description of Third Echelon and what Raven knows about them. The group's position in the US intelligence community is “currently not defined,” apparently, and “earlier information on the status of [Third Echelon] as a unit of the Ministry of National Security [NSA?] […] is wrong.”

“The main objective of [Third Echelon] – to be the likeness [sic] of special forces in the modern world of information warfare,” continues the text, before adding that the group was “launched with the exercise of one operative, [the] Splinter Cell program has been expanded under the new director Tom Reed.”

The implications here are obvious: Third Echelon is much bigger and better equipped than when Fisher worked for it. The other implication, that Splinter Cell: Conviction is going to be a deep, deep game, seems pretty likely, too. We're looking forward to hearing more.

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