Splinter Cell Diaries Part Six

This is my ongoing exploration of the Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell games, played in release order. I will chronicle my playthrough of each title in turn and discuss any recurring themes and noteworthy events.

Having stopped the broadcasting of four American soldiers being executed, Sam was sent back to the Chinese Embassy to stop them from destroying all of the evidence...

Despite being weapons free, I had the explicit instruction to not kill General Feilong, in the hopes that he could help Third Echelon reach former-president Nikoladze. I had to find my way inside the embassy from one of the upper floors, which meant that I had to get from street level. There was a nearby Chinese restaurant (which is odd, since the embassy was in Myanmar and technically closer to Thailand), which I snuck into the kitchen through the rear exit.

I shot out a light, causing the chef to investigate, before knocking him out and going up a ladder to one side of the kitchen. There were two men inside the restaurant that remained where they were, eating their meals. I took a second ladder to the roof, and Colonel Lambert contacted me to warn that there were a number of keypads in the embassy. We had no way of finding out the codes since nobody would be carrying them on a USB stick, as people had been doing since the start of the game.

There was a guard patrolling the neighbouring building, so I shot him and crossed over a plank handily left bridging the buildings. Outside of the building was a zipwire connecting to the embassy, which I slid across and grabbed onto the ledge on the wall. Climbing around the building, I had to stop a couple of times to avoid a bloke who was patrolling between two windows that were next to one another. Once around, I dropped down and went into the embassy through a vent.

I had to make my way to the basement, but could hear an auto-turret nearby. Luckily there was a hole in the wall in the other room, so I went in and hugged the wall to shift along. I slid down a pole, and was wondering where these keypads I had been told about were -- so far I hadn’t even met a door. There were three men in the next room I came across, destroying computers. I quickly shot them, and accessed the surviving computers.

Lambert contacted me again, telling me that I had a new objective. I had to destroy the ordinance which was currently on-board a fleet of trucks in a warehouse nearby.

I went upstairs and took out two guards and a camera, the guards with a sticky shocker each and the camera with regular ammunition. I snuck into a room attached to a bunk room, housing two sleeping guards who got shot several times only to still get up before dying.

The door out of the adjoining room led back into the hallway, but an officer was approaching the keypad-locked door on the opposite side. I waited for him to punch in the code, then enter the room. I shot the guard behind him with a sticky shocker, then went over to use the keypad. Lambert had come back to me with a tip -- use my thermal goggles to see which numbers were pressed.

Luckily the officer had very hot hands, as the numbers were indeed lit up when I took a look. However, inside was a big hall full of danger. There was the officer, a guard and three auto-turrets. A distraction camera/gassing awaited the guard, before I dashed around the auto-turret behind the door. I disabled it and climbed up to a crumbled ledge, disabling another turret before jumping up onto the scaffolding which held a massive Chinese flag in place.

Some more guards had turned up, so I waited for them to move before going to the door on the other balcony. Unfortunately, it was locked by a retinal scanner, so I had to go and snatch one of the patrolling guards to let me in. I checked the computer in the room before opening the window and jumping out.

I was now just off of the main courtyard, where I had been much earlier when I had to spy on the General’s conversation. Unfortunately, the dog was still here, as were a few guards. More than a few bullets went flying before I could make my way into a gate hidden on the other side of the grounds. One man and a camera stood between me and the warehouse, so I shot them both and went inside.

The weird thing that struck me was that this warehouse situated on -- or right next to -- embassy property was masquerading as a warehouse for a toy company. I snuck through the shelves just as an officer activated the keycode on the door. I unlocked it after they went in, and grabbed him, to knock him out inside the room. I picked up some items and made my way into the warehouse proper, disposing of three guards and two cameras.

I climbed up some boxes and onto a gantry, heading into the next section. They had just finished refueling the trucks, and were about to leave. I ran around to stop them, but as one began to leave I had to take a chance and fire at the fuel pump. Both trucks exploded in a satisfying way, and I went downstairs and dropped through a trapdoor.

Lambert explained that I needed to get whatever information I could from Feirong’s computer -- but it was likely locked, meaning I still couldn’t kill him until I accessed it. There was someone patrolling down in the tunnel I had entered, so I took him out with a distraction camera. I continued down the tunnel, and a colonel came around the corner. I was between lights, so completely hidden from him in the dark, and so lined up my SC-2K with his head. He stopped right in front of me, but as I was about to pull the trigger he received a call on his radio. The General was trying to commit suicide, he was told, and he ran off.

It was a good thing I didn’t kill him, as the door at the end of the tunnel had a keypad. I popped on my thermal goggles again and typed in the code, and called the elevator that he had just taken. The next hallway ended in another keypad, and as I went inside there was a gunshot. I carefully went inside and found the colonel dead, and General Feirong sat at his desk. I took out the light above him and approached. He told Sam that he was going to kill himself, but that he would do it after murdering him.

With the light out, he couldn’t see me, so I waited for him to stop shooting blindly, hidden behind a wall, before sneaking behind him and grabbing him. After a brief exchange, I forced him to unlock the computer, and he lost consciousness. He hadn’t been able to give me a location for Nikoladze, unfortunately, so I transmitted the data back to Third Echelon and bounced.

That was when the building began exploding with flames -- their burning of documents had gotten out of control, and set the embassy on fire. I made it through a few blazes and out a window, luckily where my ride was, and I left aboard a helicopter.