Splinter Cell Double Agent Diaries Part Two

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 continue Double Agent.

After helping Jamie Washington escape from prison, Sam had been introduced to John Brown’s Army…

Interrupting a grand tour of the John Brown Army (JBA) facility, a guy called Carson Moss dragged me off to run through an obstacle course. There was a safe at the end which I was to open, then meet him back at the entry in 21 minutes. I spent under three minutes sneaking past moving lasers and unlocked the safe with minimal fuss.

I do really like the touch that Sam will lean against things in the base

My Opsat said that the NSA wanted me to plant a bug and a trojan, so I had a wander around the facility. Entering the medical room, I was told off for going behind the curtain by Enrica Villablanca, who then blocked me from leaving the area for a good minute and a half. I found my way to a ladder, which led to an air vent and then the roof.

The NSA wanted me to plant a bug on the JBA’s communications, which I did - only after being spotted. The trust meter dropped a bit before I managed to exit the roof, but not too badly I thought.

Next, I was to plant a trojan virus on the JBA’s servers. These were back down the ladder and down a staircase, so not impossible to find. I unlocked a gate and hid from someone who had gone inside the server room only to leave again, and snuck under the camera above the door.

Inside, I got to a computer terminal undetected, which gave me a door unlock code but left me without any time to escape detection. Again, the trust meter dropped as I hacked the server and left the restricted area. On the way back to the obstacle course, I picked the lock to the medical office and routed through the filing cabinet, gathering medical data.

Good thing she has one of those "silently opening" file cabninets

I managed to sneak out just as Enrica turned around, all primary objectives complete. My final remaining objective was secondary, and was to practice at the firing range where I broke the record of 75 points, with 76 points.

Moss returned a couple of minutes after I was back outside the obstacle course, where he complained about being kept waiting. Except for the fact that I was stood centimetres away from where he walked up to, and had been waiting for him… He told me to follow him, which I did.

No sign of him, yet I'm the one keeping him waiting...

He led me to a room where the leader of the JBA, Emile Dufraisne, was waiting with a gun and a tied up prisoner. He explained that this was the pilot of the helicopter we stole at the prison, and that I had to shoot him. So I did without hesitation - my trust meter needed refilling somehow.

Dufraisne said that he still wasn’t convinced, so Sam offered to take on this mission about a tanker, which he had apparently overheard someone mention. With a snicker and no details, he told Sam to prepare to catch a flight…

Next thing I know, I’m 200km off the coast of Siberia and jumping out of a plane. I pulled my parachute and it got tangled. After a long few seconds of scrabbling for my backup chute, I pulled it and landed a short distance from my supplies. Or, the extra for my SC-20k, which the JBA have somehow procured.

A helicopter landed on top of my supplies, and two men got out before it flew off. I snuck around and hit one with airfoil rounds, but the other one opened fire on me. I gunned him down when he ran to change positions, then collected my stuff. A quick leap into the icy water later, I smashed through the ice to drag someone underwater to their death, and got out. I was more or less instantly spotted when I left cover to murder another guy, so wound up having to shoot everyone in short order. Luckily their method of fighting me was more “avoid contact and shoot ONLY on sight” than “find him and kill him”.

It only got weird when Sam started crooning Unchained Melody

Everybody dead, I activated some explosives to take down an ice wall, and hopped into a new hole to swim through. On the other side, I got to repeat the “drag them, through the ice” trick on two separate guys. I hopped out of the water, then slid back in on the other side of the ice to swim under a zodiac boat to where a rope was hanging from the aft of the tanker I had come to clear out.

Up the rope I went, being told by Moss that I was to murder everyone aboard so that someone else could take command of it. Since it was stuck in the ice, I’ve no idea where it would be commanded to, but nevermind. I waited for the snow flurries to whip up and obscure me, before climbing a rope up a tower. I zip wired to a gantry, and grabbed a guy to interrogate before leaving him in an unconscious heap.

Back around where I had come from, I snuck up a ladder, but was spotted at the last minute. The guard came up to investigate, so I grabbed him and knocked him out, dumping him behind some piece of machinery. I continued up the ship, headed for where the antennae must be, when Enrica came back across the comms and told me to incapacitate the crew by shoving knock out gas in the ventilation funnels.

Managing to avoid detection from a guy not three feet away, facing the direction I was climbing from, I knocked him out and went up to the antenna. I contacted Colonel Lambert before deactivating it, then went over to the huge funnel where I assumed the gas should go. I fell down an open hatch and almost died, but had soon incapacitated the crew, which made the captain bolt.

Making my way back down the ship, I couldn’t locate the captain, so I began taking down the men that Moss had told me to take out. I could only incapacitate two of them, the rest had to be gunned down with varying effectiveness. After some pointless wandering, I located the open hatch that I had walked past at least three times, and went down.

I've no idea what this is, but I turned it off and it wouldn't turn back on again

A man jumped me in the first section, so I shot him, and carefully made my way to the next one. I heard two men talking, so crept around and waited for my opportunity to kill them. The first one came my way and fell to a headshot, but the second voice seemed to have disappeared. I went into the next section and shut off some machinery, then went back and through another door. The captain was in that section, holding a lit flare as he walked back and forth.

Remembering someone mention the cargo was “highly flammable”, and given the urgency in Enrica’s voice, I snuck up behind the guy and grabbed him, knocking him out in some shadows. I was told to head for the helipad, via two handy ladders, as there was a “situation” in Taiwan, which I had to help Dufraisne with...