"Splinter Cell: Remastered" official announcement, the future of stealth games?

On December 16, 2021, Ubisoft announced that the production of "Splinter Cell Remastered" has officially begun. This game uses the Snowdrop engine and is developed by Ubisoft Toronto. This is the latest work in this series released in 8 years after 2013's "Splinter Cell: Blacklist".

As a veteran of stealth games, the "Splinter Cell" series was first born in 2002. The series is based on Tom Clancy's "Splinter Cell" novels and tells the story of a series of infiltration operations by agent Sam Fisher.

In "Splinter Cell", which is the beginning of the series, Sam Fisher conducted a series of infiltration investigations by investigating the assassination of CIA spies in Georgia, and finally averted a possible nuclear weapons attack. leading to world war.

When the first generation of "Splinter Cell" was released, the only well-known similar games were KONAMI's "Metal Gear Solid" series and the "Hitman" series that was still in the hands of Eidos at the time. Taking advantage of the opportunity that the market has not yet been fully occupied, Ubisoft also used the core game brand of "Tom Clancy" to launch its own stealth game "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell" to compete with "Metal Gear Solid".

Just like all other stealth games, your goal in this game is to sneak into enemy positions and complete the mission silently.

As a stealth game, the first-generation work of the "Splinter Cell" series announced this time is quite "hardcore". Unlike the follow-up "Assassin's Creed" which has gradually become an RPG genre, in "Splinter Cell" you need to finely control sound and light, create shadows, and even consider the impact of footsteps on different materials on enemies when sneaking. influence. At the same time, the protagonist Sam Fisher is not fast, and because of this, every step you take needs to be carefully considered. One careless move may lead to the loss of the game. Not only that, the light and shadow effects of the entire game appear gloomy and dim, which also increases the psychological pressure during the game. These hard-core designs were very popular in the game market at that time. The protagonist Sam Fisher was affectionately called "Uncle Fish", and his iconic green three-eyed goggles also became a feature of the series, bringing players Quite a deep impression.

In the joint mission between "Ghost Recon Wildlands" and the "Splinter Cell" series, it is hard not to be moved by Uncle Yu's sigh

However, with the development of the times, This kind of hardcore stealth seems to be gradually becoming less popular. Starting with the fourth generation of the "Splinter Cell" series "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent" (Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent), the picture of the series has become relatively bright. , losing the gloomy and depressing atmosphere of the first three generations of works.

In subsequent works, the production team itself seemed to be confused about the future development of the series, hesitating between maintaining the consistent stealth mode of the series and switching to a frontal battlefield conflict: in this "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction" (Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction), born out of this entanglement, seems to want to highlight the exhilaration of combat; and the sixth work that followed was also released in 2013 before 2020. The latest game in the series, "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist" (Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist), returns to the stealth style before "Conviction", but it has become a work with high reviews but poor sales. This may also be the reason why the series has been silent since 2013 - among other IPs of the same type, "Metal Gear Solid" has been difficult to follow up since Hideo Kojima left KONAMI; "Assassin's Creed" has completely moved towards the open world RPG game. Road; and there is no news about the sequel of "Dishonored" in 2016...

In today's game market, the decline of stealth games can be said to be obvious. This type of game extremely tests the level design level of the game production team, and it also tests the player’s patience and game research spirit. At the same time, although times have changed, the essence of the gameplay of stealth games has not changed and expanded. In the eyes of current game players who have tasted masterpieces, it seems that this gameplay has long been outdated.

The "Assassin's Creed" series has gradually become an RPG

But even so, in the past eight years when Ubisoft has released new "New Year's products" every year, there are still some " Fans of the Splinter Cell series are eagerly awaiting the release of the new game.

As a long-awaited new work in the series, "Splinter Cell Remastered" had already been rumored before its official announcement: As early as October, industry insiders broke the news that "Splinter Cell Remastered" "The new game in the series is already in the early development stage, and it was later revealed that the game "is an open world similar to "Halo: Infinite".

