There’s a scene in Splinter Cell: Deathwatch--Netflix's animated adaptation of Ubisoft's stealth game series--where Sam Fisher casually walks in front of a security camera. As a long-time Splinter Cell fan this irked me. The Sam Fisher I know would never do something so careless, even if it was intentional.The thing is, the Sam Fisher I know and love doesn’t exist. Maybe he did in the early 2000s, but Ubisoft has pulled this character in so many different directions over the years and he’s been diluted. In 2006, they killed Sam’s daughter and sent him to prison. In 2010, they made him a fugitive, and revealed that his daughter is actually alive. In 2013, they soft-rebooted the franchise and in the process stripped Sam of his dry humor and charm. In 2020, they added a version of him to Rainbow Six: Siege. They even put Sam in the most recent Ghost Recon games, and had the legendary Michael Ironside reprise the role. It's clear that although Ubisoft hasn’t forgotten about Sam, they have no idea what to do with him.A battered Sam Fisher aiming a gun toward the camera.This trend continues in Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, a new chapter in Sam’s long and turbulent history that arrives in the form of a Netflix series. Helmed by Derek Kolstad, writer on John Wick and Nobody, Deathwatch finds Sam off the grid in Poland. Portrayed by Liev Schreiber, this take on Sam feels hollow. He’s a man of few words, and everything he says is cold, direct, and calculated. He’s more in line with the Sam from 2013’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist’s than the original trilogy, and that’s disappointing.Continue Reading at GameSpot