New Splinter Cell in production claims rumour – is not a mobile game, spin-off or VR title

Splinter Cell – are we finally getting a proper new game? (pic: Ubisoft)

Ubisoft has allegedly started work on a new mainline entry in the Splinter Cell franchise, which may be ready to announce next year.

It’s eight years since the last proper Splinter Cell game was released, with 2013’s Blacklist, and since then Ubisoft has done absolutely everything except make a sequel, with multiple cameos for protagonist Sam Fisher in other games and talk of VR titles and even a Netflix show.

Stealth games certainly aren’t as popular now as when the first game came out in 2002 but it’s still bizarre that the only widely known character in the whole Tom Clancy mythos has been reduced to taking bit parts in other people’s (mostly awful) games.

The dry spell is supposedly set to end though, with a new rumour suggesting that Ubisoft has tasked a team ‘outside of its traditional Montreal base’ to make a new game.

There’s no further information than that though, with the usually reliable Tom Henderson, writing for VGC, only adding that there’s an outside chance it’ll be announced next year.

Whether the game is a direct sequel to Blacklist or a reboot of the whole franchise is unclear but the latter certainly seems likely given how long it’s been.

Whether Michael Ironside will be back as the voice of Sam Fisher is also unknown but that too seems unlikely, given he’s now 71, but perhaps he could appear in the game in a different role.

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Ubisoft has repeatedly said that it wants to make a new Splinter Cell, with CEO Yves Guillemot confirming last year that people were ‘looking at the brand’ but implying that it would have to be a notably different experience to previous entries.

The last few Splinter Cell games already had less of an emphasis on stealth than the earlier ones, which were more heavily influenced by Metal Gear Solid, but exactly what form the new game will take remains to be seen.

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