Tom Clancy's Delete Squad

And the world wept

What is this, Ubisoft week or something? I keep taking shots at this poor little French company like this and people are going to start getting the wrong idea, I feel like I'm quietly revealing myself as some anti-Ubisoft sleeper agent who's slowly becoming active once more. The truth is: there's just so much happening with those guys right now and I'm invested because I just used to play so many of their games not that long ago. Heck, I remember a couple of years back having sat down and played through the entire Splinter Cell Franchise (sans Pandora Tomorrow) before adopting Ghost Recon Wildlands as my game-to-play for that year. And that was after my decades long obsession with Assassin's Creed before I grew bored with their slow delineation of the formula. So I'm a fan wronged, which I suppose fuels the desire to hear and respond to every single misstep they take in a sort of "See! I knew they were on the wrong path" way. A selfish desire for vindication, burning on a lake of, not hatred, but disappointment spilled from misplaced respect. With that context, let me tell you about 'Tom Clancy's Elite Squad'

If there ever a project that felt specifically made as a spit in the face to all your fans, it was 'Elite Squad'. Born in a time where fans where begging for a return to form from the fabulous and frugal boots-on-the-ground grittiness of Tom Clancy Prime. That's right, this isn't a new desire born from XDefiant, we've been feeling Tom Clancy lost it's way years ago and have thus been hounding Ubisoft ever since. Perhaps then all of these latest games have been reactionary on their part, a knee-jerk way of saying that they were tired of their fans telling them exactly what they want, they want to tell us what we want! I think that's a trap a lot of creative types can fall into, slipping from the totally healthy position of 'I'll do what I want because I enjoy it' into the more extreme shade of that feeling 'I'll disregard my fans because they're idiots and I know what's best for them'. 'Elite Squad' was another symptom and, even more than XDefiant, honestly rang the alarm bells for the future of Tom Clancy as we know it.

'Elite Squad' was a mobile game, thus already you can tell it was probably designed more for the financial benefits than for the love of the game itself, and it was meant to be a grand smashing together of many different Tom Clancy properties in a cross over royale. You know what that means I bet; it was a game that pretty much played itself where players had to put teams together with a high enough power score, which were best supplemented with real-money microtransactions. There's no imagination to a game like this, no artistry, just a cold dead forumla which creates the very same game time and time again, all that changes is the art style, for which this one had a polygonal low-detail look that seemed a little unfinished at least to me. But that wasn't the big insult, no that was reserved for the fact the game would be first one to feature Sam Fisher as a 'playable' character since the last Splinter Cell game. Oh, so Sam is good enough for mobile but not his own game now? We see how it is, Ubisoft, you trippin'.

This was Ubisoft big controversy of the year, before all this came out about mismanagement, harassment and all the real issues that they sweep under the rug today. Back then it was all about the sheer disrespect that Tom Clancy's franchises were suffering and the way that Ubisoft flaunted all that under the guise that they knew better. And at the end of the day how do you really argue against that? I mean, they are the one's running one of the biggest gaming companies in the world; surely they know how to make money, don't they? Even if this seems like the stupidest idea in the world and we, as the target audience, ought to know a thing or two about what we'll buy, these are experts who think they know us better than we know ourselves; who's to say they haven't found some secret formula to hack our wallets open without us even noticing? Well last week's story might be the exact proof that the team are just as clueless as we believed them to be, seeing as how it was announced after 13 months that Tom Clancy's Elite Squad is officially sentenced to the chopping block.

What's that smell? Do you smell that? Must be Vindication. Smells a little bittersweet doesn't it? I suppose that's the only real logical takeaway when we're talking about the abject failure of a venture featuring some of the most beloved tactical properties in the industry. But the sweet to offset the bitter comes in how this is proof, if ever it was needed, that the future of gaming is not always in the mobile space. I mean, sure for Niantic the millions they rake in monthly means they never have to dream about developing elsewhere, but when Ubisoft go trend chasing it's only a matter of time before they start hitting such walls such as 'unsustainability'. The soon-to-be shut down servers of Elite Squad are only facing this threat because no one was on them and throwing Ubisoft their bloodmoney, making this an victory to all those who say "If you don't like it, don't buy it". This sends a clear message, I hope, to those in charge over at Ubisoft; we're not going to buy something just because you throw the brand  we love on the marketing, you need to make a game worthy of that brand and our money.

Of course, this sends just as clear a message towards XDefiant. In many ways, given the timing of this announcement, it almost seems like XDefiant is the spiritual successor to Elite Squad. An acknowledgment that bottom of the barrel mobile trash isn't going to cut it in the Tom Clancy world, and a 'compromise' move into military-style gameplay, whilst still landing short of making an actual tactical adventure. I can't quite say for sure why Ubisoft are so adverse to just making the game that fans are willing to spend money on, but here we are with a game a decent bit closer to what fans want. But will they bite? Well, if the online response to the reveal trailer is anything to go by, probably not; but this is at least progress. Heck, this time next year when XDefiant is deemed unsustainable and shutdown, maybe then we'll be getting a Game with squad controls? Is that too much to ask? I don't feel like it is.

I'm pretty sure no tears will be shed at the funeral of the crappy cash grab that Elite Squad represented, however I wonder how this news will be interpreted to those within the company. Afterall, this does demonstrate on Ubisoft's part both an inability to select fruitful products and an unwillingness to stick to their guns; in many ways this is the worst of all worlds in regards to confidence building. Perhaps a more positive way to look at this would be Ubisoft making active attempts to change it's spots, from the company that stifles it's ambitions to the whims of one ex creative director,  to one that pursues the heights it needs to in order to get the project done. That might be edging a little too positively, however, seeing as how XDefiant is still a misjudged mismatch of maligned and misshapen malpractices. Oh, and then there's Skull and Bones which certainly seems like a waste of delayed development time given how niche it'll likely end up. And BGE2. You know what, I take it back. Ubisoft ain't changing for nobody.

At the very least this means the beaten spirit of Sam Fisher can slink back into obscurity, waiting for his next chance to disappoint his fan base with a badly conceived cameo in a game which doesn't deserve him. (At this point his illuminati subplot from Conviction and Blacklist is more likely to get resolved in the next Ghost Recon game) But don't let my cynicism mislead you, I do think there's room for a solid crossover between Tom Clancy properties at some point down the line, I just think that Ubisoft need to focus on remembering how to make each game from their respective franchises first before blundering into another mess like they've done twice now. Crossovers should celebrate the strengths of both franchises, not disregard the fundamentals of both. So let's reconvene this time next year to discuss the next ill-fated Clancy crossover; agreed? Agreed.