Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell is a third-person stealth game that came out in 2002. This is a classic TPS that a lot of PC gamers love. And, although we don’t have any news for its official remake, there is a new way to re-experience the first game on PC.
Enhanced Splinter Cell is an unofficial patch/mod that brings a lot of QoL improvements. This mod restores content that was cut from the game. It also brings numerous gameplay tweaks and changes. Plus, it improves the game’s lighting so that it can be similar to the one for Xbox.
In case you didn’t know, the PC version of Splinter Cell had weaker lighting than the Xbox version. Luckily, this mod fixes that. It brings back the Xbox lighting and textures, so the game looks much better. It also brings back the flashing light effect from the Xbox version when alarms go off. On top of that, there’s a new option to change Sam’s outfit for all levels.
Not only that, but Enhanced Splinter Cell includes dgVoodoo2 to restore Shadow Buffer rendering and set a 60 FPS cap. It also includes the ThirteenAG Widescreen Fix for widescreen support. This means that you can run the game on modern PC systems and monitors. This alone is a must for everyone who wants to replay the first Splinter Cell.
As said, Enhanced Splinter Cell also comes with a bunch of new gameplay improvements. Now, you can tap a key to open the inventory instead of holding it down—just like in Pandora Tomorrow. You can also set a key to turn the HUD on or off. There’s a new option to choose how fast your character moves when the game starts. And just like in later Splinter Cell games, you can now use the crouch key to drop down from ledges.
What’s also cool is that the patch adds two missions that were cut from the game. These missions are the Nuclear Power Plant and Severonickel. Do note that these are still a WIP. As such, they are not as polished as the official missions. Still, these are two cool missions that die-hard fans may find cool. The patch also includes updated cutscene that improve the storytelling for Kalinatek, along with two new cutscenes for Nuclear Power Plant and Severonickel.
In short, this is an amazing unofficial patch/mod for Splinter Cell. Splinter Cell Remake is MIA and we don’t know when – and if – it will come out. And while it would have been cool to play Splinter Cell with Path Tracing, its RTX Remix Mod is still in a very early dev stage. Personally, I don’t expect this mod to ever come out. Thus, the best way you can play Splinter Cell right now is via this mod. So, be sure to download it from this link.
Enjoy and stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Hats off to you, John!
This is going to the collection right away!
Cheers
Great job by the modders!
One of my fav games of all-time…I have the game installed on one of my drivers with tweaks, but this looks a lot better. The don't make games like this anymore!
Man if i could do something id love to help push for a new splinter cell. These so called triple A game developers are mostly making trash. A new star wars empire at war would have been great but ea said they wouldn't make money from it. Its been a dream to have my own game company. Producing good game that are fully finished with no day one update. No loot boxes, no woke agenda.
You had me until the woke agenda thing. Really tired of ya'lls obsession with that.
You're on the wrong website. 😅
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https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/963d4d9c7d6444bf6b915655ce00d7c570bceb1f8c80e6f6ffb2096ace8cdabf.png ……
You will never be a woman.
I feel you. As a sad, unfortunate fact and a life pro-tip regarding "Its been a dream to have my own game company" from someone who very frequently guess outside home and saw how cruel and painful real life is:
"No one is born equal."
No one chose their wealth, no one chose where they were born, no one chose what family they were born to, etc.
Had all governments in the world not been so extremely corrupt and actually did something as extremely basic as cleaning the trash on the streets in THEIR OWN shithole countries or do anything to curb the skyrocketing car accidents (POV here) or pretty much to curb corruption, everyone would've been able to make his own game by now, me included literally over a decade ago.
But no! They don't care about all or any of that at all! All governments nowadays biggest concerns are instead of doing something as basic as curbing corruption and crime in their countries is to dump literal BILLIONS from what they have in their pockets (that previous governments were the ones who gave wealth to their countries and not because of how "awesome!" the snowflake spoiled brats currently in charge who imprison you and ruin your entire life over simple and harmless facts pointing out how extremely corrupt they really are) to groom you and your children with Satanic LGBTHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ propaganda, because that's what these extremely selfish, arrogant, loathsome, and corrupt elitist fuckers' biggest priorities really are. When fuckers like these have absolute full control and no one stops them and makes these spoiled and oversensitive pussies know their true place and how their non-existent "dignity" are worth less than literal trash, they abuse their power like that.
