i love stealth games for some of my subscribers that might be a little surprising to hear as most of my channel is dedicated to first person insanity i certainly love games that burn my face off with fast explosive skill based action but i also have a soft spot for games that give me the opposite challenge to lurk in the shadows be mindful of my environment and dismantle my enemies before they know what hit them metal gear thief hitman i adore all of these franchises for their unique approach to the genre but there was one game built on the foundation of these classics that gave us a more realistic take as well as a lead character that would become one of gaming's legends i'm of course talking about splinter cell developed by ubisoft montreal and released in 2002 for the original xbox with competing platforms to follow splinter cell was a stealth gaming hit sparking a popular and long-running franchise that fans are still demanding and exposing the tom clancy brand to a wider audience but 18 years after its xbox debut has the original remain the height of stealth action gaming what's up everybody i'm kirk and today i'm going to be taking a deep dive into tom clancy's splinter cell to see if it's still worth suiting up for but before all that please be sure to subscribe to this channel for more videos that lurk in the shadows alright let's get sneaking the origins of splinter cell might surprise a few of you the game was born from a failed title called the drift the drift was envisioned to be a sci-fi third-person shooter with advanced ai stealth mechanics and featuring a modular weapon that would allow players to grapple up ledges use various vision modes and shoot cameras into walls despite a few good ideas the game struggled to come together and was shelved after its unsuccessful pitch as a james bond title sometime later the montreal team would revisit the drift and explore how some of its gameplay elements could work within another ubisoft franchise in 2000 ubisoft had acquired red storm entertainment a studio co-founded by author tom clancy to create games based on his novels the tom clancy franchise at the time was characterized by rainbow six and ghost recon two team-based military shooters that featured unforgiving realism and accurate military tactics and equipment a hard requirement for the prolific author to endorse them the montreal team wondered could the drift be reconfigured to be a solo stealth action title within the tom clancy universe the higher ups at ubisoft saw potential and gave the montreal team the objective of making it a metal gear solid 2 killer with their mission clearly defined and tom clancy's name behind it ubisoft montreal set out not only to make the next great stealth action title but also the most realistic soon the montreal team would develop a premise what if the nsa couldn't collect information by conventional means would it have access to a wetworks team or operative to do discrete dirty work the answer the dev team would create was third echelon a secret subdivision of the nsa designed to combat information warfare in the modern age their operatives splinter cells highly skilled lone soldiers who conduct the missions other military organizations cannot and to do so these operatives are granted a unique right the concept at the center of splinter cell is the fifth freedom this stems from the four freedoms once articulated by franklin d roosevelt in his 1941 state of the union address freedom of speech freedom of worship freedom from want and freedom from fear freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere when all options are exhausted the fifth freedom can be granted to splinter cells giving them the right to safeguard the four freedoms by any means necessary whether it be through torture theft or murder it is not granted lightly in fact the fifth freedom can only be activated by blessing from the president you're fully authorized to use lethal force fifth freedom with everybody the fifth freedom is clearly a fictional concept but a fascinating one it's splinter cell's version of license to kill and by rooting it in a historical context and surrounding it in red tape the concept is given more weight and believability to the player get inside his office and access that machine alarms aren't mission critical anymore we're moving into fifth freedom territory to me it's a pure expression of what most tom clancy franchises aim for fictional but plausible just reiterate i said most tom clancy franchises i don't i don't know what's going on here don't make me regret this [Music] canceled a trip to georgia this morning after the suicide bomb assassination of that country's president taking place in then future 2004 splinter cell focuses on the country of georgia after their president is assassinated the country is seized by billionaire combined nicolades in a bloodless coup while georgia seems to benefit by the shift in power us intelligence agencies can't help but sniff something rotten and when two undercover cia operatives go missing in the country the us government turns to third echelon to investigate the situation the cia lost a mole inside georgian president combe nicolaz's cabinet her name is alice madison they sent in agent william robert blaustein to find her and lost him too while investigating third echelon uncovers a genocidal plot being conducted by georgia that thrusts the us into an information war with the country what the hell's going on nicolas just declared war on the u.s what the georgians hit our communications transportation power grids we still don't know how extensive the damage is splinter cell's plot is one of political corruption