While fans continue to wait for Ubisoft to bring back the fan favorite Splinter Cell series, the French company seems content in keeping protagonist Sam Fisher around for cameos. Recently, the series has been featured as post-launch content for both Ghost Recon Wildlands as well as Breakpoint. Fisher's iconic night vision tri-goggles could also be found inside of Assassin's Creed Odyssey as a cleverly placed Easter egg. According to a new report, it looks like the next stop for the Splinter Cell franchise isn't a new game, but as another crossover with another major Ubisoft franchise, Rainbow Six Siege.

Although Rainbow Six Siege started off very slowly following its December 2015 release, the game has exploded in popularity and has been enjoying its fifth year of post launch support. So far, the first two seasons have introduced interesting new operators for players to dig into like the most recent Attacker Ace and Defender Melusi. However, a dataminer has seemingly come across select lines of code that seemingly reveal some of the operators from the next two seasons.

RELATED: Rainbow Six Siege Steel Wave Adding Ace and Melusi Operators

Interestingly enough, the Year 5, Season 3 operator is called Scout - ECH (Echelon / Third Echelon). Anyone familiar with the Splinter Cell franchise will immediately recognize that organization as the top-secret NSA group that Sam Fisher, Irving Lambert, and Anna Grimsdottir were apart of. Recent games have moved Sam's team to a new organization called Fourth Echelon, but from a classic Splinter Cell standpoint, this operator is likely based on the stealth operatives from that franchise.

sam fisher splinter cell

Interestingly enough, some users have called this into question as it doesn't line up with the roadmap Ubisoft unveiled prior to the start of Year 5. The agent in question is listed as classified but the Nighthaven logo, from the fictional in-game faction, is shown. However, in a recent interview, Product Director Roy Del Valle admitted that the logo should not have been added and things have been tweaked in terms of the narrative that don't link specifically to Nighthaven.

In a different interview, game designer Jean-Baptiste Halle admitted that the team is open to adding operators from other Ubisoft franchises and a number of them would fit quite well. Halle event went on to hint that the next couple of operators this year may be very interesting additions for fans. This admission and the datamined information could be a sign of things to come later in 2020.

As for a dedicated Splinter Cell game, Ubisoft remains largely silent on the subject. It's a question that seemingly comes up each year at E3, though with the company choosing to keep the franchise in the public eye with all of these crossovers, perhaps it's setting something up for the future. While not a direct confirmation, it certainly helps that former Splinter Cell creative director Maxime Beland returned to Ubisoft earlier in the year to join the newly created editorial team.

Rainbow Six: Siege is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

MORE: Ubisoft Looking Into 'Digital Experience' to Replace Its E3 2020 Presentation

Source: Reddit; Windows Central; DualShockers;