It’s actually happening! The rumours have persisted for years, but now Ubisoft has made Splinter Cell official – and it’s a remake of the original. We think. To be honest, the wording seems very carefully selected, leading us to believe this could draw from a multitude of older titles from the brand, rather than the first game specifically.

Whatever the case, Splinter Cell: Blacklist developer Ubisoft Toronto is in charge, and it’ll be leveraging Massive Entertainment’s Snowdrop Engine, which is also powering the upcoming Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora game. Perhaps most noteworthy of all: it’s not an open world title, as was previously reported, and instead will stick to the stealth series’ linear origins.

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“We’re still in the very earliest stages of development, [and] what we're trying to do is make sure the spirit of the early games remain intact, in all of the ways that gave early Splinter Cell its identity,” producer Matt West said. “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.”

This is very much one of those announcements that only exists to drive recruitment, so don’t expect to be playing this any time soon. As such, details are light, although there is talk of “respecting the goggles”, so expect night-vision to factor heavily in the final gameplay loop. In the meantime, you can watch a kind of mini-documentary about the origins of the Splinter Cell series in the video above.

[source news.ubisoft.com]