Line #45 YMMV/SplinterCell


1	* ''YMMV/SplinterCell1''
2	* ''YMMV/SplinterCellPandoraTomorrow''
3	* ''YMMV/SplinterCellChaosTheory''
4	* ''YMMV/SplinterCellDoubleAgent''
5	* ''YMMV/SplinterCellConviction''
6	* ''YMMV/SplinterCellBlacklist''
7	----
8	!!Video Game franchise:
9	* BrokenBase:
10	** Current trend in games. It pretty much followed the exact design approach as ''VideoGame/HitmanAbsolution''. Someone somewhere is running round telling game designers that they need to make their games more "cover based shooter" oriented and it'll do wonders for their IP.
11	** The decision to recast the voice of Sam (from Creator/MichaelIronside to Eric Johnson), and ostensibly make him look younger (though it was actually the developers needed someone else to portray because of the new motion-capture software, and for what it's worth, Ironside trained Johnson for the role) alienated some fans during the runup to ''Blacklist'''s release. Eventually, Ubisoft caved to fans by bringing back Ironside to voice Fisher for a crossover DLC in ''VideoGame/GhostReconWildlands''.
12	*** This eased up a bit when Ironside revealed that he was undergoing treatment for cancer when ''Blacklist'' was being made.
13	* CantUnHearIt: Creator/MichaelIronside's voice for Sam Fisher was so beloved that the change to Eric Johnson for ''Blacklist'' was heavily complained about.
14	** The French dubs of the games famously have Sam voiced by Creator/DanielBeretta, who has dubbed Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger in all of his roles since ''Film/RedHeat''.
15	* CompleteMonster: [[YMMV/SplinterCell1 Kombayn Nikoladze]]; [[YMMV/SplinterCellPandoraTomorrow Suhadi Sadono & Norman Soth]]; [[YMMV/SplinterCellDoubleAgent Emile Dufraisne]]; [[YMMV/SplinterCellBlacklist Majid Sadiq]]. See those pages for details.
16	* ContestedSequel:
17	** Although ''Conviction'' was generally well-received, some longtime fans of the franchise didn't like the increased emphasis on action over stealth. With ''Blacklist'' Ubisoft has attempted to find a happy balance between the action-oriented gameplay of ''Conviction'' and the stealth-oriented gameplay of earlier ''Splinter Cell'' titles and while it was generally received better than Conviction, quite a few fans of the first 4 games still don't like it as much as them due to the heavier focus on action (Not to the extent of Conviction, though), [[DarkerAndEdgier lack of humor]], more Hollywood-esque plot and the change of Sam's voice and personality.
18	* FanonDiscontinuity: The decision to turn Sam's daughter, Sarah, into a Fourth Echelon operative in the ''Firewall'' novel and ''VideoGame/TomClancysEliteSquad'' doesn't sit well with fans even if one ignores [[spoiler:the retcon of Sarah's death]]. While Sarah is far from TheScrappy, turning her into being like her dad as a preparation for Sam's eventual retirement and PassingTheTorch to his daughter is poorly done since there is no explanation or context that Sarah has plans of joining Fourth Echelon (especially after everything that has happened to her in ''Double Agent'' and ''Conviction''). or that she is as skillful as Sam.
19	* FriendlyFandoms: With the ''VideoGame/MetalGear'' series, since the [[StealthBasedGame basic concept]] is the same. The games even acknowledge each other with small jokes directed at each other.
20	* GeniusBonus: Some of the ''Gone Dark'' missions in ''Blacklist'' have ''really'' obscure clues as to where to go next.
21	* HarsherInHindsight: Also a case of RealLifeWritesThePlot, Michael Ironside explained the reason he left ''Splinter Cell'' wasn't due to his age or a disagreement about the series' direction but the fact he was ''dying''. He had cancer and wasn't certain about his chances. Thankfully, it becomes a HeartwarmingInHindsight that he survived and came back to voice Sam in ''VideoGame/GhostReconWildlands''.
22	* HilariousInHindsight: As this '80s [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzzxiQ7rRqg Wisk commercial]] proves, this ain't the first time Creator/MichaelIronside played a hard-boiled man named [[{{Literature/SamSpade}} Sam]] being [[SkewedPriorities concerned about his laundry]].
23	* MoralEventHorizon: [[spoiler: Both Grim and Lambert may qualify for what they put Sam through by pretending Sarah was dead and arranging for a body to be substituted for her, possibly killing an innocent young woman to do so. While it was ostensibly to protect Sarah and Sam, Lambert didn't hesitate to manipulate Sam's grief to his own advantage. He even admits as much.]] May be a case of UnintentionallyUnsympathetic as it's obvious the developers wanted it to be more of a ShootTheDog than KickTheDog once all the facts are out. Quite a few players are never able to look at the two the same way, though.
