On December 16, 2021, Ubisoft announced the official start of production of Cell Division Remake. The game uses a snowflake engine and is run by Ubisoft's Toronto office. This is the latest work in the series to be released in 2013's "Cell Division: Blacklist" in 2013.
As a veteran of the infiltration genre, the "Cell Division" series was first born in 2002. The series is based on Tom Clancy's Novel Cell Division, which follows a series of stealth operations by Agent Sam Fisher.
In Cell Splinter, which begins the series, Sam Fisher conducts a series of infiltration investigations by investigating Georgia's assassination of CIA spies, ultimately avoiding a world war that could have been caused by nuclear weapons.
At the time of the original release of Cell Splinter, the only more famous games of its kind were KONAMI's Metal Gear Solid series and Eidos's Hitman series. Taking advantage of the fact that the market has not yet been fully occupied, Ubisoft has also used the core game brand "Tom Clancy" as a core game brand to launch its own infiltration game "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell", which benchmarks "Metal Gear Solid".
As with all other infiltration games, in this game, your goal is to infiltrate enemy positions and complete missions silently.
As a sneak game, the first generation of the "Cell Splinter" series announced this time can be described as quite "hardcore". Unlike Assassin's Creed, which has gradually become an RPG type, in Cell Splinter, you need to finely control sound and light, create shadows, and even consider the effects of footsteps on different materials when diving into the enemy. At the same time, the protagonist Sam Fisher's pace is not fast, and because of this, your every step needs to be carefully considered, and a careless move may lead to a complete loss. Not only that, the light and shadow effects of the whole game appear gloomy and dim, which also increases the psychological pressure during the play. These hardcore designs were highly sought after in the game market at the time, with the protagonist Sam Fisher affectionately known as "Uncle Fish", and his iconic green tri-eyepieces became a feature of the series, impressing players.
In the joint mission of the Ghost Recon: Wilderness and Cell Splinter series, Uncle Fish's sigh is difficult not to be moved
However, as the times progressed, this hard-core stealth seemed to gradually become less popular, and beginning with Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent, the fourth generation of the Splinter Cell: Double Agent, the series's graphics became relatively bright, losing the gloomy and oppressive atmosphere of the previous three generations.
In subsequent works, the production team themselves seem to be confused about the future development of the series, wandering between maintaining the series' consistent stealth mode and turning to a frontal battlefield conflict: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction, which was born in this entanglement, seems to prefer to highlight the thrill of battle; and the sixth work that follows, which is also until 2020, The latest in the 2013 series, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist, returns to the sneaking style that preceded Breaking Guilt, but becomes a highly rated but under-sold work. This may also be the reason why the series has been silent since 2013 – among other IPs of the same genre, Metal Gear Solid has had a hard follow-up with Hideo Kojima's departure from KONAMI; Assassin's Creed has gone completely down the path of open-world RPGs; and Shame has not been heard from since the sequel in 2016...
In today's game market, the decline of stealth games can be said to be obvious. This genre is an extreme test of the game's production team's level design, as well as the player's patience and spirit of studying the game. At the same time, although the times have changed, the gameplay essence of stealth games has not changed and expanded, and in the eyes of current gamers who have tasted masterpieces, it seems that this gameplay has long been outdated.
The Assassin's Creed series, which has gradually become an RPG
But even so, in the eight years that Ubisoft has been releasing new "New Year goods" every year, there are still some fans of the "Cell Split" series waiting for the release of the new work.
As a long-lost series of new works, "Cell Splinter Remake" has been rumored before the official announcement: as early as October, there were industry insiders who broke the news that the new work of the "Cell Splinter" series was in the early stage of development, and the follow-up revealed that the work was "an open world similar to "Halo: Infinite".
This undoubtedly worried fans of the series at the time - in recent years, the homogenization of Ubisoft's AAA games has become more and more serious, and "Cell Splinter" as a sneak game, if it is transformed in the form of "open world" in the mode that Ubisoft is good at, it is likely to follow in the footsteps of the Assassin's Creed series. While such a change may not be without benefits in business, it is certainly not what fans of the series want to see.