and conspiracy largely expressed to the player indirectly through news broadcasts email correspondents and memos found through collected data sticks and by radio correspondent mid mission you wouldn't believe the numbers nicolas has been systematically murdering his way through azerbaijan and we didn't know about it nobody did what does he want you can watch the news later rendezvous with junior wilkes for extraction this story is interesting and seemingly plausible and you can get a lot out of it if you choose to but it's not one that the player is going to connect with emotionally no what most players really connect with in splinter cell's narrative is its protagonist sam fisher i haven't been in the field in years sure but trade graft is something you don't forget it's like riding a bike or wearing high heels he's a smooth operator silent and precise like a panther with a strike to match while he is a loyal patriot at heart fisher often has a cynical view of the apparatus he works for he's been around the block enough times to know when to call [ __ ] and isn't afraid to talk back to his handlers bloustein's heart stopped beating 43 hours ago any reason the c.i.a wouldn't know about this nope nice of them to share a hardened professional even the most daunting of missions is just another day on the job for sam that wasn't the deal i made with a woman on the phone listen do i come to your job and tell you how to murder civilians what no so don't come to my job and tell me how to do mine some of sam's best moments are when he's interrogating enemies terrifying them with light chatter and fierce intimidation but for me my favorite moments with sam are the fleeting conversations with his daughter sarah moments that do much to humanize the character i thought you were gonna call last week something came up i'm sorry that's all right were you in georgia honey you know i can't answer that sam's elite skills allow players to have their secret agent power fantasy but his personality makes him feel tangible put these two things together and what you get is a beloved gaming hero say monkey monkey to praise sam fisher is to praise the writer who created him jt petty but also the performer behind him legendary veteran actor michael ironside sam fisher was a role ironside embraced fully making the character his own and even working with the game's writers to flesh out sam's backstory sam was this very kind of one-line two-dimensional character and i kept turning it on they said why and i said because there's no organics to him so he created a back story for him created a family what happened to the family you know why he is who he is and where he goes and what he does what he does and that stayed true all these years for the game it's a performance that still impresses me to this day you get so much out of even simple lines of dialogue grab him and make him talk don't be afraid to use force who me ironside has stayed with the character throughout the franchise's history and while he has had to step away from it a few times due to health concerns the actor still maintains his ownership of the role i never left i am sound fisher now obviously splinter cell is a game pushing that 20-year mark and it's definitely showing its age but that doesn't mean we still can't have some appreciation for its graphics splinter cell was famous for its lighting and shadows which still look great even today the lighting in general goes a long way to give the game its moody techno thriller atmosphere on top of that there is some nice attention to detail paid to these levels it remains believable at least to me the character models look fine sam's model looking the best of course but i can't help but find it funny that the guards aren't able to drop their weapons when put in a chokehold and some of the attack animations aren't quite as convincing as they were back in o2 the game was also notable for its cloth physics which applied to hanging plastic as well this effect in particular blew my mind when i first played the game back in the day as nothing had ever looked so realistic to me in a video game today it still holds up even though at times it can come off a little wonky now just so everyone knows for this video i played through the pc version of splinter cell and applied a few fan made patches to improve the image quality the first was a widescreen fix that let me run the game at a higher resolution and fix some issues with the fov and hud i also applied a patch which let me use the hd textures from the playstation 3 version of the game they aren't a massive improvement but they do make the game look a little nicer now a real big bummer is that the pc version of splinter cell running on modern hardware fails to render the real-time shadows which is very bad as they do serve a gameplay function in some of the levels there is a fix though the widescreen fix i mentioned earlier restores the default buffer shadows using dg voodoo 2. however there is another way to do it by running the game with this parameter which forces projection shadows these shadows don't look quite as sharp as the buffer shadows but i felt they looked a lot more realistic if you choose to play this version of the game and apply these patches play around with the settings and see what works for you i have a link in my description to the pc gaming wiki which details all of this as well as a video from nick930 showing how to install everything as we begin to talk about gameplay keep in mind that splinter cell is a pretty dense game in terms of mechanics there's a lot of cool stuff sam can do and a lot of cool things he can play with we'll touch on all of these as we go