It was recently claimed by an alleged playtester that one of Ubisoft’s recently cancelled projects was a Splinter Cell-themed battle royale game named ‘Splinter Cell: Hunters’. In a lengthy post that was published to 4Chan, this user revealed a lengthy breakdown of exactly how the game would unfold.
It was claimed that Ubisoft was ‘weeks’ away from announcing Splinter Cell: Hunters before the project was ultimately canned, with the user reporting that the last playtest on the project was in July of 2022. Sadly, what this user claims would have been released with the full game sounds quite intriguing, but it’s another game from Ubisoft that’ll never see the light of day.
Sneaky Spy Battle Royale Time
In the words of the claim that surfaced on 4Chan (before being circulated on Reddit), Splinter Cell: Hunters would have been an all-new third-person PvPvE battle royale title.
Featuring several Operators, customisable classes, and a night-time map set within the confines of a ‘Washington DMZ’, players would spawn in as a duo and attempt to locate and eliminate HVTs scattered around the map, whilst also tussling with other players and AI enemies.
It read like a Spies vs. Mercs variant but expanded immeasurably.
Once the players eliminated the HVTs (assuming they survived that long), they’d be prompted to loot caches and then extract from the map – beating twenty-eight other players to the punch. It does seem that this was more of an extraction shooter than a battle royale, but the user was adamant in their post that it was certainly the latter genre that the game would be marketed as.
Other features such as an in-game levelling system, partner-based movement mechanics, gadgets, and even a back-to-life feature that turned downed players into ‘Mercs’ – hey, look – Spies vs. Mercs. They’d return as a pre-determined, pre-equipped soldier tasked with killing a spy – a real player – at which point, they’d respawn themselves.
That is unless they killed their partner, at which point they’d be branded a traitor – the consequences of which weren’t really expanded on.
It wasn’t explained in the post what happens when the last spies are left alive by themselves, whether that counts as an ultimate win or not – which is the most fundamental component to a game being branded as a battle royale.
That may be a question that goes unanswered forever if this post is to be believed, as it’ll never see the light of day again. Another cancelled project from Ubisoft – shame.
For more Insider Gaming news, check out our coverage of Unrecord, one of the most realistic-looking shooters to ever surface.
