THE MAKING OF SPLINTER CELL: CHAOS THEORY

As the series' return sneaks up on us, we debrief Sam Fisher's finest outing with its creators

- Robert Zak

In a nocturnal world of oily shadows, where darkness cuts into damp surfaces illuminated by solitary swinging lightbulbs, the green-goggled man is king. By the time the third entry in the Splinter Cell series, Chaos Theory, was released in 2005, we were already well acquainted with Sam Fisher’s skill set; with just a year between this and his previous outing, we thought we knew what to expect, and expectations were high.

But in that short time between the two games, the industry straddled a technological revolution like Sam Fisher straddles a narrow corridor with his split-jump; unthinkable things became possible through untapped tech like normal mapping and HDR lighting, playing right into—while also shaping—Ubisoft’s vision for Chaos Theory. This wouldn’t just be the third iteration of an already excellent series, but one of the greatest stealth games of all time.

After Pandora Tomorrow was made by Ubisoft Shanghai, development on the third game returned to where it all began— Ubisoft Montreal. The focus at this time was on making games work on the original Xbox, and the presence of former Nvidia chip designer Danny Lepage as a programmer on the game meant the team had insider knowledge on how to maximize the console’s graphical horsepower (and in turn not restrict the PC version).