Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Diaries Part Nine

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 murdered the hell out of Doug Shetland, Sam was being sent to the Japanese Defence Ministry in Tokyo to find out who was working with him to start a world war - Admiral Otomo, or the Japanese government…

The sliding door that I was dropped close to had two guards patrolling behind it, so I waited for them to patrol away before opening it. I hid in the shadows inside, and shot a sticky camera near to them, and gassed them when they got close enough. I turned off the lights and activated my night vision, spotting the infrared light that the security camera was using. I quickly EMP’d it, and snuck past.

At the end of the tunnel, where the gassed guards lay, there was a crawlspace which led to a ladder. I went up, and could hear someone humming. I jumped up onto a dividing wall to find a janitor washing the floor behind another guard. I waited for him to turn before dropping down silently and choking the guard out. I quickly repeated the act on the janitor before he could turn around, and picked a direction to go in.

Entering another corridor, I spotted a guard with his back to me. I could overhear talking, and assumed it was the US officers who hadn’t been heard from since their office was raided. I had to make contact with them, so I waited in the shadows to see what happened. After a few moments, the Japanese guard who was “interrogating” them (he wasn’t doing a very good job), came out to stand guard. I shot the furthest guard with a sticky shocker, then the newcomer with another one before going into the room.

After almost blundering into the view of a camera, I shot it with an EMP and approached the two guards. Unfortunately, when I started talking to them the “alert” music began very loudly, so I couldn’t actually hear what they discussed…

After whatever they said, I left the room via a vent shaft, and found myself upstairs from the main lobby. I knocked out a guard and jumped over the railing. I dropped down to the next level and listened to two guards chatting. I fired a sticky camera behind the one sat at the desk and gassed him, then shot a sticky shocker at the other one when he went to investigate.

I went down the stairs (I didn’t use them earlier because they were lit too brightly) and went through a motion sensitive door. Leading downwards was a travelator, with another one coming back up, and a guard patrolling it. I shot out the lights above me before I noticed a light switch, so I shot the guard with a sticky shocker and turned them off. It also deactivated the travelators, so I carefully went down, being told by Redding that the guards were equipped with non-lethal artillery. I would be interrogated rather than killed, if captured.

Another guard patrolled the bottom of the travelators, so I waited for him to pass before shooting a camera with an EMP before sneaking past it. I grabbed and interrogated the guard, being told that they would not drop ammo if I shook them. I grabbed another guard who was patrolling the toilets, and dumped him with his now-unconscious buddy.

I went past the elevators and an ominous-looking door to a retina scanner, so I hacked it and went through. I came across a storeroom containing two guards, so I ignored it for now and went to the other, locating the server room that I had been given the code to earlier. There was a camera above the servers, so I shot it with an EMP and nipped through to the computers, and hacked them to find out who gave the I-SDF assault team their orders.

Objective complete, I went back to the ominous door to listen in on a meeting in the war room. I almost got spotted by a guard, but he turned and I shot him with an airfoil round. There were two ways to go around the soundproof room, so I went left and EMP’d the camera. There was a guard keeping watch of the door, so I crept around the corner and socked him one. The only way to gain access to the war room was a handy person-sized vent, so I jumped up to it and crawled through.

I arrived just in time to see Admiral Otomo call the occupants of the room, and threaten them. It quickly became clear that he was blackmailing the Japanese government, and would launch a North Korean missile at a random Japanese city if they didn’t comply. So they sent in an assault team, which went about as well as you’d expect. He called back and told them that he was launching the missile.

After exiting the vent, I retraced my steps back to the elevators and went down. Outside the windows, the ocean floor quickly approached. Fearing another assault team, I overheard the men say to cut the power to the elevators. I dropped out of the bottom of the car I was in, and carefully made my way to the floor by dropping between metal beams.

Lambert contacted me on my way down, and said that I had three minutes to get to the servers and stop the launch. Thankfully the doors were open at the bottom floor, so I hopped out and went carefully around the corner. There was a guard, so I threw a smoke grenade at them. I punched the closest one’s lights out, then the second. The third had gotten out of reach, but as the smoke was clearing decided to run towards me.

The hallways exploded in fire and smoke as he set off the motion-sensitive wall mines, happily just out of reach of me. I went through the doors they were surrounding which was where the assault team had met it’s end. I flipped on my thermal vision and spotted a laser grid. Luckily the off switch was next to the door, so I turned them off and went through the door at the end of the killing corridor.

Some grating had been lifted from the floor, so to avoid the mobile turret zooming up and down the room. I went down and under the two men waiting to kill me. I shot them both with sticky shockers and hurried over to the servers. I had the opportunity to hack them, and still having over a minute left I did so, before attaching an explosive and making for cover.

The servers blew, stopping the launch and alerting two troopers from the next room to my presence. Luckily the turret had been shut down by the blast, so I quickly dealt with the two newcomers with a hail of bullets, and hurried through to snatch Otomo. Lambert wanted him extracted to answer for his crimes, which would avoid a war between the Koreas and Japan.

Knowing the jig was up, Otomo stabbed himself through the belly. Lambert ordered me to get into the safe room and save him, so I used an access shaft hidden in the server room opposite. With Otomo stabilised, my exfiltration was ordered. Through the window. Lambert assured Sam that he would probably be fine, so I set a charge and hid behind a wall. The window burst inwards with a rush of seawater, and Sam swum for the surface with Otomo in tow.

The bad guy caught, and catastrophe averted, the president thanked a very generic “everyone involved”, and Third Echelon celebrated.

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Final Thoughts

Another very enjoyable entry of the series. The open-world feel to each mission was the most surprising change from the previous entries, which were very linear. Bringing Shetland back from the previous game was a good worldbuilding touch, but they didn’t even reference events from Pandora Tomorrow. There was more fourth wall breaking than I was expecting, with Splinter Cell on a couple of the TVs, Prince of Persia getting namechecked and a guard taking a shot at Metal Gear Solid.

I’m looking forward to Double Agent next time, and will follow that with Essentials.