Sam Fishers originalskådespelare Michael Ironside diskuterade under gårdagen i en Reddit AMA hur Ubisoft förändrade karaktären efter att Ironside kommit med synpunkter inför lanseringen av det första spelet i serien år 2002, och säger att han kände att han inte ville spela Sam Fisher.
"I have to confess I'm not a gamer. When they sent me the contract for the very first game, it was quite lucrative, and I said 'absolutely, I will do this'. I thought it was going to be like PONG, and I would just have to introduce it."
"When I got the script, it was very stiff, very inflexible, and very blood and violent. And I didn't want to do it. And told them I was going to give them back their money. They asked me what would it take to keep me on the project, and I said we would have to change the character, and give him some type of humanity. To their credit, they sat me down with the game creators, and we came up with the present Sam Fisher, who had an empathy and was not just a 2 dimensional killing machine. And we got as much humanity, I think that that format will allow."
Ironside förklarade också att han var överraskad över hur många och varierade människor som spelat serien. Bland annat tog han upp hur han under en transatlantflygning hamnade bredvid en "an absolute Splinter Cell freak" i en kostym med väst.
"The great thing about the game is that I've found over the years that a lot of people from different social, racial, and ethnic and national backgrounds to have a worldwide conversation. Because they're all gaming together online!"
"And where I thought the stereotypical gamer was an oversized pair of pants, runny nose, sitting in a corner, playing with his control, it's actually none of that. It hits every level of society, and every socio-economic group."