After waiting eons, millennia and what seemed like the end of an old Earth and the beginning of a new, Ubisoft has finally unveiled some new footage of Splinter Cell Conviction and the game doesn’t look half-bad.

During the live press conference at this year’s E3, Ubisoft Montreal’s Max Béland and Alex Parizeau come out to talk about the new direction the game is going in and how the gameplay and interaction have changed drastically.

It’s cool that the game now seems to have a bigger focus on the freedom of infiltration rather than just infiltrating. Players approach missions in a sandbox fashion, much more similar to Hitman than previous Splinter Cell games. Sam also no longer looks like a bum with the gruffy beard and long hair…sorry folks, he’s a bit more clean-cut now.

New moves have been added that allows Sam to scale environments easier, sort of like climbing around scalable objects or using the environment to gain leverage for access to new areas. New abilities have also been added, such as being able to hold on to a ledge, peep around or over a corner and shoot, as well as new combat mechanics so that players can be more picky-and-choosy as to how they incapacitate (or how much they incapacitate) enemies.

It’s really awesome and the game seems to be shaping up nicely. We’ll try to get some footage up as soon as possible, so be sure to stay tuned in with Blend Games for further news and updates regarding all things gaming.