Watch Clint Hocking Revisit Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Classic stealth
Ubisoft's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is one of the very finest stealth games, our Adam will tell you. Should you agree, or simply be curious about that bold declaration, you might want to watch its creative director Clint Hocking revisiting the game 11 years after release. He's got together with Chaos Theory level designer Mathieu Berube to play through its Bank level and chat about the game, and the two very kindly recorded it for us all to see. Observe:
I enjoy this recent trend of developers revisiting games they made years ago, games which went on to become seen as classics. It's the way they (and I don't mean Hocking and Berube specifically, although...) can stumble trying to remember how the game even works then suddenly jump deep into technical details about individual parts. If this sort of thing is your bag, I really enjoyed John Romero's look at Doom too. Heck, Double Fine have organised twoseries of looks back.
Hocking bounced around a lot after Chaos Theory. He left Ubisoft Montreal after directing the phenomenal Far Cry 2, joining then leaving LucasArts, then Valve, then Amazon Game Studios, before returning to Ubisoft - this time their Toronto studio. He also wrote an essay about immersive sims for us, which I can't say I remember at all. Ace. There's my evening reading. After this, my evening watching.