Most action games light the way forward. Splinter Cell asks you to put the lights out. Its hero, Sam Fisher, is safest where the screen is darkest, and a meter tells you how visible he is to the guards. Shooting out a lamp, or finding the light switch in time, became, in Edge’s words, “an essential skill”. Ubi Soft’s Montreal studio built it for the Xbox around a real-time lighting system that its own art director doubted would run. It reached the shops in November 2002, up against the Xbox version of Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 2, and Computer Gaming World thought it had overtaken its rival to become “the darling of both consumers and critics”.
Fast facts
- Developer: Ubi Soft Montreal; the PlayStation 2 version by Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio.
- Publisher: Ubi Soft, under the Tom Clancy name.
- Released: Xbox, November 2002; PC early in 2003; PlayStation 2 and GameCube in 2003.
- Hero: Sam Fisher, voiced by Michael Ironside, an agent of the National Security Agency’s fictional “Third Echelon”.
- Engine: Epic’s Unreal Engine.
Making it
In August 2000 Ubi Soft bought Tom Clancy’s “multimedia outfit”, as Edge called Red Storm Entertainment, and Ubi Soft’s Montreal studio set out to make a new stealth game under the Clancy name. Clancy himself did not work on it. “Even though he wasn’t involved in this development directly,” said Mathieu Ferland, the game’s senior producer, “the Clancy universe was a very, very important guideline for us.” He told Edge how the team used the name as a test: “Each decision we were making was: ‘Is it Clancy? Does it feel serious, realistic, not too futuristic?’” Developers went on courses with the local police’s tactical response group, and weapons consultants showed them police tasers, which became Fisher’s “sticky shocker”, a non-lethal round for his rifle.
The game’s look came from its technology. Splinter Cell was planned as an Xbox exclusive, using the console’s power and Epic’s Unreal Engine for dynamic lighting. Hugo Dallaire, the art director, remembered that “most people were sceptical that this powerful system could run in realtime, including me”, and the frame rate was still “in terrible shape” two weeks before the deadline. Lighting also changed how the levels were designed. “As soon as lights can be switched on and off and can cause the player to be detected or provide places for him to hide,” said Clint Hocking, a designer on the game, “then suddenly how the level is lit is more important to the level designer than it is to the artist.”
Fisher’s signature move arrived late. The split jump, in which he braces himself between two walls and waits for a guard to pass beneath, was added after one of Ubisoft’s marketing artists drew it for a magazine cover. “There were only a dozen places to use it in the game,” Ferland admitted, but it became, in Edge’s words, “the perfect signature move”.
Playing it
Fisher works alone, with “a few voices in his earpiece” for company, through nine missions. Computer Gaming World listed their settings as “Georgian police stations and Chinese embassies to CIA headquarters and besieged oil rigs”. He can see in the dark with night-vision and thermal goggles, peer under doors with a fibre-optic camera, hang from pipes, climb poles, and grab guards to question them. Edge thought the goggles gave the game “a unique and remarkable visual character”, from the video grain of the night vision to a set piece in a freezer room seen through the thermal imaging. Its sniper rifle had a breath meter: holding the trigger made Fisher hold his breath, and for a few seconds his aim stopped drifting.
Computer Gaming World singled out the “onscreen visibility meter”, which “lets you know just how hard it is for enemies to spot you, making stealth-work less of a guessing game and more of a science”. It also noticed the noise: “How fast you move determines how much noise you make.”
Edge gave the Xbox version seven out of ten. It saw the debt to Hideo Kojima’s games, praised the light and the set pieces, and disliked the trial-and-error sections, the clumsy aiming and a linear route through every level. Asked whether Splinter Cell was “an MGS2-killer for the Xbox”, Edge thought not, but called it “an often compelling and creative attempt to push the genre in new directions”. Computer Gaming World was keener on the PC version: “one of the best stealth-action games ever”. The Australian PlayStation 2 magazine noted that the PS2 version, made in Shanghai, added a new mission in a power plant and more than 30 minutes of new cut-scenes, and called it “one of the best PS2 games so far”. It sold strongly too: Hocking recalled seeing early sales “numbers that were higher than Halo”.
The series
Pandora Tomorrow (2004) added Spies vs Mercs, a multiplayer mode that set stealthy spies, played in the third person, against heavily armed mercenaries seen in the first person. Edge later pointed out that it was designed in France, by Gunther Galipot and Ubisoft’s Annecy team. Chaos Theory followed in 2005 and Double Agent in 2006.
Conviction (2010) changed direction. Edge found that “as Splinter Cell goes from covert to overt, a new-found dynamism emerges”, though “the much-loved Spies Vs Mercs mode is absent”. Blacklist (2013), made by Ubisoft Toronto, brought Spies vs Mercs back and gave players the choice between stealth and open combat. In December 2021 Ubisoft announced a remake of the first game, also led by Ubisoft Toronto and built on its Snowdrop engine. An animated series, Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, with Liev Schreiber voicing a “visibly older” Fisher, began on Netflix on 14 October 2025.
Sources
- Edge issue 118, Christmas 2002, pp. 86–87: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell review (Xbox; Ubi Soft Montreal; the Kojima comparison; light and shadow; the goggles and the freezer room; the split jump, fibre-optic cable and sticky shocker; interrogation; the breath meter; the faults; seven out of ten).
- Che Chou, “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell”, Computer Gaming World issue 224, March 2003, pp. 82–83: PC review (the Xbox release the previous November; Metal Gear Solid 2; nine missions and their settings; Third Echelon; the visibility meter; noise; the split jump; the verdict).
- “The Making of… Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell”, Edge issue 227, May 2011, pp. 111–113: Red Storm Entertainment; Fisher’s earpiece; Mathieu Ferland on the Clancy approach and the police training; the tasers; the Xbox and the Unreal Engine; Hugo Dallaire on dynamic lighting; Clint Hocking on level design and sales; the split jump; Michael Ironside.
- PlayStation 2 (Australia) issue 13, April 2003, pp. 54–57: PlayStation 2 review (the Shanghai studio; the power-plant mission and new cut-scenes).
- Computer Gaming World issue 250, April 2005: Michael Ironside as the voice of Sam Fisher.
- Edge issue 165, August 2006: Spies vs Mercs and Ubisoft Annecy.
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 190, April 2005: Chaos Theory reviews.
- Edge issue 168, November 2006: Double Agent preview.
- Edge issue 214, May 2010, pp. 92–93: Splinter Cell: Conviction review.
- Edge issue 258, October 2013, p. 104: Splinter Cell: Blacklist review (Ubisoft Toronto; Spies vs Mercs).
- “Splinter Cell remake announced by Ubisoft”, Game Informer, 15 December 2021 (web, secondary): Ubisoft Toronto; the Snowdrop engine. https://gameinformer.com/2021/12/15/splinter-cell-remake-announced-by-ubisoft
- “Splinter Cell: Deathwatch Coming To Netflix October 14”, Ubisoft News, 22 August 2025 (web, secondary): the premiere date; Liev Schreiber as a “visibly older” Fisher. https://news.ubisoft.com/en-gb/article/W0KNTqjKvcFbCNBTY9EbH/splinter-cell-deathwatch-coming-to-netflix-october-14-watch-the-new-teaser-trailer-now
- Wikipedia, “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell” (web, secondary): the Xbox release date; the PC, PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions in 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_Splinter_Cell