Ubisoft’s original ‘Splinter Cell’ team did not like the books – “they were just so awful”

A member of the original Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell team revealed how much he and the rest of the team disliked the books that inspired one of the most successful stealth series to date.

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In an interview with Game Informer, former Ubisoft Montreal creative lead Francois Coulon said that “the planets were perfectly aligned” to create the first Splinter Cell entry. However, lead level designer Ed Byrne shared that a number of developers didn’t agree with the author’s political views at all.

Byrne added that the Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell team was made up of “a bunch of bleeding heart liberals” with scriptwriter J.T. Petty described to be “a sandal-wearing, vegan, NYU student”.

“One time I was having lunch with the guys from PAX and they were big fans of Splinter Cell,” explained Byrne, who is now Marathon‘s design manager. “And when I told them this story, they were like, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, Splinter Cell was ironic? It was an ironic Clancy game?’”

The narrative and design developers “threw in all of these tropes to see what [they] could get away with” in a video game interpretation of Splinter Cell. The story of the 2002 title is not lifted from any of Clancy’s original material as their options were scant.

As such, Ubisoft Montreal had free rein to write whatever it wanted and “every time we added more tropes, the more Clancy-like it became”, elaborated Byrne.

“They were just so awful,” said Byrne of Clancy’s books. “I can admit it now. I’m sure Ubisoft would love to hear this, but I mean, none of us loved Clancy. It wasn’t our dream license.”

Ubisoft’s remake of Splinter Cell is in development now, though it is in an early point in its production. “20 years later, we can look back on the plot, the characters and the overall story of the original game, [and] make some improvements [to the] small things that might not have aged particularly well,” assured creative director Chris Auty.

In other gaming news, Bethesda said that Redfall and Fallout 76 share a lot of similarities, and that Arkane’s supernatural shooter will not be abandoned based on its poor critical performance.

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