This undoubtedly made fans of the series very worried at the time - in recent years, the 3A games produced by Ubisoft have become more and more homogeneous. The transformation of the "open world" format into the mode that it is good at is likely to follow the footsteps of the "Assassin's Creed" series. While such a change may not be without commercial benefit, it's certainly not what fans of the series want to see.

The visual effects of "Avatar: Pandora's Frontier", also produced with the Snowdrop engine

In addition to the changes in gameplay, there is another aspect of this "Splinter Cell Remastered" The highlight is the new use of Ubisoft’s “Snow Drop” engine. This engine was independently developed by Massive Studio, which developed the "The Division" series. Its latest application is undoubtedly "Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora" released in June. Here In the trailer of this game, you can see quite excellent visual effects. However, in the video related to "Splinter Cell Remastered" currently released by Ubisoft, only the video footage of the original "Splinter Cell" can be seen, and no footage of the new game has appeared for the time being.

As a veteran game manufacturer, in addition to the Snowdrop engine, Ubisoft is also famous for the "Anvil" engine that developed the "Assassin's Creed" series and the Dunia engine responsible for the "Far Cry" series. However, with the exception of Snowdrop, the images produced by other engines are all similar. In addition, the gameplay of New Year products is becoming increasingly similar, and it is difficult not to feel aesthetic fatigue. Among these engines, it can be said that Snowdrop is the most stable and expressive of Ubisoft's own engines.

In this way, the game "Splinter Cell Remastered" has the original game for reference in terms of gameplay, and the graphics are supported by the company's most powerful engine. Maybe you will feel this now after seeing it. There seems to be nothing to worry about in this game.

However, there is always a problem that is difficult to avoid no matter what, and that is the Ubisoft Toronto studio responsible for producing the game.

The studio just ended development of "Far Cry 6" a few months ago. Although Ubisoft often spreads its games to various studios for development, the main work of a single studio is often Single line operation. This means that the project just announced may take longer to complete.

At the same time, since March this year, Ubisoft Toronto Studio seems to have been caught in a "resignation wave". Executives who have worked at Ubisoft for many years have resigned, which has also brought difficulties to the studio. It was a big blow. Although Ubisoft took the initiative to raise wages to retain employees, the results were not good. In fact, just after the official announcement video of "Splinter Cell Remastered", Ubisoft also announced that it would recruit new talents for the production of this work. This also raises concerns about whether the shortage of manpower will further affect the development of the work.

In fact, production capacity problems caused by brain drain have frequently appeared in recent Ubisoft games. The new series of "The Settlers" and "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time HD" were both officially announced in the period after Time has announced that the release will be postponed indefinitely. Although the latest news reveals that the two works will be officially released as soon as 2022, it is still difficult to give a specific date.

Various signs seem to indicate that Ubisoft has unavoidable problems in project management and production capacity, which also makes people worry about the future fate of "Splinter Cell Remake".

Andy Robinson, the game editor of VGC, said on Twitter that the development of "Splinter Cell Remastered" is not optimistic

Although it was originally created to compete with the "Metal Gear Solid" series, However, during the development process, the "Splinter Cell" series also gradually developed its own style by relying on the story tone of American heroism and realistic stealth levels.

Now that the "Metal Gear Solid" series has come to an end, Ubisoft has chosen to restart the "Splinter Cell" series, which has to be said to be a bold attempt. This attempt is not only a test of Ubisoft's own engine technology and game understanding, but also a questionnaire issued by Ubisoft to the market and players - if this work can be successful, it may mean the hard core of "fundamental principles" There is still a market for the stealth genre; and if this work fails to meet expectations, it may cause Ubisoft to no longer dare to try this type of genre in the future, or even cause them to abandon the "Splinter Cell" IP.

Ubisoft’s recent personnel changes have also made the undecided release date of “Splinter Cell Remastered” seem even more uncertain. Whether this game is really worth looking forward to, we still have to wait until the game is released to find out.