Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Diaries Part Seven

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 broken into the North Korean missile battery which sunk the USS Walsh, Third Echelon had discovered that the identity to who ordered the attack could be found in Seoul, South Korea…

With North Korean forces attacking the city, I had been deployed in an apartment complex in the midst of the so-called three-block war, caused by South Korean and US troops funneling North Korean forces. Quite why Sam was in a child’s bedroom is a matter worth discussion, but perhaps not mid-mission…

This building is literally missing walls - how is that night light still okay?

I had to locate the South Korean data trunk and transmit it to an aircraft using a laser, which I was assured was unable to be intercepted. I left the building via a handy hole in the wall by rappelling down, then snuck up to a wall mine and disabled it. Hopping over a fence, there were two men chatting next to a truck, but broke up so one could take a whizz.

Grabbing and interrogating him, I learned where someone Lambert wanted me to interrogate had been moved to. Apparently the “splinter cells in training” had lost him, so it was now my responsibility to locate him…

After knocking him out, his mate came wandering and so I knocked him out too. There was a loud speaker blurting out propaganda as I passed, so I bypassed the circuit to turn it off. An unexploded bomb was embedded in the path in front of me, fizzing, so I quickly scrambled up a drainpipe to a fire escape, then down the ladder.

I suppose if the bomb HAD gone off, I'd need to find a new way around this gate...

The area ahead had two soldiers wandering around a truck, which Grim had told me was a mobile command center. There was also a sniper on a ledge, so I climbed up some scaffolding and took him out after a brief word. There was a zipline which led right over the truck, so I used it and dropped down silently onto it. I shot one of the soldiers with an airfoil round, but the other must have heard it as he came running out of the truck and shot me. I managed to shoot him in the head before he did too much damage, then slipped into the truck to plant a “tap” in the system.

Unfortunately not a beer tap...

There was another loudspeaker, which I bypassed, then I noticed a ladder on the building I had to enter. Rather than taking the direct route, I decided to climb it (after disabling another wall mine), and went up. There was a final loudspeaker there, which I turned off.

A vent led into the building, and a hatch led into the server room that I needed. I took the hard drive whilst some soldiers chatted outside, and went back up the ladder just as there was an explosion.

Grim told me to get the drive I was carrying to the roof, and since there were no more ladders or drainpipes, I had to go back down through the hole the North Koreans had made. I ignored one soldier inside the room, and nipped out almost getting spotted by a second. Hiding under the stairs he was stood on, I was almost spotted again by a third soldier. I shot him with a sticky camera by mistake, but it took him down and made the second trooper curious. I shot him with bullets and went up the stairs to an elevator.

The elevator arrived and two voices came from it, so I leapt into a bathroom and turned off the light. I figured they would walk past, but they decided to investigate the “strange” fact that the light was off. The building was partly on fire, and there had been a few explosions inside it, but sure a light being off was odd.

A sticky camera took them out (with gas, not concussive force this time), and I went upstairs in the elevator. Lambert told me that I would be exfiltrated if the situation was clear. If not…

Well, Sam aimed the information laser at the jet, and it uploaded fully, but after a soldier shot a missile at them and they activated their chaff, they inadvertently signalled to everyone where to shoot. The plane went down, with the information still aboard.

Secretary Frank Masson told me sending it to the plane would be the safest way... THIS IS NOT SAFE

Lambert told me to go after the jet and erase the information before the North Koreans retrieved it. Once Redding realised that I was being circled by a drone with an infrared camera, he decided that while I was at it I should try and get any information I could about them. I disabled the drone with an EMP and shot a sticky shocker at the guard also on the roof with me. I disabled his radar equipment and hopped on a zipwire across to a neighbouring rooftop. I landed on a fence and clambered over it.

Sneaking around the corner, I overheard two soldiers chatting about how safe they were - apart from against bombs, of course. I EMP’d a light and jumped up onto a pipe to get across a gap in the roof, and dropped down. A drone came from behind me and I quickly fired an EMP at it, but when I turned around a soldier had crept up on me. He spotted me a moment after I spotted him, and I had to quickly shoot him and his two mates before the drone recovered. One ran into the building and I chased him, and knocked him out.

I waited for the drone to do a circuit of the roof before coming back outside, as I had spotted another portable radar setup further up. I turned it off, then went back inside the building and out through another door. I could hear another drone, but couldn’t see it, so carefully dropped down a couple of floors. Jumping over a gap to another building, I spotted it hanging out in the opposite direction and not moving.

After disabling another portable radar, a soldier spotted me. He didn’t recognise me as a threat, so while he was investigating, I shot him in the head before going in through the door he had come through. The floors of three stories of the building had been smashed through by an unexploded bomb at the bottom. As I dropped down a level, two soldiers came to investigate the munition.

Much to their relief, it did not go off. However, the gas grenade I fired at them did, and they dropped to the floor. I went through into the remains of a kitchen and accessed a laptop, getting the drone information Redding requested. I went outside to see a soldier cut down another. I had turned off the lights in the kitchen, so while I was considering what to do, he came to investigate. He was checking out the laptop when I belted him from behind.

No, that's not the bomb - the bomb was in the other room. Far on the other side of the room

Outside, I mantled a fence only to be told that there was “active armour” - meaning some tanks or APCs - in the area. As I dropped down, I could hear a pitched firefight going on through an alleyway. I shot an EMP at a sign and took a wall mine that was beneath it before watching the action. Since nobody seemed to be dying, I punched the closest soldier. His mate didn’t notice, so when he got into position I belted him, too.

With the bullets no longer flying, the one North Korean soldier down the road not in an APC came to investigate, so I gave him a slap too. That left the APC in my way, so I threw a smoke grenade and rushed past it to a ladder on the wall behind it, and ascended it. There’s been a lot of climbing, I’m trying to avoid reusing the same word over and over…

There was another radar unit, which I turned off, before heading through a building. I EMP’d an incoming drone, then dropped down a couple of floors to the ground where three soldiers patrolled. I lined up a headshot, but missed, and had to shoot the guy several times. Of course, this alerted his mates. Or, rather, one of them.

After a brief firefight, he was down, and I made my way up the street. I EMP’d the drone again and managed to shoot the third guy who was patrolling as normal, despite the gunfire. There was another mobile command center, so I planted a bug in that one too, then went around and through yet another blasted wall.

This was the crash site, and an APC with two or three soldiers was at one end of the street. I waited for a flickering light to go off and went to destroy the data. Which, you might be able to guess, wasn’t possible. The equipment had been destroyed, but the data was likely intact. To solve that particular conundrum, Lambert told me to paint it with a laser and they would send a jet with some ordinance.

This would, of course, kill the pilots laid off to one side, which Sam voiced his misgivings with. I agreed with him, and grabbed one of them, putting him near the flickering light. I grabbed the other one, then threw a smoke grenade at the APC to hide us. Once both were safely in the alleyway, a soldier came to investigate and I shot him in the head. I then went up a few ladders on a scaffolding, and painted the jet for the bomb run. It hit successfully, and I was exfiltrated.

Big bada-boom

The data confirmed that it was sent from Japan, likely by Displace International. Doug Shetland had been profiteering from the war, and he was on his way to a meeting with some people in a bathhouse in Tokyo. The purpose of this meeting was likely to sell off the Masse Kernel information, which of course could not be allowed to happen...