Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Diaries Part Four

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.

With Abrahim Zherkezhi being protected by Displace International, Third Echelon wanted answers about what was going on…

Of course, since the government had contracts with Displace, I was under strict orders to kill noone. Why this didn’t bother Lambert earlier, I’ve no idea. I arrived on the roof and overheard two people repairing the ventilation system. When they split up, I grabbed them separately and left them unconscious in a corner, before turning off the huge fan in the middle of the roof.

After rappelling inside, I overheard a couple of people chatting about a contract. Displace was looking to reinforce the National Guard (and make some bank off of it, of course). They left the conference room, but one of them was carrying a computer which held the codes to access the servers, and I had to hack it.

Stop wasting electricity in this blackout...

Before I followed the duo, I stopped by one of the computer rooms and knocked out a technician before hacking the computers. There were some emails, but the main thing I needed to do was plant some code for Grim in several sections, this being one of them.

Back to the duo, they had gone through a door to continue chatting, but first the guy from Displace just had to show off the special opaque window -- by turning it off. I was almost spotted, but they continued on before stopping in front of some elevators to continue their discussion. The computer was down, so I quickly hacked it, then went back the way I had come and hid in the shadows.

They returned, and somehow spotted me in the pitch black. I quickly switched to a sticky camera and gassed them both with it, before they managed to decide to shoot me.

How did they spot me? How?

I went downstairs and took out a guard, then back upstairs to take out another. Unfortunately, he also spotted me and I hit him with an airfoil round right in front of a camera, striking off an alert. I went into the training room behind his desk and took down another couple of guards before planting more code in the computer there.

When I tried to access the server room, Grim told me that there were a couple of guards stuck between the door in front of me, and the one leading into the server room. I would have to find another route in to get the info I required.

Back downstairs, I went through to another section and overheard two guards talking about “that new Prince of Persia game”, and how it would “be game of the year”. Of course, they were talking nonsense, since this was 2007: two years after the last game came out, and a year before the next one.

"Guys, there IS no Prince of Persia game this year, what are you talking about?"

There was a third guy at a table full of computers, so I grabbed and knocked him out before one of the chatty pair came around the corner. As soon as he turned around, I grabbed him too. To ensure utter quiet, I went back and clobbered the other guy, and it had nothing to do with talking about unreleased, unannounced games.

Wanting to explore, I headed into a firing range which had a turret set up. It was facing away from me, and turned off, so I went down the firing range whilst Sam and Grim chatted about how it required ventilation. At the end of the range, I spotted a large hole in the roof leading into the ventilation system, so I hopped up inside.

I went through to find the server room down a rope, and slid down. The two who were stuck remarked that they were close to getting through, so I quickly unlocked the server and hacked it before climbing back up the rope.

Returning to the lower floor, I called the elevator and headed up to the top floor. I listened to a couple of guards chat about something before revealing the meeting room door code. They split up, and I took down the one that walked past me. Whilst hiding him, I overheard two more men chatting, so I went to check inside the room with my optical cable.

Unfortunately for me, the guard I had left alone was walking right towards me. I had no way to grab him, so I shot him with a sticky shocker and quickly dragged him out of the way of the door. As I entered shadow, the door opened and one came out and went to another office. I headed into the room he had left and knocked out the man in there.

Deciding to leave the guy alone in his office, I went for the meeting rooms. I shot a camera with an EMP round, and opened the door with the code I had overheard, then went inside. One of the rooms was empty, but the other had someone working at a laptop. I grabbed him and interrogated him for the CEO’s door code.

People are so forthcoming with information when you're threatening to throw them out of a window...

With him knocked out and left in shadow, I went into the CEO’s office. I found out where Zherkezhi was being kept -- Hokkaido. I also found the code for the fire door, so left to extract.

Whilst Sam was travelling to Hokkaido, the USS Walsh was attacked by a cyber attack and a missile of unknown origin. The only people who could have launched the cyber attack was the dead Morgenholt, or Zherkezhi -- who was being kept in a safehouse in Hokkaido by the vice president of protection operations for Displace, Milan Nedich…