In this regard, the production team said that there are many "fundamentalist stalkers" in the team, and they also attach great importance to the content in the original version of the game. And confidently able to incorporate the essential elements of the original Splinter Cell and redefine the concept of stealth game action. He also said that it would maintain the linear narrative structure of the game and would not make it into an open world. On the basis of maintaining the linear narrative of the original "Cell Splinter" and sneaking into the gameplay, how to balance the "hardcore" old fans and successfully attract the attention of new players to the series will be a test for the production team.
Visuals of Avatar: Pandora's Border, also produced by Snowflake Engine
In addition to the gameplay changes, another highlight of the Splinter Remake is the new use of Ubisoft's Snow Drop engine. The engine was developed by Massive Studios, which developed the The Division series, and its latest application is Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, released in June, which shows pretty good graphics in the game's trailer. However, in the video related to the "Cell Division Remake" currently released by Ubisoft, only the video footage of the original "Cell Division" can be seen, and there is no new work for the time being.
As an established game manufacturer, in addition to the Snowflake Lotus engine, Ubisoft is also famous for the "anvil" engine that developed the Assassin's Creed series and the Dunia engine responsible for the "Far Cry" series. However, in addition to the snowflake lotus, the pictures made by other engines are similar, and the gameplay of New Year products is becoming more and more similar, which is difficult not to feel aesthetic fatigue. Among these engines, it can be said that The Snowflake Lotus is the most stable and the most expressive of the picture in Ubisoft's own engine.
In this way, the game "Cell Splinter Remake", in the gameplay has the original work to refer to, and on the screen, there is the company's strongest engine blessing, perhaps see now will feel that this game seems to have nothing to worry about.
However, there is always a problem that is difficult to avoid in any case, and that is the Ubisoft Toronto studio responsible for making the game.
The studio only finished developing Far Cry 6 a few months ago, and although Ubisoft often spreads its games across studios for development, the main work of a single studio is often a one-line operation. This means that the project that has just been officially announced may take longer to complete.
At the same time, since March this year, Ubisoft's Toronto studio seems to be caught in the "wave of departures", and the executives who have worked in Ubisoft for many years have left, which has also brought a lot of blows to the studio, although Ubisoft took the initiative to raise salaries to retain employees, but the results were not good. In fact, just after the video of the official announcement of the "Cell Splinter Remake", Ubisoft also announced that it would recruit new talents for the production of this work. This also raises concerns about whether the lack of manpower will further affect the development of the work.
In fact, the capacity problems caused by the brain drain have appeared frequently in recent Ubisoft games, and the new works of the "Worker's Tales" series and "Prince of Persia: Sands of Time HD" were announced to be postponed indefinitely some time after the official announcement, although the latest news revealed that the two works will be officially released in 2022 at the earliest, but it is still difficult to give a specific date.
Signs seem to suggest that Ubisoft has unavoidable problems with both project management and capacity, which raises concerns not only about the future fate of Splinter Cell Remake.
VGC's game editor Andy Robinson tweeted that the development of the Cell Splinter Remake is not optimistic
Although it was born to compete with the "Metal Gear Solid" series, the "Cell Split" series has gradually stepped out of its own style with the story tone of American heroism and the stealth level that is biased towards reality in the process of development.
And now that the "Metal Gear Solid" series has been extinguished, Ubisoft has chosen to restart the "Cell Division" series, which has to be said to be a bold attempt. This attempt is not only a test of Ubisoft's own engine technology and understanding of the game, but also a questionnaire sent by Ubisoft to the market and players - if this work can be successful, it may mean that there is still a market for the "fundamentalist" hardcore infiltration class; and if the work does not meet expectations, it may lead to Ubisoft not daring to try such genres in the future, and even more likely, it may lead them to abandon the IP of "Cell Splinter".
Ubisoft's recent personnel changes have also made the already undetermined release date of "Cell Splinter Remake" seem more and more uncertain. Whether this game is really worth looking forward to, or we have to wait for the game to be released to see the real chapter.