Former Ubisoft Montreal lead level designer Ed Byrne revealed that several developers behind the originalSplinter Celldidn’t like the Tom Clancy books, partly because of the author’s Republican views.
Speaking toGame Informer(viaNME), Byrne said that the team was mostly made up of “a bunch of bleeding heart liberals” and that scriptwriter J. T. Petty was “a sandal-wearing, vegan, NYU student”. By comparison, Clancy was a Ronald Reagan supporter and suggested, on The O’Reilly Factor, a Fox News show, that the American left was partly to blame for 9/11 after “gutting” the CIA.
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“They were just so awful,” Byrne said regarding Tom Clancy’s novels. “I can admit it now. I’m sure Ubisoft would love to hear this, but I mean, none of us loved Clancy. It wasn’t our dream license.”
Despite the lack of love for Clancy’s novels and political views, many more games were made under his name. After Splinter Cell, the French publishing giant released The Sum of All Fears, Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm, EndWar, H.A.W.X,The Division, Elite Squad,Rainbow Six Siege, and Wildlands. It also has several games in development using Tom Clancy’s name that are yet to launch, such as The Division Heartland, Ghost Recon Frontline, Rainbow Six Mobile, The Division Resurgence, and the Splinter Cell remake. XDefiant, meanwhile,dropped Tom Clancy’s name altogether.
During the original Splinter Cell’s development, Byrne says that the team packed it full of tropes while lacing it with irony. “One time I was having lunch with the guys from PAX and they were big fans,” Byrne said. “And when I told them this story, they were like, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, Splinter Cell was ironic? It was an ironic Clancy game?’
“It was almost to the point where we just threw in all of these tropes to see what we could get away with, and every time we added more tropes, the more Clancy-like it became […] What we realised was, ‘Well, we can just put Clancy’s name on anything’.”
The only rule that Clancy’s people gave the development team, according to Byrne, was that the player could not kill someone inside a church. Aside from that, they had complete freedom. Splinter Cell wasn’t even based on a Tom Clancy novel because the team couldn’t find anything to adapt after looking through the options. A book would later be written based on the games, but it was penned by David Michaels.
The Splinter Cell remakedoesn’t yet have a release date, but it’s expected to launch sometime next year.
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