This week, Zero Punctuation reviews Ubisoft Montreal’s Splinter Cell: Conviction. Enjoy!

Funny stuff, enjoy!

Montreal-based audio production studio Wave Generation provided recording and engineering services for all dialogue in Ubisoft Montreal’s Splinter Cell: Conviction, and cast characters across multiple languages including Russian and Arabic, the company has announced.

While publisher Ubisoft apparently handled casting for many of the game’s character roles, Wave Generation was contracted to cast a number of others. For the foreign-language parts, the company says it sought Russian and Arabic speakers who were capable both of delivering English lines in authentic accents as well as delivering lines in the original Russian or Arabic.

The company was first employed specifically for the Russian roles; it says it conducted casting in Toronto and Montreal and chose a selection of actors including both native Russian speakers and those who spoke Russian as a second language.

Ubisoft then tapped Wave Generation to handle vocal casting for Arabic characters. The studio says that, because of a similar recent job for another game, it was able to cast from its existing "local network of Arabic speaking actors."

Wave Generation says in addition to the services it provided for full casting of foreign-language characters, it also handled recording studio and engineering duties for all of Conviction’s dialogue.

Here’s another trailer for Splinter Cell: Conviction, from Ubisoft Montreal, coming out April 13th.

This trailer examines the storyline in more detail. Are you all eager to play it?

From GameTrailers:

Sam develops a nasty vigilante streak after his daughter Sarah’s death — here’s your entry to the conspiracy.

You can also find some new screenshots on Joystiq from Microsoft’s X10 event.

This week’s Guest Speaker will be: Patrick Redding (Game Director, Splinter Cell: Conviction Co-Op)! He’ll be here live to answer your questions this Thursday, January 21st, from 4-5PM EST.

Follow Employee #1’s Facebook profile for more details.

Ubisoft has rebooted development on much-delayed title I Am Alive – and is now creating the game with the Splinter Cell engine.

CVG reported this week that the title had been delayed again, and would now not see the light of day until 2011 at the earliest.
Clarifying the reason for the delay, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said:
"We have totally re-engineered I Am Alive. It’s still on the way, it’s going to use the Splinter Cell engine.

"We have amortized all the costs that were incurred with the previous developer.
"Everything we do is fresh now on that product and we think it can be very good quality, but it’s not going to come this financial year."

I Am Alive – a Jade Raymond pet project – was originally developed by Darkworks, but CVG understands that the project was then moved to Ubisoft Shanghai.
According to this latest news, that shift involved more of a ‘complete restart’ than a ‘bit of spit and polish’.

Video after the break: