Some fans believe Ubisoft has dropped a hint about the Splinter Cell remake.
Ubisoft announced the remake last 2021, but have been notoriously sparse in giving us updates on the project. And of course, when game companies don’t give us updates or reassurances about their games, it gives gamers to speculate wildly. But they may be onto something on this one, for once.
As reported by PlayStation Lifestyle, Ubisoft Toronto updated their Facebook header and profile picture, on the same day that Ubisoft announced that they would reprise their Ubisoft Forward event at this week’s E3 season, once again at June in LA, even after E3 has been ended permanently.
Ubisoft Toronto’s profile picture is the Ubisoft logo, but now themed green. The header, on the other hand, clearly shows us the lights from Sam Fisher’s iconic Multi-Vision Goggles, or as some fans have dubbed it, the tri-scope.
Ubisoft’s last update on the title, from 2022, did reveal that they expected the game to not be ready for a few years. That’s because they are making the game from the ground up, and that includes updating the story for a modern audience.
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell launched as an Xbox exclusive in 2002. Ubisoft’s developers have never been shy about getting inspiration from the Metal Gear Solid franchise. But unlike Hideo Kojima’s pet project, Ubisoft created a more straightforward narrative, that also brings it more in line with the spy fiction of its era.
While Ubisoft takes liberties with Tom Clancy’s novels, the novelist’s inspiration still looms large over the games they made with his name on it. Some people reading this won’t remember the time when Tom Clancy enjoyed a broader mainstream success, with four of his most successful novels turning into blockbuster Hollywood movies.
Those movies include The Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears. Most recently, Amazon hosted a TV series called Jack Ryan, which featured Tom’s most popular character, who was also head of the CIA. As some critics have noted, Clancy’s novels reflected a Reagan era Cold War values, particularly the distrust of the Soviet Union, and how that defined everything America did.
The game also happened to release in light of the aftermath of September 11, 2001. It doesn’t seem likely that Ubisoft’s work was actually affected by those events, because the timing is too close. Subsequent games did move away from those abovementioned Reagan era values, as Ubisoft turned the narrative to a more personal one for Sam.
And that may be why Ubisoft was talking about updating the game’s story. A reboot for Splinter Cell could do for it what a reboot did for the Tomb Raider franchise. Not only did Tomb Raider’s new narrative make it more acceptable to contemporary players, they were also able to improve the overall story and how it was told.
But in any case, even if the Splinter Cell reboot shows up at Ubisoft Forward, it isn’t likely that the game is ready for release. But perhaps Ubisoft will finally give us a real look at the game as it appears in progress.
