After 4 quiet years, Ubisoft keeps some hope alive for its Splinter Cell revival as it asks for some parts of the Netflix show to be cut because of “other plans” for the dormant stealth series

It’s been over a decade since a new Splinter Cell game launched, and nearly four years since developer Ubisoft quietly announced it was working on a remake of the original stealth title. The upcoming Netflix show, Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, is the biggest sign of life the franchise has had in ages, and it seems Ubisoft still has some plans beyond it.

Splinter Cell: Deathwatch showrunner Derek Kolstad, who you might recognize as the creator and writer of the John Wick series, has some “hope” that his show will be considered canon to the game series.

“[Ubisoft’s] got a stranglehold on their IP for good measure because they’ve got some of the best titles,” Kolstad tells IGN. “But there were some things that along the way [they] were like, ‘Don’t do that.’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’ And they’re like, ‘Hey, we got other plans.’ Again, I only get to peer behind part of the curtain for what they’re thinking [of for the] long run. But for what I want to do with the anime and talking in the future of any other spinoff they want to do, it’s going like, ‘This fits the mold.'”

Of course, it remains to be seen exactly what those “other plans” are, never mind whether they actually come to fruition at all. Ubisoft sparked hopes of Splinter Cell game news earlier this year with a mysterious tweet ahead of Summer Game Fest, but those hopes came to naught.

The long, long wait for that Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake doesn’t exactly spark much confidence in the chances for Ubisoft franchise revivals to happen in a timely manner, but here’s hoping Sam Fisher gets back to interactive action sooner rather than later.

“We had failed as designers”: Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory director says developing the original stealth game was “very difficult,” but that it drove Ubisoft to do “much, much better.”