Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow Diaries Part Eight

Coen raced Sam to LAX and screeched to a stop next to a wall. Sam leaped out and mounted the van to clamber over the wall. Lambert and Grímstóttir came on comms to explain that Soth was seen entering the airport, and probably had people on the inside.

Climbing a fence, I hid behind a car while a truck got between myself and the closest guard. This truck would be the easiest way in, so luckily the back was open and I jumped inside before it went into the parking structure. As Soth no doubt had the smallpox weapon, Grím suggested that Soth’s men would have received a vaccination beforehand, and so their body temperature would be up.

This made my job easier, as I could instantly tell that one of the guards was a member of Soth’s group with my thermal goggles. Unfortunately there was another one who was just doing his rounds with a dog. I managed to alert them by hurrying too much, and the dog picked up my scent -- luckily I climbed onto the guard room where I could wait with ease. I considered my options, and decided to smoke grenade them when they gathered close together. Lambert told me that I must kill the terrorist, so I hid the bodies and then shot the terrorist.

I went into the staff room, making sure to shoot the lights out in the adjoining hallway, which made a cleaner go to investigate. Slipping past her, I shot out one of the lights in the room to get the attention of a man in a keypad-locked room and draw him out. Neither of them were terrorists, so I let them be and snuck into the room, and out the other door.

There was a terrorist in the warehouse chatting to a member of staff, so I shot some more lights to aid my sneaking and got a sticky shocker ready. Bullets didn’t always stop people quickly enough, I had been finding, so this would be easier. Rounding the corner in the light, the terrorist was coming right towards me -- the sticky shocker shut him up, and a bullet to the head ended him.

Leaving the clueless worker alone, I went through to the next part of the warehouse. One terrorist sat on a chair in a spotlight and another one introduced himself to a worker, while a security guard patrolled the gangway above. With careful timing, I dragged the sitting terrorist off of his chair, knocked him out in the shadows and shot him. The second one took a little more planning, but I managed to shoot him in the shadows before moving him just in case.

Unfortunately, the worker spotted me and came to investigate, so I had to fire an airfoil round at him, then elbow him to knock him out. It was only then that I noticed a third terrorist patrolling a different part of the gangway to the guard. I shot out some lights, and the spotlight pointed at the chair, then waited for the terrorist to stop moving before shooting him. The lights already gone, I managed to easily slip past the security guard and into where the baggage conveyer belts snaked their way through the building.

Having to pick one side, so I chose the one that allowed me to shoot the lights out, and climb onto a walkway above the conveyer belt. Shooting the lights alerted the employee watching the belt, but not enough to pull the alarm as I creeped past, dropping back to the floor at the other end. There was another belt and employee, but the window was open for this one, so I shot the light out through the window and went past with ease.

Now finally in the terminal, I just had to find Soth. I managed to grab and kill another terrorist as soon as I came out, before he walked past any civilians. I snuck along the travelator, almost getting spotted by an employee who came out of the keypad-locked door at the end, before going inside to grab and take out the sixth terrorist. There were apparently only Soth and two of his men left, so now I just had to not be spotted by the civilians…

The conference room attached to that office had four people in, and as I entered they decided to take a break and open the automatic blinds. Since they were all so close, I couldn’t risk moving faster than the slowest sneak possible. I only just beat the light from the blinds, and followed one of them outside. Someone spotted me, and followed to investigate, but thankfully it was dark enough to hide me.

Lambert called again, telling me to confirm their intel that Soth was in the terminal. I hurried down the escalator and under a security camera to the balcony. Using my thermal goggles and binoculars, I spotted Soth with his prosthetic leg and two of his men, and was told to get to them and take them out.

Running past another camera to the elevator, I was surprised when I pressed down and nothing happened. After pressing up it began moving. Unfortunately, after a few floors the power was cut, and the elevator stopped. Lambert told me to knock off the roof and climb -- I must have missed the part where I was supposed to be going up.

Out of the car, it took me quite a while to climb up the cables to a place I felt comfortable trying to reach for another cable. I figured I had to go all the way up and across, but I only had to get to the top of the next car along, where an opening led to where the ventilation system was housed. Soth was discussing flights with his men, trying to work out the best time to set off the device.

Carefully, I snuck around past some workers, and shimmied along a pipe, trying to find a way to Soth without being spotted. One of the civvies saw something, and started searching for me, but I succeeded in getting to the ladders which led to the terrorists. Then the timer began counting down from 60 seconds.

Firing back at the men, I managed to sticky shocker one of them to take him out quickly, the others falling to a hail of bullets. Time running out, I shot the one I stunned, and reached the bio-weapon.

Sam decided that the best plan wasn’t whatever Lambert and Grím could come up with. Instead, he dressed up as a worker, and placed the ticking bomb behind a couple of policemen. They spotted it as Sam slipped away, and called in a bomb squad (in the nine minutes remaining...), detonating the bio-weapon safely while Sam met back up with Coen for extraction…

-----------------------



Final Thoughts

I honestly enjoyed Pandora Tomorrow. It’s a decent improvement on Splinter Cell, with only the glaring exception of the voice actor for Lambert. The storyline was decently put together, whereas Splinter Cell’s seemed to just randomly put you at cool locations joined by a vague thread. Pandora Tomorrow had a couple of plot threads weaving about the place.

It was odd that they introduced D.P. Brunton as the CIA inter-agency consultant, and yet his contribution was practically nonexistent. He replaced Vernon Wilkes Jr from the first game, but even Wilkes did more by actually appearing on-screen in cutscenes and missions. Other characters that were introduced went on to play actual roles, with Douglas Shetland and Ingrid Karlthson both appearing in the opening mission and later on, which I enjoyed.

If the increase in quality is matched by Chaos Theory, I’m really looking forward to playing it next time.