14 DAY TRIAL // Splinter Cell: Conviction is a videogame built, on the sentimental level, around the concept that a father and his child share a deep connection and that the concern for their safety trumps everything else. The developers at Ubisoft Montreal were not even particularly subtle about the theme, transporting Sam Fisher back to when his daughter was a small child in the first 10 minutes of Splinter Cell: Conviction.
With the young girl sharing with her father a fear of the dark, the Third Echelon man, who is accustomed to striking out of the shadows and using the dark to even the odds against superior numbers of enemies, cannot resist giving her a few pointers on how stealth can work to one's advantage when enemies are around. He uses simpler terms like “the dark” and “monsters” and “sight” but everyone who has played a Splinter Cell before or has the faintest idea about how the games work knows that the developer is actually talking to the player and telling them how they are expected to tackle the game they have just started experiencing.
I felt a little bothered while playing the sequence. After all, Fisher, as the responsible and loving father that he is, should try to shield his daughter from the harsh realities of his existence. Sure, he ain't spilling any state secrets but the kid must know something is wrong when daddy begins to talk about how she could actually gain a tactical advantage on monsters in the dark and drop something on their heads to make them disappear. And the scene gets only weirder when Sam uses a firearm to dispatch some intruders and a sleepy child gets in to see the scene.
Our existence as a race depends on taking care of children and there's a subtle emotional impact in these Splinter Cell: Conviction scenes, where the vulnerability of a little girl is used to show off both the tough hide and abilities of Sam Fisher and the tenderness, which grounds him and allows the fighting machine that he is to perform to the best of his abilities.