Original Splinter Cell designer and Chaos Theory lead Clint Hocking likely won’t return to the iconic stealth series.
After just founding a brand-new studio, Build Machine Games, Hocking has left Ubisoft for a second time after working on Assassin’s Creed Hexe. While an original designer for Splinter Cell, Hocking left the series to work on Far Cry 2, which he believes is his best game.
Since then, stealth games have changed a lot. Modern lighting systems have made determining whether you’re actually hidden harder than ever, Hocking admits, and Splinter Cell itself changed a lot after his tenure with the series.
Speaking on the next episode of the FRVR Podcast, releasing later this week, Hocking explained that they feel they reached the apex of what they could do with Sam Fisher. “I’m just happy to have made a really, really amazing game that’s probably the best—I don’t think it’s my best game—but I definitely feel like it’s the best Splinter Cell that I could make. And I don’t think I could ever do better. So I’m super proud of it, and it can live on its own and other people can do what they want.”
“I’m excited if other people can find a way to express themselves using that as a framework.”
Splinter Cell designer Clint Hocking on future games in the series.
“I had my fill of Splinter Cell by making it,’ the designer told us. While they believe they can’t do anything better than 2005’s phenomenal Chaos Theory, they also don’t want to play other games in the series. “It’s just too strange to go back and try to play those other games,” he added. “And do I have an opinion about what it should be? Not at all. To me, Splinter Cell is Chaos Theory. It’s the best Splinter Cell I can make. It’s the last Splinter Cell I ever hope to make.”
While Hocking is done with Ubisoft’s phenomenal stealth series, he hopes the franchise continues. Just as he reworked Far Cry with Far Cry 2 and Watch Dogs with Legion, the game designer wants other designers to come in and turn Splinter Cell into something with their own unique ideas.
“I’m excited if other people can find a way to express themselves using that as a framework, [a] sandbox to work in,” he told us. “But how they do that needs to be up to them, not up to me. I’m not [the owner]. It’s not my brand. I don’t own it. I don’t want to own it.”
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory was also not an easy project for Hocking. While this has little bearing on his want to return to the series, the designer took on too much work for the 2005 stealth game. Hocking took on multiple roles, which he admits no one forced on him, and the designer suffered from memory loss due to how much time he spent working in a high-stress environment.
“[There were] was too many 12, 14,16-hour days, never stopping, super high-stress the whole time,” he recalled. “Yeah, that’s not super healthy. It’s very hard, for sure. Again, no one ever mandated those hours on me. They never never needed to. I was always there because it’s what I love to do and it was super engaging.”
At the end of that rough development period, Hocking created one of his best games, and one of the best games ever made. To this day, alongside the immersive sims that Hocking was inspired by, Chaos Theory is still heralded as the golden child of stealth games, and few games come close to its quality.
Right now, Ubisoft is remaking the original Splinter Cell, and Hocking isn’t involved. While the game has been in some form of development for a number of years, there’s currently no release date for the project. However, the game did survive Ubisoft’s recent layoffs.
