"I'm not going to go into the whole story," says Splinter Cell: Blacklist creative director Maxime Béland during an interview with Joystiq at PAX 2012, "but Conviction was kind of a rescue job for me." As the last game in the Splinter Cell series (that also served as a more action-oriented reboot), Conviction ended up doing fairly well at retail. But Béland says that he and another producer were "brought in because it wasn't going well. We changed the direction and kind of shipped the game in two years. So Conviction is very sweet and sour for me."

Soon after Conviction's release, Béland says he and his team sat down to put together a spreadsheet, going through over 80 reviews of the game and marking out what features were most mentioned, and which were most positively or negatively received. The black-and-white graphics during gameplay weren't well liked, so this past E3 when Béland announced Blacklist, one of the first things he said was that black-and-white was out.

Players felt the single-player part of Conviction "was too short, and the scope of the game wasn't big enough," so growing the world of Sam Fisher has become a priority for Blacklist. And the least-liked feature of Blacklist? Fans really missed the spy vs. mercs competitive gameplay mode. That's why for Blacklist, it's implemented right back in there. "Easiest decision of my life," says Béland.