After more than eight years since Splinter Cell Blacklist was released, a new mainline game in the franchise has finally been greenlit and is in production, according to VGC.
This has been a long time coming and according to VGC’s development sources, the hope for the new game is to help win back fans who have been frustrated by the franchise’s revival in Ubisoft’s other initiative in the mobile and VR markets. As of right now, the title is early in production but an announcement could come next year but VGC’s sources say there is a small chance of that happening. As far as the Ubisoft studio in charge of the project, nothing is known at this time but VGC’s sources hinted that the lead of the new Splinter Cell project might not be handled by “a studio outside of its traditional Montreal base.”
The last developer to work on the franchise was Ubisoft Toronto with 2013’s Splinter Cell Blacklist so it could be that studio. Especially after the news that the studio is already working on a new project before its release of Far Cry 6, which was hinted at by a job narrative director listing that described it as being “at the helm of the creation of the embedded and emergent narrative elements that make up a living, breathing, reactive world.” Really, if you think about it, that listing could describe any Ubisoft game but it is possible it could be for Splinter Cell.
At this time Ubisoft hasn’t made an official comment on the recent reporting of a new Splinter Cell game. That’s not to say they haven’t talked about bringing back Splinter Cell as last year Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot said in order for the franchise to come back it would need to evolve.
“When you create a game, you have to make sure you will come with something that will be different enough from what you did before. The last time we did a Splinter Cell, we had lots of pressure from all the fans actually saying, ‘Don’t change it, don’t do this, don’t do that,’ so some of the teams were more anxious to work on the brand,” Guillemot said in an interview with IGN.
“Now there are some things and some people that are now looking at the brand, taking care of the brand… so at one point you will see something, but I can’t say more than that. Also because of Assassin’s Creed and all the other brands taking off, people wanted to work on those brands more, so we have to follow what they like to do.”