through the video but for now let's focus on the base stealth mechanics [Music] splinter cell takes a lot from other stealth franchises obviously metal gear solid was a major inspiration but in terms of gameplay splinter cell borrows heavily from the thief franchise like thief splinter cell is all about keeping to the shadows and minimizing sound with slow crouched movement in order to slip by patrolling guards how this 47 year old's back and knees are able to survive it i'll never know and we're thief innovated by letting players snuff out torches with water arrows splinter cell matches this by letting players shoot out lights much like thief's light crystal sam has a light meter to give the player a sense for how visible they are if the slider is all the way to the left sam is invisible all the way to the right and he's a clown at a funeral where the game gets tricky is this little section between visible and invisible sometimes you can get away with hiding in the zone sometimes you can't it can feel inconsistent at times which is frustrating as it'll seem like you should be totally hidden and yet a guard will still be able to spot you and vice versa but these moments are in the minority the shadow system for the most part is well executed the next hallways the same idea but for sound i'll be monitoring a few hidden mics in terms of sound the faster sam moves the more noise he makes so it's crucial to keep your movement as slow as possible when around guards surfaces factor in this heavily sam is going to be louder on metal surfaces as opposed to carpet or grass but don't get careless even full speed on carpet will likely get you caught you also have the ability to press your back against the wall with a button press much like solid snake useful in getting that slider to inch a little closer to the left as well as shooting around corners and slipping into tight spaces because those are my orders i speak to vyash's love grinco or nobody a solid suite of stealth mechanics is all fine and good but they don't mean squat if you don't have the level design to back them up and while the montreal team would hone and perfect their level designs and later splinter cell entries their first effort here is strong and challenging that maybe leans a little too much into trial and error hello stealth perfectionists better get comfortable with that quick save and quick load key and if you're playing on the original xbox have fun with that checkpoint system because splinter cell can have some cheap surprises sometimes it's on the player like not seeing a guard up on a balcony and other times the lights suddenly turn on it does keep you on your toes though and you want things to be a little unpredictable when you're sneaking into places you don't belong however if it's one thing that might disappoint new players it's that splinter cell's levels are very linear especially when you compare it to the first two thief games which are more open and have more options i'm of two minds on this on one hand more open level design can lead to more player choice and improvisation which brings with it more replay value on the other hand you could look at a stealth game as being like a puzzle with each scenario challenging the player to find the optimal way of getting through without alerting any guards i actually appreciate splinter cell for this reason there's a lot of satisfaction in mastering these levels even if the more open design of later games was the right way to go i should mention too that the newer hitman games do a great job of balancing these two philosophies what i appreciate most is that there's a real sense of these levels building upon each other not just in terms of challenge but in giving the player experience with the different aspects of the gameplay fisher the sun's down time to go to work finding agent blaustin's our first priority the first mission well first if you don't count training has you navigating the claustrophobic streets of georgia riddled with corrupt cops now what are we going to do with him check his pockets i radio hq although surprisingly the beginning of the mission does have you ziplining into an inferno in order to save a mission contact indicating to the player early on that this game is not afraid to throw a few curveballs at them oh they're gonna stay checked out leave the corpse for the fire less to explain to his family the level does a great job getting the player comfortable with the base mechanics plenty of dark spaces to hide but also close enough quarters with the guards to give some challenge it's well balanced with opportunities to use platforming along with some of sam's gadgets sam fisher is a well-equipped man um in terms of his gear you know what i mean most missions he's deployed with a standard 5 7 silenced pistol which you'll use for things like shooting out lights and of course popping fools in the head complimenting this is the sc20k splinter cell's signature weapon we'll cover this a little more later you can also use good old-fashioned grenades which aren't stealthy at all but are great for the game's involuntary firefights assuming the damn things don't bounce away from your enemies combat is actually pretty decent in splinter cell aiming and shooting feels tight and responsive and the weapons feel accurate and powerful and this game was pulling off the over-the-shoulder view before re4 and gears popularized it now weapons are fine and good but no secret operative is complete without an arsenal of gadgets you can peek under doors with a spy camera which is a big help and before i forget you can crack a door open and peek through not nearly as helpful as a spy camera