Splinter Cell could return in 2021

Fans of Ubisoft's Splinter Cell series have been waiting for a new installment for a while now. At each event where the publisher confirms its presence, the players hold their breath hoping to hear of Sam Fisher. With the cancellation of E3 this year, Ubisoft offered its own online conference, Ubisoft Forward, ten days ago, but there is nothing new about Splinter Cell.

There is no lack of rumors or potential clues on this matter, and we see new ones appearing regularly. A new one has just appeared, and it's a rather interesting one. From July 13 to 19, the Ultra Pop Festival took place. It's an Italian live event focused on pop culture and, in particular, on video games. It's been organized by the media Multiplayer.it among others. The event was broadcasted only in Italian with no English subtitles so it's quite likely that you have not followed it, but one information in particular was revealed during an interview with Luca Ward. He is an actor who has lent his voice to Samuel L. Jackson, Keanu Reeves, or Pierce Brosnan, but also the voice of Sam Fisher. And here is what he said during this interview:

There's this Splinter Cell comeback that's supposed to happen, I think, for a final episode, but I'm not sure, they (Ubisoft) still don't know whether to do it in 2021. Before that, it must have been 2020, then, given what has happened, several major projects have stalled. Others continued like Cyberpunk 2077 which I almost finished working on. But I'm sure Splinter Cell will come back, that's a fact.

We already knew that Ubisoft wanted to revive the Splinter Cell license, but it was announced last year that we should probably be patient. These statements seem to indicate that something is indeed in the pipeline or even already in development. Even if all this sounds quite good, it would be wiser to wait for an official confirmation from Ubisoft before getting too happy. Maybe it could happen during the next Ubisoft Forward scheduled for this year?