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Splinter Cell remake is in the works at Ubisoft, but it’s a long way off

A Splinter Cell remake has been greenlit, and will be built in the Snowdrop Engine by Ubisoft Toronto

Sam Fisher's goggles glow green in Splinter Cell promotional art.

Ubisoft has announced that it has greenlit a remake of stealth-action classic Splinter Cell. It’s probably a bit early to get excited about it, however – the language of the announcement suggests that the remake is still in the very early stages of development. The company says the stealth game will be built in its Snowdrop engine, which has powered Ubisoft games since debuting with The Division in 2016.

Ubisoft’s production team says the intent is to preserve the feel of the original Splinter Cell, while building a game “from the ground up” that feels at home on modern gaming hardware.

“It’s important for us to preserve the sense of mastery by supporting players who observe the situations, make their plan, use their gadgets, and outsmart the enemy creatively to deal with the challenges they are presented with,” says creative director Chris Auty, who worked as the level design director on Hunt: Showdown before joining Ubisoft to work on level design for Far Cry 6. “Ideally, they end up coming out on the other side with no one having realized you were even there. That’s the essence of Splinter Cell.”

Here’s the announcement trailer:

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It’s been a long time since the last Splinter Cell game, despite sporadic appearances by protagonist Sam Fisher in various Tom Clancy-branded games over the past several years.

“A lot of time has passed since the original Splinter Cell, and even since the last sequel – enough time to miss an entire console generation,” says technical producer Peter Handrinos, a programmer who’s also hot off the release of Far Cry 6. “So now we’re going to take the time to explore what this means for us, for light and shadow, for animation tech, for gameplay, AI, even audio. We’re going to ask ourselves, ‘where does it make sense for us to innovate?'”

It’s probably going to be quite some time before we see anything concrete on the Splinter Cell remake, and there’s no release window to pencil into your calendars just yet. Sam fans can take heart, though: the team says one of their guiding principles is “respect the goggles.”