It has been several years since he was mentioned, teased, even timidly promised lip service. Today, it’s official: Ubisoft announces the return of the Splinter Cell license, which will go through the remake box.
The very first episode of the adventures of Sam Fisher, released in 2002 on Xbox first of the name, will therefore be the subject of a remake in due form. While a new episode exclusive to helmets Oculus Meta had allowed the Splinter Cell saga to return to the front of the stage, eight years after the release of the episode Blacklist, it is to the studio Ubisoft Toronto that it returns once again the honor of offering a second youth to the series.
Stay true
Because a lot of water has flowed under the bridges since the remarkable disappearance of Sam Fisher, and no image is currently available, Ubisoft preferred to bet on nostalgia, and recalls in a video of a ten minutes why Splinter Cell has established itself from its founding opus as the new strong license of the publisher. Almost 20 years later, and after a long absence, it was necessary a priori to go through the remake box to restart the machine, as explained by part of the already formed team:
A remake takes the elements of a remaster and goes a little further. The first Splinter Cell offered a lot of amazing and revolutionary things when it was released 19 years ago. The “gamer” audience now has an even more refined palate, and I think we need to go through a remake rather than a remaster. While we’re still in the very early stages of development, what we’re trying to do is make sure that the spirit of the early games stays intact, and keep the Splinter Cell identity. We’re going to keep its linear aspect like the original games, not make it an open world.
The developers of Ubisoft Toronto therefore intend to keep the infiltration aspect that made all the salt of Splinter Cell, and judiciously break with the all too systematic application of an open world in recent Ubisoft productions:
In a Splinter Cell map, every square inch is intentional. Each square centimeter is part of a choice, or directly offers a choice, a direct branch. This gameplay density is at the fore in Splinter Cell, and it’s a parameter that will be really, really important to us. The gaming experience we are aiming for must capture the essence of what gamers may have felt back then.
Between tradition and modernity?
To relaunch the Splinter Cell adventure, Ubisoft Toronto will rely on the Snowdrop Engine, the same proprietary engine on which the very next-gen Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and the future Star Wars game announced earlier this year will also run.. The remake will thus have the heavy task of bringing the license into a certain form of modernity, but also of making it known to a new audience, which has had plenty of time to cut its teeth on the competitor Hitman:
A lot of time has passed since the first Splinter Cell, and even since the last one – enough time to miss an entire generation of consoles. Now we’re going to take the time to explore what it means to us, in terms of light and shadow, thinking about animation technology, gameplay, AI, and even audio. We’re going to ask ourselves, “where does it make sense for us to innovate? What is it that not only fits the legacy, but brings the game to a level that is expected of us,” and how can we surprise our players? ” We want to offer them something new, while also connecting them to that feeling they had two decades ago, playing this masterpiece for the first time.
If the basic team is already formed, Ubisoft Toronto is now officially recruiting to make Splinter Cell Remake, which should – hopefully – be released on PC, and next-generation consoles.