24	* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nXNEKA-i1o Sam's night vision goggles.]]
25	* {{Narm}}: The number of times Lambert [[GoshDangItToHeck exclaims "Good Lord!" or other]] whenever the plot develops, refusing to tell Fisher what he's uncovered (until the next mission's briefing) all starts becoming predictable. It gets to the point that even in the first game during the Chinese Embassy level, when Lambert uses the phrase to express shock at the presence of a high-up Chinese general, Sam repeats it back to him in a feigned shocked tone before dropping back to his normal tone to ask who this general even is.
26	* PortingDisaster:
27	** The [=GameCube=] and [=PS2=] versions of the first 3 games were horribly gutted in comparison to the Xbox and PC versions, (for the first game, it is so bad that the Splinter Cell Wiki refers to it as "Version 1" (Xbox and PC) and "Version 2" (Gamecube and Playstation 2)). Because of their weaker hardware, not only is there LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading, but there were also many instances where you fight fewer enemies and some levels were reduced in size compared to the [=Xbox/PC=] counterpart. In fact, it is not much of a stretch to say that playing the [=Gamecube/PS2=] version and the [=Xbox/PC=] versions feel like playing two different games. The first game especially: because the changes to some levels were so severe, the Gamecube and [=PS2=] versions had to insert several additional full-motion video cutscenes to compensate and try to fill in some plot holes. [[labelnote:example]]A big example is the CIA infiltration mission in the first game: the Gamecube and Playstation versions ''start you off inside the building'' instead of having to infiltrate it from the outside in a rainy night. Presumably, their weaker hardware couldn't handle the advanced lighting effects of rain and lightning in an outdoor nighttime setting. As stated earlier, a very flimsy HandWave is given where they had to insert a cutscene with Sam using a fake ID to get in. Another big example is in the final mission of Pandora Tomorrow: you must kill 9 terrorists in the Xbox and PC versions but only 6 in the Gamecube and Playstation versions.[[/labelnote]]
28	*** For the first game, on the [=PS2=] side to make up for this, an extra level was added between the Kalinatek and Chinese Embassy missions where Sam investigates a Russian nuclear power plant. This is actually a ''plot-critical'' level because it reveals where General Feirong obtained the nuclear material for his missiles. But because the power plant mission is only available in the [=PS2=] version, players of the Xbox, PC, and Gamecube versions will have [[AdaptationInducedPlotHole no idea what Lambert is talking about]] when in the second Chinese Embassy mission he [[OhCrap starts freaking out]] about some "missing Americium-239" the player was never told about before that moment.
29	** The first two games [[TechnologyMarchesOn eventually]] became this on PC. They were directly ported from the original Xbox version, and as such were optimised for a number of contemporary Nvidia and ATI cards that supported a form of shadow mapping called "shadow buffers", first supported on the [=GeForce 3=] and the [=NV2A=] GPU used on the console. While it did work on most hardware at the time, later graphics cards, driver versions and [=DirectX=] [=APIs=] broke functionality for said buffers, causing spotlights and other projected shadows to no longer work. As lighting and shadows are key elements of the gameplay, playing the original ''Splinter Cell'' and ''Pandora Tomorrow'' would be an ugly and unpleasant ordeal with a lot of trial-and-error. Fortunately, the first game does have a fallback mode for systems incapable of rendering shadow buffers, but ''Pandora Tomorrow'' lacks it, which may account for why it is the only ''Splinter Cell'' game unavailable through UsefulNotes/DigitalDistribution. [[http://www.jiri-dvorak.cz/scellpt/ However, there is now a fan made fix for both of those games]].
30	* ScrappyMechanic:
31	** The "three alarms and game over" mechanic. Nobody complained when ''Chaos Theory'' replaced it with alarms making mooks get progressively more well-armoured and alert instead.
32	** Although they might just be a vocal minority, some ''Splinter Cell'' fans absolutely ''hate'' the Mark and Execute feature added in ''Conviction'', feeling that it makes the game too easy even on the highest difficulty.
33
34	!!Novels:
35	* HarsherInHindsight: The Shadows terrorist organization, meant to be more dangerous than Al-Qaeda and tech-savvier while even more fanatical, is actually a fairly decent approximation of ISIL.
36	* MoneyDearBoy: The reason Raymond Benson wrote the first two novels.
37	* PeripheryDemographic: The novels have a decent-sized fanbase who have never even heard of the video games.

Context YMMV / SplinterCell