- Hannah Guy

It's only been a year since Pandora but Sam Fisher is back. The third installment in Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series, Chaos Theory, finds secret operative Sam ready to do battle with separatist guerillas. But as they've done since the series' first installment, developer Ubisoft has set up Chaos Theory to lead the next generation of console gaming.

"We started everything from the beginning," says Clint Hocking, the game's creative director, scriptwriter and lead level designer. "We rebuilt the AI, we rebuilt the rendering engine, we rebuilt the sound engine, we rebuilt the animation engine - we rebuilt the whole thing. We re-concepted the game. And, yeah, it's a big step."

Chaos Theory takes place a year after Pandora Tomorrow and three years after the original Splinter Cell. ("Kinda the same as it does in real life," laughs Hocking.) When an American computer engineer is kidnapped by separatist guerillas in Peru, Third Echelon operative Sam Fisher is sent to find him. But the assignment isn't as simple as it seems, and Fisher is thrust into the middle of information warfare, revolution and a slew of conspiracies.

"It's quite a complicated story," admits Hocking, who not only wrote the script but has had his fingers in the game's every creative pot since its inception. "It's really Tom Clancy-esque in that we have very strong characters who are driving the story forward. But, in the end, the whole story is sort of global in its importance."

But make no mistake, Chaos Theory is anything but small. With almost 300 people working on the project - nearly three times that of the original Splinter Cell - the game's graphics will likely initiate an entirely new level of video game eye candy. Reflective and wet surfaces, and unique lighting effects are just the tip of the gaming iceberg.

"I think everyone's going to be astonished by what we've done with the technology," says Hocking. "The graphics engine is, in my opinion, probably the best in the world right now, and we worked really hard on making sure we not only had the technology to do what the best games out there are doing, but also we worked really hard to make sure our artists and our designers were all really well-trained and really competent."

This technology doesn't just take into account the game's environment. Splinter Cell's characters have also gotten a facelift, so to speak. Especially main dude Sam Fisher.

"For [the third] Splinter Cell, we wanted to not just have more [animation] but have a different dimension to it," says Hocking. "So we made Sam's animation a lot more dynamically driven."

Part of this intended dynamic includes an effect that the Splinter Cell team refer to as "closer-than-ever." Besides extensive interactions with his surroundings, Sam actually reacts to the world, charging his animations with a kind of body language that translates into a more empathetic experience for the gamer.

"The whole idea... is that if Sam's emotional state is reflected in the way his body is moving then the player feels that... As [Sam] gets close to someone, he shifts into this more predatory kind of movement. It starts to make everything feel a lot more tense. You start to feel the emotional state that's being illustrated by the character's body movements. The player really starts to feel what Sam is expressing with his animation.

"It's really powerful. It's really cool."

Fans will notice a few more new details. Not only does Sam now carry a knife (giving players the choice of lethal or non-lethal kills), but there are extensive physical interactions with other characters (including 12 to 16 different attack animations for each position Sam is in - whether crouching or standing). Things like computers can be hacked, and players are encouraged to pick, use and climb on items.

Combined with the improved animation, rendering and the series' already stellar reputation - not to mention a score composed by Ninja Tune artist Amon Tobin - Chaos Theory is one of the most anticipated titles of the year - not to mention a groundbreaker within the gaming industry.

"I think looking for ways to make our games more emotionally engaging is something that everybody in the industry is doing right now," says Hocking. "Now it's not just a matter of making things visually and technically picture-perfect. It's more about making things artistically and emotionally compelling."

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is scheduled for release on March 31, 2005.

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