though and it's not super obvious how to activate it you'll likely go through the whole game and never use this the next door is locked sam you'll need to use your lock picks to get through it there's a lock pick in the game which splinter cell turned into a mini game you rotate the thumbstick around until you feel a vibration to lift the pin and if you're on pc like me you just alternate between the wasd keys until it lefts up not nearly as cool but it gets the job done i always thought this was a fun mechanic that added some nice immersion to the game but if you're in a tight spot or just don't have the patience to pick a lock you can always use the uncommon but handy disposable pick which from what i can tell disintegrates the lock high tech gadgetry is all well and good but sometimes just picking up an empty can or bottle and throwing it as a distraction can be enough to slip by a guard or two assuming the ai reacts the way you want them to dude i threw it over there don't come over here don't come over here and good aim with the bottles can yield good results but of course we can't forget the most iconic gadget of the splinter cell series sam's tri-focal goggles featuring both night vision and thermal vision night vision is self-explanatory and very very effective it's only downside being that it washes out the graphics a necessary evil i'm afraid and thermal is great for easily spotting enemies and navigating foggy environments a fun bit of trivia tom clancy was actually opposed to the iconic goggles as he pointed out it was impossible at the time for night vision and thermal to exist in the same device but the devs would argue that splitting it into two devices would make the feature cumbersome and they wanted the function to be kept to a single button press clearly the devs were able to convince him and thank goodness they did i thought the kitchen was closed it's a special order for colonel kobayashvili ah excellent may i always mission two the georgia defense ministry is when the game puts some real restrictions on the player don't let them trigger any alarms at all we still don't have any official approval from the joint chiefs for this operation so one slip up and it's mission over the player has to employ pure stealth but it's still afforded some flexibility also this is one of a handful of levels where you have to use the laser mic which is cool it'll make you feel like a real spy for sure all the bloods on yours and nikolaj's hands unclean there's something back there the ai for the guards is very attentive and a little unpredictable while it's in your best interest just to sneak past the guards there are going to be moments where you have to deal with them and the game gives you plenty of options for how to do so guards can simply be knocked out or grabbed from behind in which they can be used as human shields or once again just knocked out sometimes sam will have to interrogate them which is always a treat what the hell i'm going to ask you some questions when i think you're lying i'll do this i who do you work for there's also a few times a guard will be needed to access a retinal scanner for a locked door the close quarters combat of the first splinter cell is pretty rough especially when you compare it to the later games you never quite have a good feel for how close you can be to an enemy often just using the action box as a signal of when to act and the basic melee attack lacks satisfying feedback oh and by the way always hit the enemies in the back because if you hit them in the front they just get stunned and gyrated around like a cartoon character it's hard not to daydream about chaos theory in these moments if you knock out a guard or just happen to shoot them you'll need to hide the body in a spot where no one will find them this basically means hide them in the darkest part of the environment failure to do so will result in an alarm at a later point in the level and i should mention most levels only allow for three alarms before it's game over so yeah hiding bodies correctly is very important this operation is based around stealth watch the alarms in retrospect the alarm system is kind of silly i mean the fact that just placing a body in a thick enough shadow is enough to hide it is all sorts of video game logic but there's also the fact that the alarms don't really affect your mission the guards don't increase or become more agitated other than the ones that caught you essentially it's a strike system meant to punish sloppy play which makes sense but the trial and error nature of splinter cell can make this system feel more like a nuisance and it can lead to total mission restarts which is annoying it's not a big surprise later games would heavily tweak and even overhaul this system [Music] security cameras rear their ugly heads as well with their pesky sound effects you can usually be in their view for maybe a second before an alarm is triggered best way to deal with them is just to shoot them unless they are one of the black bulletproof ones in which case you have to stick to the shadows or use the handy camera jammer sadly though you don't get this until late in the game why would they be holding onto this rig it's not nikolaj's smartest play that's what got our attention nikolaj is sacrificing several cells to hold on to it so whatever's coming over the network must be critical mission 3 is a short but sweet infiltration of an oil rig in the middle of being bombed by american forces easily the game's most bombastic level and the player can approach it with stealth or go hog wild and turn it into a michael bay movie either way works so long as you don't tip off the technician