It's been a while since I did one of these and I do want to keep this series alive, so here is another level design analysis but now on the Splinter Cell franchise. Before I get started, I would like to give a disclaimer that I am covering Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, Splinter Cell Double Agent "V2", and Splinter Cell Blacklist. So let's go:
Splinter Cell is a rather fascinating franchise in that basically combined aspects of 3 stealth game franchises. It has the verticality of Tenchu, the themes and setting of Metal Gear Solid and most importantly it took the sound design and light and dark mechanics from the Thief franchise. By combing aspects of all 3 franchises Splinter Cell stood out from many games at the time.
Now what else that makes Splinter Cell stand out? It's how the levels are put together. Here is the thing with Splinter Cell, compared to Thief and even stuff like the Hitman games and the first Deus Ex game, Splinter Cell at its heart has always been more "linear" compared to those games even Chaos Theory, the most "open" game in the series. The word "linear" tends to get a really bad reputation but I argue being linear on its own is not a bad thing, it's the level of challenge and the amount moment to moment decision making the player does in those levels is what makes or break level design in any game, regardless of it being "linear".
So with that out of the way, how does Splinter Cell handle being more "linear" compared to Thief 1 and 2, some of the Hitmans and Deus Ex? The thing is, those games I mentioned gives you one massive level to explore and you can do your assigned objectives in any order you want or have a number of ways of tackling your objectives. Splinter Cell adheres to the latter, but not the former. Splinter Cell is what I like to call it "open stealth room challenges". The original game and Pandora Tomorrow are this but are much more strict in how you can do it. You do have another way of solving the stealth room in both games. For example, in both games you can either, knock everyone in the room(as long as it's not people who need to stay conscious for the mission), you can shoot everyone in the head using the pistol or the 40K as long as no one spots you and the mission gives you the "Fifth Freedom", you can use the various gadgets like Sticky Shockers, Airfoil Rounds, Stick Cameras, you can find an alternate hidden route where you can bypass guards entirely, or you can use the guard AI to lure them over to you and you can knock them out or "ghost" past them after destroying the lights easier in Pandora Tomorrow since it introduces the "whistle" feature. Splinter Cell for me, tends to be at its most fun when you combine all of these tactics in every level. The only issue with these 2 games is that guard AI is spotty, guards are very trigger happy and can kill you super quickly, and some of these tactics requires you to hide bodies a lot or else you can trigger an alarm since 3 alarms in these games and game oven even if you are far in a mission. This is where Chaos Theory and Double Agent V2 comes in. Where in the first game and PT, you had open stealth rooms but you had to be careful at all times when playing them due to the issues I mentioned, CT and DA V2 are much less strict and give you more options how to tackle each stealth room challenge. For example, they give you much more open space to move around to avoid guards and add more alternate pathways to avoid guards. It doesn't end there, both games you a light disruptor called the "OCP" which means you can mess with more nuanced guard AI and don't have to worry about possible alerts when shooting out lights like in the first game and PT. Sam Fisher's movement options are improved and his animations feel better. You also get more opportunities for stealth takedowns from ledges, pipes, and from the water as well as a quick tap of the knock out or kill button to quickly takedown alerted guards, you can also find codes or hack into keypads as well. Also there is various shortcuts like crawl spaces and cutting cloth for an alternate path.
So what am I saying with all this? The core philosophy of the 1st two Splinter Cells remain but are vastly expanded upon and have much more options within the stealth rooms themselves. CT and DA V2 are more of interconnected stealth rooms rather than just a straight line each featuring a stealth room.
Here is the thing with CT's level design, it is very much a linear game like I said, all the objectives the player has to do in every mission must be completed in a certain order and backtracking is minimal compared to Thief 1 and 2. There are bottlenecks in the levels, especially if you look try to find them but I argue this level design is more like Timesplitters 2, Syphon Filter and the earlier Medal of Honor games, where the objectives have to be done in a specific order and the player will complete them as they go through them, the only major difference is that in CT, the do "x amount of stuff" is optional where in the above mentioned games they are mandatory.
To give an 2 examples in how the levels in CT is ultimately linear, I will use the levels where Douglas Shetland pops up. In the mission "Hokkaido". There is a wooden spiked door at the start of the level that the player can't open or access that leads you to the end of the level where Shetland kills Zherkezhi, if the player tries to backtrack during the level, before Shetland does the kill, he won't be able to go through that door, when Shetland does kill him, then the player is allowed to go through that door from the other side. The second example: "The Bathhouse". The player can go through all the rooms where he is eventually going to confront Shetland and his goons, but if you try to get to Shetland before going to the registry, Lambert will tell you to go to the registry and until you look it up, you can't confront Shetland.
I am not saying any of this is bad, I just find it fascinating how CT disguises it's linearity compared to other games that attempt stealth.
Now, I will get to the next game, Splinter Cell Blacklist. It's rather surprising how Blacklist stays true to the level design philosophy of the previous Splinter Cells before Conviction. In a sense, it combines Conviction's stealth system with level design of SC1, PT, CT and DA V2. In Blacklist, you have all the options that were removed in Conviction like knock outs, gadgets, luring guards to you but you now have Conviction's climbing mechanics and cover system. In Blacklist, it is very much the open stealth room challenges of the games before Conviction but much more modernized. Blacklist has open stealth rooms that the player can traverse and you can do it either by the use of Sam's agility, lure guards to you, use gadgets, or use the cover system to slip past guards. Now giving the player much more enemy awareness due to the detection arrows returning from Conviction. Now the games gives you 3 play styles, guns blazing, ghost, or killing guards using stealth. I feel like Blacklist in many ways was a pretty high note to end the series on, minus some of the forced action parts which might be a carryover from SC1 and PT.
In conclusion, Splinter Cell is very much one of my go to examples on how to do linear game design and was a rather clever way to modernize the stealth genre on consoles where games like Thief Deadly Shadows and Deus Ex Invisible War struggled a great deal due to no longer being PC exclusives. Splinter Cell in many ways was the stealth genre for a console audience done right.
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