Splinter Cell Blacklist Diaries Part One

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. This time I begin Blacklist.

The final game in the Splinter Cell series, unless they announce a new one before I finish this, Blacklist was released in 2013 after three years in development. I’m aware that Ironside didn’t reprise his role in this, but he apparently did help coach his replacement Eric Johnson. I’ve not seen anything with him in, so I can’t pre-judge him based on past roles.

Honestly, this is the first game that I know nothing about. Other than something vague about a drone? It’ll be fun finding out.

Anyway, let’s find out how things panned out after Conviction!

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After a rough three years, and having helped thwart an attempt on the president’s life, Sam had taken his daughter away to reconnect with her after her alleged death…

While taking off from Anderson air base in Guam in a helicopter piloted by Victor Coste, terrorists blew up the armoury. The resulting explosion took the helicopter down just outside of the base, so Coste and I made our way back in to disable the jammer and try to stop them.

Big bada-boom

Due to the surprise nature of the attack, the base personnel were completely unprepared. Humvees were being gunned down, with survivors hunted, bullets are flying from the group behind this attack. Coste stayed back to help a soldier and sends me ahead, so I went for the jammer to try and report what’s happening. I took down a couple of men, but reached the jammer without being spotted.

I drug an injured soldier out of harm's way and Coste joined me as I deactivated the jammer. The man was trying to say something, but it was a ploy as he pulled out a grenade. Coste tackled me to the ground as the explosion went off…

A few days later, the president had Sam brought to Fourth Echelon’s mobile base, set up inside a plane, called the Paladin. Very Agents of SHIELD, but more high tech, except for the cells. I was also introduced to the team: Isaac a top CIA field agent; Charlie the tech guy; and Grímstóttir who Sam was uneager to work with again after the whole “lying about his daughter’s death for three years” thing…

SHIELD never had this many monitors on The Bus!

After the attack, a group calling itself The Engineers was taking responsibility, and threatening more. Their sole demand was that the USA recall its forces from other countries, otherwise another attack would strike against US interests every week.

One quick look around the plane later, I upgraded the cockpit to enable a radar and talked to Grim. We set course for Libya, where our old friend Andriy Kobin was being held in a CIA safe house for questioning. Apparently he had survived being stabbed and left bleeding in Tom Reed’s office, which blew up roughly 10 minutes later when Third Echelon’s entire building exploded…

Quite why he appears to have flown commercial, I'll never know0

Boots on the ground, Grim contacted me to say that she had so far been unable to reach her contact, who was with Kobin. I went through a shop into an alleyway men's room, got changed and headed for the safe house. I worked through a few batches of men as I went up and around some rooftops, carefully avoiding some hostage takers and murdering a few others.

I snuck into the room containing the target and grabbed one of them. I quickly executed two others, and managed to gun down a third before he realised what was happening. Unfortunately, Isaac was wrong about the target being inside the building, it was just Grim’s contact’s corpse tied to a chair. Charlie managed to trace a phone call from one of the dead men’s phones and I had to head for the local police station, tagging a target of interest along the way.

Apart from shooting a barking dog, nothing else of note happened on my way to the police station. I hopped a wall and killed two men before sneaking in through a hole in the outer wall. After distracting the two guards and one dog in the courtyard with a noisemaker, I climbed into the building through a missing window, and made my way to the interrogation block. Grim confirmed that was where whoever these guys were had him.

Going inside the interrogation room, I found three men torturing Kobin for information, so I smashed through the two-way mirror to kill him, then executed the other two. Needless to say, Kobin was a little worried that it was Sam who had saved him owing to the fact that Kobin had orchestrated the fake death of Sam’s daughter Sarah. And somehow escaped the exploding building he had been left in.

He went from "Thank you!" to "OH GOD!" in literal milliseconds

Dragging him out of the room, I carefully shot three men in the head before leaving the station via a window, and ziplined down to Isaac. He bundled Kobin into the van he had brought around, and we returned to the plane.

Kobin admitted that he had supplied The Engineers with the weapons they used in the Anderson attack, and turned himself in out of fear they would be coming for him. Justified fear, it seemed, since he was being tortured. Isaac put him in a cell while we planned our next move…