Hey everybody welcome back to LegalSpeak a ColdNorth Production, I'm TheLawMorris and this is the short video essay series where I get to talk about the games I've been playing and my thoughts on the video game industry as a whole. You can see everything we do all in one spot over at ColdNorthPro.com. This week we are going to be talking about Tom Clancy Games so lets get to it!
The Tom Clancy licensed games have had their ups and downs throughout the years but overall have stayed very close to what they were originally intended to be. With each new series in the franchise there was a markedly different approach and intent that satisfied a gap that hadn't been filled previously by anything else in the portfolio. And shockingly the intent was always clear and none of the series' have radically changed what they originally set out to be but instead they’ve come increasingly closer to realizing their own respective original conceptualizations. As the games were introduced the technology was clearly not up to the task to allow the developers to make the games they had clearly envisioned from the start but as technology improved each Tom Clancy series came closer and closer to what was originally intended to be in the players hands from the very beginning. Now in 2019 the technology has finally caught up to the vision and as a result the portfolio of Tom Clancy games is one of the most consistently great in contemporary video games.
It all began in 1998 when Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six was released on the PC and later ported to the PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and even mac OS. Rainbow Six consisted of short bite sized missions that revolved around tactical shooting and team based objective driven gameplay. Over the years the series improved but didn’t stray far from the formula. Enemies felt like blank slate lifeless bots that felt as though they could better serve the experience if they were controlled by a living breathing and most importantly, thinking human. I never felt any sense of satisfaction in killing the enemies in Rainbow Six because and the games always felt hollow in the same way Counter Strike does when playing against bots instead of people. Enter Rainbow Six Siege. Suddenly sticking to the formula but putting human players behind both ends of the conflict elevate Rainbow Six be what it had always had the potential to be but had never been able to be because of hardware limitations.
And speaking of hardware limitations no series in the franchise has been more stymied by hardware limitations and forced to limit the scope of what the developer so obviously and desperately wanted it to be than Ghost Recon. Being relatively familiar with most of the series in the Tom Clancy franchise I think it's safe to say that Ghost Recon had the biggest aspirations of the bunch. When the first game launched in 2001 on the PC, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Nintendo GameCube it slowed down the pace of Rainbow Six and used the added time to emphasize squad based stealth gameplay. From the get go Ghost Recon was always intent on portraying a more intimate, quiet, cooperative experience that involved four people moving through a level undetected together. As time went on the levels in Ghost Recon games grew larger allowing players to attempt different variations of their approach to achieve their objective. And finally in 2016 Ghost Recon Wildlands was released and is a massive open world that not only embraces the cooperative multiplayer experience but encourages it. Ghost Recon Wildlands has become what the original was so desperate to be and after putting dozens of hours into Wildlands I am astounded that a developer 18 years ago was able to conceptualize what Ghost Recon would eventually become so accurately.
One year after the release of the original Ghost Recon game Ubisoft Montreal treated us to my personal favorite Tom Clancy game, Splinter Cell. Splinter Cell wasn’t less ambitious than it's older brothers but simply smaller in scale and much more contained. Where Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon were so focused on being video games and delivering an excellent pseudo multiplayer experience, Splinter Cell was much more refined and more in line with what Tom Clancy himself would deliver in his books. A single player narrative focused game featuring characters with depth and global conflict Splinter Cell immediately stood out from the rest of the Tom Clancy games and seeing as the type of game Splinter Cell was meant to be wasn’t nearly as dependent on advanced technology it is the series in the franchise that has undergone the least amount of change in order to realize its original vision. The series came out of the gate strong and immediately Ubisoft knew they needed more of these games in development. Ubisoft Shanghai took the reigns on the second entry in the series while Ubisoft Montreal was able to take their time with the third entry and arguable the best game in the entire franchise, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. After Chaos Theory though the Splinter Cell series went through what felt like a couple of identity crises. First forcing Sam Fisher to be a double agent then pushing a much more cinematic approach in Conviction. Luckily after a three year break Ubisoft Toronto brought the series back with Blacklist that functioned as return to form for the series while maintaining some of the more accessible elements from Conviction. Splinter Cell has been dark for the past five years and with each E3 I continue to let myself get excited to hear Michael Ironsides gruff gravely voice but every year I end the Ubisoft conference disappointed…maybe 2019 will be the year we see the spy make a comeback.
After Splinter Cell there wasn’t a Tom Clancy series that really caught traction in any significant way for more than a decade but then in 2015 Tom Clancy's The Division was released on PC, Xbox one, and PlayStation 4 and it was…kind of ok I guess. At launch The Division suffered from the same difficulties that almost all online games do which is a lack of balancing and a lack of content. The core of the experience was present but the product felt lacking and rough around the edges. Over the last three years however not only has The Division been given more coats of wax than Biff Tannen would lie to you about but they’ve also managed to keep the Christmas season going for three plus years! Now The Division hasn’t had nearly as much time to develop as the other games in the Tom Clancy stable and for the first time a Tom Clancy series is following trends rather than setting them by being a shared world MMO shooter but it has worked out fairly well. I've never been particularly into the shared world shooter genre and to be completely honest I played the game at launch and quickly fell off then only went back to it for a few hours for this video but there is so obviously so much potential in The Division that I am actually really excited for the what The Division 2 has to offer, maybe it will be the one that hooks me on shared world shooters.
Over the past few years Ubisoft has shown a commitment to their games and their players by continuing to support their online games like Siege and For Honor and The Division is no exception. I'm not crazy about everything they've done in the past and I'm sure they will make decisions that I don’t agree with in the future but credit where credit's due: when Ubisoft sells a game for $60 this generation they are going to make sure you get your moneys worth out of that game.
Where the Tom Clancy franchise sits right now (assuming Splinter Cell makes a return at E3) is an incredibly well rounded portfolio that has a game or two for everyone. If you want something that plays like the Tom Clancy movies or books play out, look no further than Splinter Cell. If you want to explore an open world and play a top shelf co-op stealth shooter with your friends you'll be hard pressed find a better experience than Ghost Recon Wildlands. If you're looking for some match based PVP action Rainbow Six Siege has got it spades. And if the daily grind of an MMORPG is more your speed then The Division and soon The Division 2 will scratch that itch for you. The technology finally caught up with the developers imaginations and aside from 2005 there has never been a better time to pick up a Tom Clancy game. 2005 being the year Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory one of the best games of all time came out but you all already knew that because we have all played that game all the way through at least a dozen times right?
Which Tom Clancy game is your favorite and why is it Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory? Let me know in the comments down below.
Don’t forget that we have other content besides just these boring ass videos! Check out our podcast HardReset for more free form video game discussion and our movies podcast NoRefunds the podcast that watches bad movies so you don’t have to! You can find both of those on most major podcast services and right here on YouTube! If you don’t want to scrounge for our content you can find everything we do all in one spot over at ColdNorthPro.com! I will be back next week talking about my favorite video game of all time The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask but until then just go play some games.
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