Splinter Cell, as a franchise, has been on the ice for a while now, but it looks like it may soon find new life as a semi-open world game. The development of the new Splinter Cell was reportedly greenlit earlier this year in October, and according to new leaks, it is being treated as a semi-open world game.
This kind of open-world structure was most recently seen in games like Halo Infinite. The leak comes via Tom Henderson, who has been a fairly reliable source of information regarding major gaming franchises including Battlefield and Call of Duty. According to Tom, the idea behind the next SC game is to make a much more stealthy version of Assassin’s Creed.
The next Splinter Cell could be an open world
Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell game that is in early development is currently scoped as a… You guessed it… Open World of sorts.
“A more stealthy version of Assassin’s Creed”
“Similar to how Halo Infinite has done its Open World”pic.twitter.com/eqSzRplhu5
The comparison between Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell is somewhat amusing, because Assassin’s Creed’s roots are in the stealth action genre. From the very beginning, Assassin’s Creed has shifted to an action RPG style with a bit of stealth.
Splinter Cell, up until Blacklist, was a franchise focused primarily on linear games focused primarily on stealth. Later games in the franchise, Conviction and Blacklist, eventually allowed players to switch between stealth modes and perhaps even play the game as a third-person shooter. It will be interesting to see what approach Ubisoft takes regarding stealth in the new open world of Splinter Cell.
The last game in the series, Blacklist, was released in 2013.
A direct comparison would be Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and even the new Ghost Recon games (which feature Sam Fisher). These games (especially MSG V) showed that stealth could work outside of a linear game and easily integrate into an open world sandbox.