Sam Fisher is no longer voiced by the Michael Ironside in this title either, which is kind of a big deal considering one of the best qualities of good Splinter Cell titles have been his voice work making the character interesting.
It’s startling just how much difference a voice-actor makes, too. With Fisher’s longtime voice-actor Michael Ironside out of the game, Sam becomes a generic military brotagonist with a shocking quickness. I lost interest in him so immediately and so fully that I had to ask myself: Was Ironside’s charismatic performance singlehandedly keeping this series’ storytelling afloat this whole time?
The last Splinter Cell game I tried to play was Double Agent which had an ugly interface and absolutely terrible gameplay. Shallowing the pool on Sam Fisher and reducing the game to a series of maps-of-badguys challenges that doesn’t even push the limits of the gaming hardware sounds like good money after bad. Fool me once, shame on you, and all that.