you have to tail what makes this worth the risk who the hell are you don't ask any more questions answers only and fast the goal of this level is to get the player even more familiar with sam's acrobatics as the beginning is pretty much all navigating and platforming as you climb on pipes and zip down zip lines to reach the rig one thing that sets splinter cell apart from other stealth titles is just how agile sam can be he can climb up fences mantle up ledges and chimney of pipes he can also move horizontally along them too which is good for getting the literal drop on enemies he can even pull out his gun if necessary jumping next to a wall and then hitting jump again lets sam kick off the wall which is useful for getting to some hard to reach spots sometimes with a running jump and if sam is in a narrow enough hallway he can do a split jump channeling his inner van damme now while sam's acrobatics were notable back in the day almost 20 years on some of these mechanics can feel a little stiff ah crap positioning yourself for maneuvers like wall jumps or even regular jumping can feel imprecise and clumsy plus the toughest platforming challenge in this game is getting off a pipe or a ladder next to a nearby ledge the controls here just haven't aged all that gracefully the next couple entries would improve a lot of this specifically chaos theory and the later two games in the series would totally overhaul movement entirely putting an emphasis on fast fluid movement that is effortless to pull off but if you happen to have experienced the later splinter cells first and are playing this for the first time just keep certain expectations in check ah mission 4 cia headquarters cia hq is one of the trickier missions in the game we cannot afford any casualties the nsa doesn't operate in the u.s we don't spy on other agencies i'm not here that's right you've lost existence privileges until the mission's over the start of it has you thinking fast as you have under two minutes to get inside the building before the shutdown ventilation system switches back on again from there it's uncomfortably large spaces that are sparsely lit and uncomfortably small spaces with government employees working around the clock concluding with kidnapping an agent and sneaking him past several guards one of our people has been attacked this is a love hate level for me love the challenge hate the challenge 10 14. the best part though is that this is the mission where sam obtained splinter cell's signature weapon the sc20k modeled after the real life f2000 funny thing though while the text refers to the weapon as the sc20k lambert's audio refers to it by its real-life name he says your f-2000 is in place you can retrieve it in the storage room behind the generator backup i'm curious if this was a goof or a loophole to get around the copyright no matter what you call it who baby this thing is cool featuring semi-auto fire and automatic fire although be careful with the auto fire as it will burn through ammo pretty fast it also has a sniper scope oh but what really makes this weapon are its deployable gadgets first up the sticky shocker little taser dart that will take enemies down in one hit i tend to default to these when i panic if fired at the head a ring airfoil will knock enemies out in one hit body shots will only stun sticky cameras will allow you to recon areas diversion cameras work the same way however they can make noise to draw enemies to them and then gas them to knock them out pro tip both sticky and diversion camps will knock out an enemy if you hit them in the head and finally there are gas grenades which are self-explanatory and good for knocking out groups of enemies most of these gadgets became staples of the splinter cell franchise as they gave the player a lot of options with dealing with the guards non-lethally and you could loosely compare them to garrett's arrows from thief the only downside in getting this weapon in the cia mission is that you can't use it on anybody the lethal part that is but that's what clean attack is for kalinatec is one mission where i allow myself to go full rambo there's no alarms there's no penalty for killing and the guards are mercenaries whose sole objectives are to kill all the employees in the building to be fair though the final portion of this mission on the rooftops forces you into combat situations and there are grenades and explosive barrels everywhere so many temptations it's a good way to put splinter cells combat through its paces which is good because stealthing through this mission is kind of a pain if i had to be brutally honest though it's definitely the unnecessary combat level devs put into their stealth games when they're a little insecure about how much players will enjoy their stealth mechanics but then again clean attack is only one of a handful of levels that puts you into involuntary combat situations and i think it's a healthy breather from the game's usual restrictions oh yeah wall mines are fun move too fast around these and they go boom slow movement is key to get around them and of course the game makes you rush through several rooms of them while trying to reach a time bomb before it goes off but this does a good job teaching players how to handle them in future levels you can disarm them though when they flash green which requires precise timing oddworld players will feel right at home here and then you can deploy them for yourself which can be very entertaining to be clear if you kill anybody this mission's over slip up on this one i'll find a fallout shelter and learn some prayers i'm glad you understand the next three missions all take place in yangon