I hope Sam Fisher is enjoying his retirement. While I pray the Third Echelon agent has found time to relax after saving the world countless times over, I miss him and his tangible impact on the stealth genre in video games. Ever since the release of Splinter Cell: Blacklist in 2013, the series has been little more than a playful reference or cameo for other games to make use of – and it’s a bit heartbreaking.
He’s been in Rainbow Six Siege, Far Cry New Dawn, Ghost Recon Wildlands, and a weird mobile game that nobody cares about. I can’t even remember its name, which speaks to how much of an impact it managed to have. Unfortunately, this seems to be the priority of Sam Fisher nowadays, a former great relegated to brief moments of fan service. Ironically, these homages are inciting misplaced anger more than anything else, and Ubisoft could correct this if it was willing to take risks that go beyond its tried-and-true staple of products. Tom Clancy's XDefiant is the latest in a line of moves like this, with two characters sporting Sam Fisher's night-vision goggles in the key art alone.
Related: It Really Shouldn't Be This Hard To Legally Play Old Games
The publisher is all about live services nowadays, with Assassin’s Creed shifting into such a formula alongside the likes of Rainbow Six Siege, For Honor and Hyper Scape. Shout out to the ten people still trying to find a match in that last one, now you know how Splinter Cell fans must feel. Anyway, it seems like Ubisoft is increasingly wary of committing resources to standalone experiences, one and done efforts that feature a robust solo campaign without entertaining a vast open world, microtransactions, or potential for post-launch DLC.
Everything needs to have a tail, the potential to maximise profits and become yet another ecosystem in a homogenous mass of live services. It’s a cynical outlook, but an increasingly common one that won’t be going away any time soon. Ubisoft has made it clear that it isn’t interested in such things, with the rare exception of smaller indie efforts in recent years that have also faded into relative obscurity. Knowing this trend, the idea of a traditional Splinter Cell reboot feels very unlikely, and if it does become a reality, expect it to be sufficiently detached from what became before.
This realisation wouldn’t hurt so much if Sam Fisher had remained on the bench ever since his last mainline appearance, but it’s evident that Ubisoft is aware of his popularity and how the character can be utilised in other projects. Perhaps the company is afraid of committing resources to an entire project, aware that stealth titles seldom perform if they aren’t attached to an already established property. But isn’t Splinter Cell big enough already? Or perhaps it simply needs to swallow its pride and develop a project that lives within its means, instead of striving to be a monolithic, all-encompassing live service designed to last for decades. It’s okay for games to be momentary, to exist as standalone works of art that stand the test of time because they aren’t defined by current trends. As I said previously, Ubisoft isn’t into that anymore.
Netflix is working on an animated series with the minds behind John Wick, so Ubisoft is aware of demand for Sam Fisher and his cheeky misadventures with terrorism, but it isn’t enough for his own reboot, or even a sequel that brings Michael Ironside’s iteration of the character out of retirement. The series exists in a weird state of flux, one where it is constantly being referenced and acknowledged without ever becoming a member of Ubisoft’s modern repertoire of titles.
I’m not massively confident we’ll ever see Splinter Cell make the return I’m hoping for, and if it’s hollowed out as a live service, I’d rather it stay quiet and exist on the periphery like before. However, if E3 2022 rolls around and we’re greeted with the whine of Sam Fisher’s night vision goggles as the screen fades to black, you can expect me to be the first amongst the crowd to absolutely lose their minds. Never say never.
Next: The Owl House Isn't Getting A Full Third Season And That Really Sucks
