The Splinter Cell remake will update the game’s story ‘for a modern audience’

The upcoming Splinter Cell remake will include a rewritten story in order to appeal to a new generation of players.

As spotted by PSU, developer Ubisoft Toronto is currently looking to recruit a scriptwriter to update the original game’s story “for a modern-day audience”.

Ubisoft officially confirmed last December that it was working on a remake of Splinter Cell, the stealth action game which was first released in 2002 as an Xbox exclusive.

It said the game was being rebuilt with the Snowdrop engine—which also powers The Division and is being used to build Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Ubisoft’s upcoming Star Wars game—”to deliver new-generation visuals and gameplay, and the dynamic lighting and shadows the series is known for”.

Splinter Cell’s story centres around protagonist Sam Fisher, a black ops agent of the US National Security Agency’s secret arm, Third Echelon.

Fisher’s undercover work sees him tasked with helping maintain world order as cyber terrorism and international tensions threaten to explode into a new World War.

“Using the first Splinter Cell game as our foundation we are rewriting and updating the story for a modern-day audience,” reads the scriptwriter job ad.

“We want to keep the spirit and themes of the original game while exploring our characters and the world to make them more authentic and believable.

“As a Scriptwriter at Ubisoft Toronto, you will join the Narrative team and help create a cohesive and compelling narrative experience for a new audience of Splinter Cell fans.”

VGC exclusively revealed last October that Ubisoft had greenlit what will be its first mainline Splinter Cell game in a decade.

Development sources told us that the title had been put into production as a means of winning back fans frustrated by recent efforts to revive the franchise in the mobile and VR spaces.

Following VGC’s report, it was claimed that Ubisoft could take inspiration from IO Interactive‘s Hitman franchise for its next Splinter Cell game.

“Although we’re still in the very earliest stages of development, what we’re trying to do is make sure the spirit of the early games remains intact, in all of the ways that gave early Splinter Cell its identity,” producer Matt West said when the game was announced.

“So, as we’re building it from the ground up, we’re going to update it visually, as well as some of the design elements to match player comfort and expectations, and we are going to keep it linear like the original games, not make it open world.”

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He added: “One of the things that, from my point of view is really exciting about this project, is that the last couple of games all of us have worked on have been really big worlds. What that means is that the economy of decisions is very spread out, whereas what I love about a Splinter Cell map is every square inch represents intentionality.

“Every square inch is part of a choice, or directly offers a choice, or has a direct ramification. That density of gameplay is at the forefront in Splinter Cell, and that’s going to be really, really important for us. The gameplay experience we are targeting is directly tied to what we want players to feel, to capture the essence back when we were all playing the original games.”