Details about the upcoming Splinter Cell remake have hinted that Ubisoft will modernize the original game's story, which feels like a diversion from the spirit of Tom Clancy's Cold War-era storytelling. While the events of the original Splinter Cell games occurred in the mid-to-late 2000s, the games managed to capture the pulpy, 90s thriller vibes that came to be associated with adaptations of author Tom Clancy's work. After almost a decade since the last Splinter Cell video game, those classic vibes may be sinking into beautifully designed shadows.
According to a job listing at Ubisoft, the Splinter Cell remake will update Sam Fisher's story for modern audiences. The job listing details that the development team plans on keeping "the spirit and themes of the original game" while adapting their characters and the world of the games to "make them more authentic and believable." While this might seem like a sensible move for the series, it appears to be diverging from the hallmarks of the Splinter Cell series which were deeply rooted in Cold War-era espionage and dramatic spy thrills.
Even though he didn't write Ubisoft's titles, Tom Clancy's unique storytelling style was apparent across the first Splinter Cell games. The first Splinter Cell game followed Third Echelon agent Sam Fisher as he rescued prisoners of war, heisted encrypted data from foreign governments, and prevented nuclear disasters. These tense, intricate single-player levels will return, as the Splinter Cell remake will not feature open-world gameplay, as well as the iconic characters that colored every twist and turn of the past seven games. How these levels and characters will change for a "modern audience" is currently a mystery, but the prospect of a modernized Tom Clancy story could be a bad omen, given part of what made previous adaptations work was their post-Cold War flare. Indeed, as other recent Clancy adaptations like Amazon's Jack Ryan series have shown, the late author's works lose a lot of their charm when their intricacies are paved over with more conventionally modern military and espionage narratives.
Splinter Cell Remake - Why "Modernizing" Tom Clancy Never Works
The modernization of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy games has produced diminishing returns in recent video game adaptations. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction, the latest Tom Clancy video game, was met with mixed reviews, while Tom Clancy's The Division and its sequel were generally favored by players and critics alike. In general, recent entries in the franchise have divested from what made it unique to begin with, placing less emphasis on tactical gameplay in favor of more science fiction. Even 2013's Splinter Cell Backlist - a solid entry in the series by all accounts - suffered from a different modernization problem, trading series icon Michael Ironside as the voice of Sam Fisher for Eric Johnson, whose performance didn't gel with the 56-year-old spy.
With what little information there is about the upcoming Splinter Cell remake, there is a clear opportunity for Ubisoft to make a new Splinter Cell work for modern audiences. Whether the game's developer will dodge the pitfalls of more recent Tom Clancy games in favor of honoring the original games' flare for the dramatic remains to be seen. After years of hiding in the shadows, the Splinter Cell remake will soon bring Sam Fisher into the spotlight again - for better or worse.