Introduction: After the news that the original generation of Splinter Cell is about to be remade, the voices among players who do not trust Sam to make a comeback still dominate.
As a large IP with a full series of sales of more than 30 million, at the end of last year, as a ton of rumors about the new work of "Cell Division", it was constantly manufactured and spread, and after several rounds of questioning, Ubisoft finally remembered the works that were once used to compete with "Metal Gear Solid" at the beginning of this century, and officially announced that it would develop the first remake of "Cell Division".
"Cell Splinter" was born at the beginning of this century, is a full-fledged "Generation 00" game, so called it, not only for the objective description of the original release time, but also because the series of background stories is different from the cold war era favored by the traditional spy genre, the protagonist Sam Fisher is placed in the 21st century When the United States announced the opening of the "War on Terrorism" Era, the headband night vision goggles are arranged in a triangular row of green light points, which has become a high-point indicator for players to go deep behind enemy lines and crack various conspiracies.
Let's start with the first generation and talk about Sam Fisher's rise and fall as an anti-terrorist agent.
9/11 spawned a sneak game upstart
"The World Trade Center in the United States was blown up, and the plane was blown up."
In 2001, when 9/11 happened, I was a high school student, and that morning, my uncle who was driving a rental car downstairs was wiping the car downstairs, and he mentioned the matter to the neighbors, and my family lived on the second floor, and the sound of conversation came in through the open window. At that time, there was no Internet at home (I didn't buy a PC until after I went to college), and at most it was Monday or mid-week on Champions League match days, and I opened the sports channel to see AC Milan's record, and the outcome of the game determined my mood when I went to school.
With the release of MGS2, tactical espionage games have reached a new peak
In the same year, "Metal Gear Solid 2" was released on the PS2 console, and the game not only had the dramatic scene of nuclear weapons threatening the security of the United States, but also the big chess piece of the fake president using digital information dissemination channels to influence the world's thinking, but also played by Trump in the US presidential campaign many years later. For the Americans at that time, there were terrorists stirring up trouble, there was a conspiracy theory, the shadow of this white tower was shrouded, the traditional American heroes who used to show their muscles and open the way with RPGs were no longer suitable for the waves of the war on terror, and "Metal Gear" Resnek sneaked into the battle, hiding the merits and fame of the "shadow warrior", but became a popular role that players were happy to pursue.
In the second year of 9/11, Ubisoft used its "Tom Clancy" brand's natural advantages in the Military Theme of Benger, incorporating the gameplay of the sneak game to create the first "Cell Division".
The first image of the game to the players at the time was "black", not only the protagonist Sam Fisher wearing a night suit; the warehouses and cruise ships in those scenes; the ink-colored shadows hidden in the corners with layers of killing machines; there was no voice chat channel like "Metal Gear Solid" to relieve you, but the atmosphere of loneliness and tension pervaded the assassination mission like a tightrope walk.
The cold and hard style has always been the main theme of "Cell Division"
Due to the lack of characterization, Fisher shoots a headshot or breaks the neck of an enemy, just like a 996 worker completing the work tasks assigned to him by the company, the core gameplay of the game is how players choose weapons according to the environment of the venue and carry out the killing of the target. Although the same contemporary background and infiltration gameplay have made Splinter Cell a strong contender for Metal Gear Solid from the start, Splinter Cell is somehow more like Tenchi, with one being a hidden ninja in the East and an underground agent in the West.
The success of the first generation gave Fisher the opportunity to continue his "further education", because the worldview of "Cell Splinter" is very real, so Fisher can not bear a dramatic fate from birth like the protagonists of the "Metal Gear Solid", and the organization he serves is also the more secretive U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) than the CIA in reality, which was founded in the early 1950s and separated from the military department according to the secret instructions of then-US President Harry Truman In order to strengthen intelligence communications, it later became the center of the US intelligence agency, and its mission included the use of reconnaissance satellites and monitoring stations to intercept military movements of various countries; the collection of information on various countries to expose the liaison activities of potential spies; and the development and deciphering of codes.
Fisher belongs to the NSA's "third echelon" organization, according to the setting in the game, that is, when the technical means of some hostile forces are so backward that they cannot intercept their information with contemporary technology (such as film and television dramas, we can often see the use of old communication equipment to avoid the so-called high-tech detection methods), it is necessary to send "staff" to offline to solve the threat.
The name of the game, "Dividing Cells", is the NSA's comparison of terrorist organizations to the cell structure of living things, and to destroy them, they have to be destroyed from the inside, splitting the cells and losing their original activity, and it is in the process of destroying the "cell" tissue that Fisher experiences the duties and occupational risks of an agent.
Play this game of "someone behind your back"
Although the game does not directly give the full life of Sam Fisher, but with reference to the official setting, we learn that Sam was born in the U.S. port city of Baltimore, and his childhood experience is "top secret", only recording sam's parents since childhood, brought up by his grandmother Sarah, after graduating from the U.S. Naval Officer School, he was recruited by the CIA, and was sent to Europe as a diplomat to work undercover, fell in love with the local N.S.A. employee Regan Burns, and his daughter was born in 1985. In honor of his grandmother, who raised him with hard work, Sam named her daughter "Sarah".
From the advent of its original works in 2003 to its last sequel, The Blacklist, in 2013, Cell Division has launched a total of 7 orthodox works on various platforms (excluding N-Gage's mobile games and 3DS rubbing naked-eye 3D hot milk powder works).
Of these 7 works, 2006's "Spy Essence" is a PSP game, and the rest are cross-platform works for home consoles and PCs, which build Sam's 2025 post-Cold War war on terror from the end of the "Blacklist" incident in 2012, spanning 30 years, if you count the "Rainbow Six Siege Operation" "Shadow Legacy Operation" set by "Ghost Recon" DLC of the same Clancian Universe, Sam was 68 years old at the time.