This is the upside-down, JuDEIzed dystopia we are forced to live in.
Love the Splinter Cell games. Well, the first three anyway. Would love for a new game to come out thats like those, only modern graphics. Michael Ironside has to be Sam though.
This is the way to replay this classic, looks great and the QoL changes sound amazing.
Please stop mentioning the RTX mod, it completely fcks the shadowed and lighted areas, making them inconsistent with the stealth meter.
Great job by the modders!
One of my fav games of all-time…I have the game installed on one of my drives with tweaks, but this looks a lot better. The don't make games like this anymore!
Agreed. I've played this game countless times over the years, and it's definitely one of my all-time favourites. I still remember how impressed I was when I first played it on my new GeForce 3 — this game took full advantage of DirectX 8's features. It featured beautiful water effects using pixel shaders, high-resolution textures, shadow buffers and volumetric lighting. Gameplay was also amazing. Back then such stealth games was something new to me.
Oh yeah! I remember the time when I first saw the screenshots in 2002 (including the one on cover of this story!)…from that moment was eagerly waiting for it's release.
Splinter Cell has a special place in my heart!
Splinter Cell 1 does not feature volumetric lightning. It does however try to simulate it in some spots with great artistic succes
Splinter Cell 1 does not feature volumetric lightning. It does however try to simulate it in some spots with great artistic succes
Yes, it was a simulation, but it looked spectacular.
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When you think about it, it's so incredible that 22 years later, a team has formed to improve one of the best games ever.
This is what makes PC gaming the best.
Anyway, it seems that we really need an original copy of the game, which… I don't have, crazily enough. I have Magipack (the best) and Dodi's repack, and both have already the outdated PS3 textures pack.
Speaking of which, apparently this video is already outdated? Cos the guy says that the PS3 textures don't work, but it's not important anymore, since that team already released their own textures.
So, this is the best all-in-one "mod" we can get in 2025, merging widescreen fix, bugs fixed, QoL improvements, HD textures, etc. 😃👍
If the remake ever comes out, it'd better be good, cos I don't even need it anymore! lol
Edit: it works with Dodi's repack! I didn't do anything, just extracted the files normally to the main folder as instructed.
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Trans ladies out here making cis women insecure by being more feminine, and making men insecure by having a bigger d*ck, truly the best of both worlds 😂
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Looking good with their updated PS3 textures pack and the improved shadows!😍
It could need some color balance tweak with Reshade or something.
But gee, not only the gameplay hasn't aged at all, it's better than most stealth games we've seen since a decade.
For stealth lovers like me, gaming totally evolved backwards.😩
No, the shadows exclusive to the Xbox were those of its Nvidia GPU, so they were exactly the same on the Nvidia GF 3 and GF4 series. And on the FX series. The ATI 9700 could not use that method.
What happens is that any later GPU from Nvidia or ATI/AMD can't use that shading method. DgVoodo2 emulates those GF 3/4 cards.
The textures of the Xbox version I believe are exactly the same as the PC version. What was used in those enhanced PC versions (which have been around for several years) were the textures of the PS3 version.
The Splinter Cell 1-2 shadows worked until GeForce 7. They broke starting with GeForce 8. Not entirely sure they ever worked properly on ATI GPUs of the time.
Nontheless, Splinter Cell 1 has like FOUR shadowing sysfems.
1. No shadows
2. Projector shadows, you can enable this in ini.
3. Shadow Buffers, you can enable this in ini.
4. Shadow Buffers + DgVodoo, this emulated how shadows looked on GeForce 3-7.
5. Splinter Cell Enhanced mod, this enabled shadowing to look like it does on Xbox, which was always heads and bounds above the original PC port on GeForce GPUs anyway.
I started the series with Splinter cell 2 Pandora tomorrow, i had GeForce Fx 5800 Ultra and Oh boy, these games were garbage ports, performance was abysmal on my PC.
Still waiting for my favorite title, Pandora Tomorrow.
Still waiting for my favorite title, Pandora Tomorrow.