Splinter Cell Needs To Make A Comeback


Eight years. That's how long we've been waiting for a new Splinter Cell game. In that time, Grand Theft Auto 5 has been released twice, The Last of Us got a sequel, and an entire console generation has gone by.

The franchise may have sunk into the shadows, but protagonist Sam Fisher has done anything but. Since 2013's Blacklist, you can find him in two Ghost Recon games, the mobile game Elite Squad, and as Zero in Rainbow Six: Siege.

It's time for Sam to stop messing around and get back in his own game, I say.

Read More: Splinter Cell 2021: Release Date, Teasers, PS5, Xbox Series X, PC

Splinter Cell Needs To Make A Comeback

There was a time when stealth games were fairly regularly released. Splinter Cell last popped up in 2013, but even in 2014 we got the likes of the Thief reboot, and Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes.

But since both of those franchises are on the ice, along with Deus Ex, and seemingly Dishonored, we're currently reliant on Agent 47 for our stealth kicks.

Sam even acknowledges the dearth of contemporaries in his appearance in Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

Splinter Cell isn't going to bring in the sales that Assassin's Creed or Far Cry might, but it's also arguably the last bastion of 'pure' stealth in the triple-A space. That said, Hitman proved that stealth sells.

The franchise has (almost) always been about slinking through the shadows, shooting out lights and distracting guards with a cheeky whistle. Even the Bourne-ified Conviction offered a stealth game, but one where you felt less like a ghost and more like a hunter.

Imagine a current-gen Splinter Cell that offers realistic shadows, or (whisper it) ray-traced reflections.

Metal Gear Solid V is, at least gameplay-wise, my favourite in that franchise, and Splinter Cell could definitely make the jump to an open-world, too. That said

So many games offer stealth options these days, but I'd do unspeakable things for the kind of game where detection is almost as bad as death.

Time to go back to playing the older iterations on Xbox via Backwards Compatibility, I guess.

For more articles like this, take a look at our Splinter Cell page.