Sam's life was the life of a tough guy and a life of being a black glove in America
In the game, as the player's mission objectives continue to change, the forces hidden behind the events have become larger and deeper, although we have always emphasized that Sam's personal charm and the various limitations of the real world view of the work make "Cell Splinter" lack the delicate epic sense of "Metal Gear Solid" at the level of the play (the whole series can not even find a famous line), but the various conspiracies and tricks necessarily designed by the spying, and the possible dual identity of important characters, are still reserved for the players." This time it was who framed Uncle Fish again" suspense.
For example, in the second work in the series, "Project Pandora", one of the villains is norman Soth, a former agent that the CIA once cultivated. In "Double Agent", Sam was betrayed by the third echelon of his own role and became a victim of the N.S.A.'s internal power struggle.
When the plot began to tilt towards "a big game of chess", the outlaw Sam gradually approached the truth, it turned out that he had been betrayed in "Double Agent", but after the former third echelon leader detected the movement of the inner ghost, in order to let Sam leave the organization one step ahead in order to carry out a comprehensive investigation, the black hand behind the scenes was to use the third echelon to assassinate the new leader of the US president, and behind him, there was a private military contractor's desire to smoke his heart, lest the world be undisturbed malice (about 9 · One of the conspiracy theories of the 11th incident is that the arms dealers, in order to urge the U.S. government to start a war in Afghanistan, let the intelligence agencies conceal the security risks on the plane for the first time), Sam continues to dig deeper, and the mysterious masonic organization "Megiddo" like a Masonic organization surfaces.
At this point, the conspiracy theory model that the media likes to talk about in reality is almost used, so in the last work of "The Blacklist", Sam and the old man Anna set up the fourth echelon of the new organization under the designation of the President of the United States (which coincided with the secret assignment of President Truman to the NSA in real life).
Even though Sam in "The Blacklist" is still athletic, but "Cell Splinter", which is a routine of "there are enemies behind the enemy, and the people who play chess are also pawns", has been choreographed too many times by film and television works, and finally became a greasy intelligence game that Sam suddenly realized in the game, but the player can guess the ending at the beginning, Ubisoft positioned the new work in the emotional remake, rather than continuing to write the legend, it is estimated that it is afraid that the current environment is so complicated, can not write, or dare not write a spy story that truly reflects the environment.
Who is "Sam" the biggest anxiety
Literally, "Sam" of course refers to the male number one of "Cell Splinter", and by extension, "Sam" actually represents the nickname of the United States and the classic anthropomorphic image - Uncle Sam, so Sam Fisher is both an agent in the game and the United States in reality, both of which are fighting external terrorists while fighting for power and profit internally.
Uncle Sam in the pen of the famous American cartoonist Alex Ross
If we compare the real time with the game's iteration process, we will find that the most successful Generation 00 of "Cell Splinter" is the stage when the United States won the war on terror and showed its muscles to the undefeated West. After entering the 10th generation, the Voice of the United States questioning the Afghan war and the US invasion of Iraq is getting louder and louder, and during the Obama period, it has begun to slowly withdraw some military forces from the Middle East, and Sam, who once reached the peak of his career by relying on anti-terrorist assassination operations, also like "Uncle Sam", has lost the justice of his past actions, and his skills have not decreased, but the goal of fighting for the cause of counter-terrorism in his eyes has become more and more blurred.
Since the 2013 "Blacklist", "Cell Division" has not launched a new work, and the reason for this is largely due to "intention" rather than "project". Because from the perspective of gameplay design, there is a lot to do about the "infiltration" type of spy infiltration, such as "Batman Arkham", "Doomsday 2", and even "Shame 2" (Is there less high-tech equipment that Sam used in "Splinter Cell"?). ), all have a good in-dive level design around a specific worldview. Even the withdrawal of "Metal Gear Solid" has nothing to do with the iteration of the game itself, but more is a change in the direction of KONAMI's operation.
Although the United Kingdom established a modern spy agency as early as the First World War (earlier, such as the East Factory of the Ming Dynasty in China, which is not discussed in this article), spies entered the context of popular culture narratives, thanks to the Cold War.
With the change of the times, the enemy forces represented by Hollywood spy movies continue to change, the red camp in the initial Cold War period (007); the terrorists in the war on terror ("Mission Impossible"),and finally the doubts about their own careers (Craig's version of 007, Mission Impossible, Bourne's identity) due to the digging out of internal enemies, forming a continuous internalization process, last year's Craig version of 007's curtain call "No Time to Die" the reason why the evaluation is low, in the final analysis, is Bond like Sam Fisher , lack of motivation.
Spy movies have developed into the "Bourne" series, and they have not saved the world, but have searched for themselves
Today, in the context of the world's "new Cold War", the United States has withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan, and the contradictory focus of literary and artistic creation either continues to be aimed at its internal enemies or new Cold War opponents. The former is constrained by the current "zzzq" (zzzq) and "far right" (Trump fans, white red-necked brothers) in the West, and the call of duty modern warfare campaign mode wants to be self-moving. As for the latter choice, with Ubisoft's emphasis on China's game market, it will certainly not actively seek to "die", perhaps this is the choice of remake of the new work, rather than the original reason for keeping up with current events as in the past.
Conclusion: Unlike professional assassins like Hitman 47, or the strong authorship of Metal Gear Solid, Cell Splinter always stays in the vein of Tom Clancy's real serious military work. If the original generation is completely remade, with the current player's game level and video clearance intensity, it will be difficult to achieve satisfactory results in business, and I personally feel that Ubisoft is not as good as some players expect, in the context of a generation of stories, the game is redesigned into an open world form, even if the "spy" part can not keep up with the times, the open world is still its own.