myanmar and are easily the most nail-bitingly tense missions of the game the first has you tiptoeing through the streets to sneak into the chinese embassy patience is key here as patrolling guards are numerous and dark spaces are sparse plus there are climbing portions all around with one false step easily tipping off a baddie it also doesn't help that a lot of these guys have headlamps yeah getting in front of them is a bad idea once you get inside the embassy you meet the dogs who no matter what i do always seem to sniff out my scent and get the guards suspicious i don't know i always lose my patience with them and just resort to giving them pets and treats yep giving them pets and treats no guilty conscience here next you infiltrate a slaughterhouse the most brutal part of this level is getting through the minefield at the beginning which is full of minds obviously but also guarded by two snipers and covered by a searchlight yeah here's where it gets fun you can only see the mines if you have thermal on but with thermal on you can't see the spotlight whereas in night vision it's easier to navigate and you can see the spotlight so you have to be switching between the two modes constantly yeah if tom clancy had gotten his way we would have been tearing our hairs out this is the level though where you get to get real familiar with the automated turret oh boy the turrets your worst enemy and your best friend the devs just love putting these automated turrets near doorways where it's hard to avoid them you can throw out a flare to distract the turret as they are heat seeking but usually attentive players can find something in the level design to sneak around them if you do manage to do this and find their control station you can deactivate them or as i like to do make it so they shoot the guards the last of the yangon trio is the return to the chinese embassy this level is similar to the first mission in the jordan streets in that it's an all-around balanced level albeit far more difficult that will make you use all the tricks in the splinter cell playbook i'm going to shoot myself not in the face although this level introduces an ingenious little trick using your thermal goggles to figure out the codes on keypad doors as the heat from soldiers fingers still linger on them very clever reached the library nikolaj is inside everybody at alert we are retrieving the art finally we come to the last mission the georgian presidential palace while the beginning of the final mission is a frustrating one a spotlight courtyard crawling with guards and dogs that i usually just get lucky with the rest of this mission features some of splinter cell's most challenging and satisfying gameplay numerous guards patrolling at regular intervals bulletproof cameras laser grids and some unavoidable combat with a heart-pounding finale with some insanely high stakes this is easily my favorite mission of the game and the conclusion of it does leave you with a strong sense of satisfaction it's time to get scarce [Music] wait i forgot the bonus missions the original splinter cell featured three downloadable missions taking place on the cola peninsula an early example of console dlc these are included with the digital download of the pc version the first has you infiltrating the hideout of hacker philip mass a character that would have some significant impact on a later splinter cell entry the next two involve sneaking into a russian submarine these three missions aren't too bad they're straightforward but clearly designed with advanced players in mind highlights being dragging an officer through most of one level to reach a retinal scanner and navigating through the close quarters of the russian [Music] submarine i always get a kick out of returning to the first entries in long-running franchises splinter cell was no exception this game laid strong groundwork for the series in fact what pleased me the most in returning to splinter cell was knowing how well the later entries would build upon and improve the series gameplay sure there have been some lows but for the most part the splinter cell franchise has always been consistent and unafraid to try new things it's no wonder fans are so antsy for a new entry put sam in ghost recon in rainbow six all you want ubisoft it's not enough to satisfy us the vr game might be cool though now all that said the most important question still remains to be answered is splinter cell worth returning to today 18 years on sam fisher's debut is understandably a little rough around the edges but what matters is that the core stealth mechanics and lead protagonists still hold up if you don't mind dealing with some hoops to get it running i think splinter cell is still a worthwhile stealth experience especially if you're a fan of the genre but if you're a newer player who's more interested in splinter cell at its best well there's one game you can't go wrong with essentials kidding splinter cell chaos theory or splinter cell blacklist are both excellent and very playable and a good way to jump into the series no michael ironside and blacklist though but hey do consider playing the original there is a certain charm to it be sure to let me know in the comments your thoughts on the original splinter cell and what you think of the series on the whole if you enjoyed the video please be sure to subscribe like and share with your friends it's a huge help for this channel curious about other classic stealth games be sure to check out my video on thief the dark project i post videos weekly so be sure to ring that bell so you're the first to see them i'm kirk and thank you for watching this video stay safe out there you