Maxime Béland is a long-time Ubisoft employee who served as creative director on the two most recent Splinter Cell games, Conviction (opens in new tab) and Blacklist (opens in new tab) (although they're hardly recent), as well as Far Cry 4 (opens in new tab), Primal (opens in new tab), and 5 (opens in new tab). He left Ubisoft in early 2019 to take on the role of creative director at Epic Games, but that only lasted about eights months—and according to VGC (opens in new tab), he's now back at Ubisoft.
Béland will serve as a vice-president of Ubisoft's editorial team, according to the report, which the company recently said is being revamped (opens in new tab) in order to encourage greater differentiation between Ubisoft's many, often very similar (opens in new tab) games.
Splinter Cell, with its well-established characters and linear narrative, probably doesn't need as much help in that regard as, say, Far Cry. But fans have been encouraged by other signs of activity on the Sam Fisher front over the past year, even though they haven't added up to anything substantial. Ubisoft creative director Julian Gerighty said in May 2019 that he was "working on the next Splinter Cell (opens in new tab)," although that was later dismissed as a joke; in September, Gamestop said that a new Splinter Cell game was "on the horizon (opens in new tab)"; and in November, Ubisoft Spain dropped an out-of-nowhere tweet about understanding "the darkness (opens in new tab)" that ultimately went nowhere. Still, hope dies hard, and Ubisoft is bound to bring it back sooner or later, right?
LinkedIn (opens in new tab) indicates that Béland was at Epic from March to October 2019, and is now back at Ubisoft. I've emailed the company for more information and will update if I receive a reply.
