The latest Tom Clancy-branded release, XDefiant, shows that Ubisoft has lost sight of (or at least chosen to redirect) what the brand may once have meant. Tom Clancy published his last solo fiction novel in 2003 and would go on to co-author a handful more until his final major novel Command Authority in 2013, the year he passed away. Despite being known as one of the most successful American authors, there have been almost as many video games released with his name as books. Five of these have come since his passing (in addition to a mobile game), with more on the horizon. XDefiant is the newest announced for the brand, and showcases that Tom Clancy games aren't at all what they once were.
Tom Clancy was a pioneer of military technothriller fiction, and that carried over into the film adaptations and early games with his name. The most recent addition to the Tom Clancy game brand, however, has practically nothing in common with the generally assumed style and tone, a subversion of expectations that seems quite intentional. XDefiant's fast-paced Call of Duty-esque shooting looks like fun, and there's a lot of exciting potential around it, yet it's a Tom Clancy game in name alone, so far as can be discerned so far - and that isn't a new development for more recent games under the brand.
Ubisoft bought the game studio Red Storm, which Tom Clancy co-founded, thus acquiring the rights to Tom Clancy branding for their games. Ubisoft made many games that fit the Tom Clancy mold, with titles like Ghost Recon 2, Rainbox Six Vegas, and the Splinter Cell franchise. Since Clancy's death, Ubisoft has gone to on to release Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoint, Rainbow Six Siege, and two entries of The Division. All of these are fun shooters with military themes and inspirations, but none of them though feature the technothriller-level plots or the intense military simulation styles of previous Tom Clancy games.
At the onset of the Tom Clancy branding, Red Storm used the moniker in part because of his reputation, but also to signal to fans that the game was an in-depth tactical shooter. In games like Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield or Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm players would strategically outfit their squad and methodically work through intricate combat scenarios whilst working to thwart rogue militant groups. Splinter Cell built on that with an intense stealth-tactical approach, making every encounter complex and unique as players worked to stop war criminals or keep superweapons out of dangerous hands. For over two decades these franchises honed their craft of using immersive gameplay to tell elaborate stories.
Even today games like Rainbow Six: Siege and Ghost Recon: Wildlands stands amongst predecessors with detailed shooting mechanics, arguably being some of the best tactical shooters of all time. Somewhere along the way, though, the narrative aspect took a distant back seat to gameplay. Siege is an arena shooter that gives Ubisoft a competitor to Call of Duty and Battlefield. The Division became Ubisoft's answer to Destiny. Wildlands basically became Far Cry but with more overt military themes, and the upcoming release of Rainbow Six: Extraction and XDefiant really look nothing like Tom Clancy games that have come before.
There are still great games within the Tom Clancy brand, and undoubtedly more to come. That name, however, seems to mean something rather different than it once did. In a sense, XDefiant epitomizes the drastic changes throughout the entire Tom Clancy ecosphere. Pulling character styles from each of the Clancy franchises to make up its factions and featuring everything from flamethrowers to bubble shields to a neon-punk backdrop, XDefiant is a strange amalgamation of things that will likely come to define Tom Clancy games going forward. If the age of the military technothriller is over, perhaps the age of the raucous and rowdy Tom Clancy shooter is dawning.
