Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent is the fourth installment in the Splinter Cell series of video games developed and published by Ubisoft. The series, endorsed by American author Tom Clancy, follows the character Sam Fisher, an agent employed by a black-ops division of the National Security Agency, dubbed Third Echelon.

Double Agent was released for the Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Xbox 360 in October 2006. The Wii and Microsoft Windows versions were released in November 2006. A PlayStation 3 version was released in March 2007.

Originally the game was set for a March 2006 release, but Ubisoft moved the release date to October 2006 in order to have more development time. Ubisoft then released their fiscal quarter results for Q1 2006 and announced that Splinter Cell Double Agent would be put back at least one month in order to boost Q3 2006 income.

There are actually two separate versions of Double Agent. One version (Generation Seven version) was made by Ubisoft Shanghai, who developed Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and was released on the Xbox 360, Windows, and PlayStation 3.

The other version (Generation Six version) was made by Ubisoft Montreal (Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory) and was released for the Xbox, PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo Wii. The version for mobile phones was developed by Gameloft. The Generation Seven version features a completely custom engine while the Generation Six version plays more like the classic Splinter Cell games. The games share the same general plot but feature different storylines, plot twists, and levels. Even the levels they share have completely different level designs. They do however, share the same background music and a few cut scenes.

Plot

The two versions of the game feature different plot lines. They share many of the same locations, but with completely different level designs and in a different order.

Shortly after the events of Chaos Theory, Sam Fisher must deal with the recent loss of his daughter to a drunk driving accident. But he has little time to mourn, he soon has to go on an undercover assignment which requires him to pose as a criminal in order to infiltrate a terrorist group based in the United States. This new mission forces Fisher into a new and very dangerous gray area, where the line between right and wrong is blurred even beyond what Fisher is used to, and thousands of innocent lives are in the balance.

Xbox 360, Windows and PlayStation 3 version

The game begins in September 2007, shortly after the events of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory as Sam Fisher and rookie John Hodge are being flown to Iceland to investigate suspicious activities at a geothermal plant. After he averts a missile strike by Islamic terrorists during which John dies, he is met by Colonel Irving Lambert aboard the Osprey to deliver bad news. Sarah Fisher, Sam's only child, has been killed by a drunk driver. Overcome with grief, he is unable to concentrate on his work and is pulled out of active service.

Shortly thereafter, Lambert offers him the rank of a NOC (nonofficial cover operative), hoping that it will help him refocus. NOCs are operatives with backgrounds from both the CIA and NSA, trained to infiltrate organizations for HUMINT purposes. The government denies any involvement in their activities. The NSA stages multiple bank robberies and killings to set up Fisher to infiltrate a domestic terror organization known as John Brown's Army (JBA). He is sent to Ellsworth Prison in Kansas where he is placed in the same cell block as Jamie Washington, a JBA member, and begins digging a tunnel for escape. By February 2008, Fisher helps Washington escape, and is welcomed into the JBA.

At their compound, Emile Dufraisne, the leader of the JBA, gives Sam the order to shoot Cole Yeagher, the pilot of the helicopter used to escape the prison. If Fisher kills him, he will earn JBA trust and lose NSA trust. If he misses his shot on purpose, Jamie will kill Cole, and Sam will lose a little trust with the JBA. Fisher's decision doesn't affect the rest of the storyline, unlike later decisions. He is then sent on a mission to take over a Russian oil tanker in the Sea of Okhotsk, while receiving radio contact from Enrica Villablanca, the JBA's weapons expert. Sam needs to take over the tanker so that JBA ally Massoud Ibn-Yussif can use it to deliver one of the bombs.

As soon as Fisher is finished, he is quickly flown to the Jin Mao Hotel in Shanghai. CIA agent Hisham Hamza orders him to record a meeting between Emile and a Pakistani nuclear scientist, Dr. Aswat. During the meeting, Aswat sells Emile several kilograms of red mercury, a fictional explosive material that can detonate with the force of a thermonuclear bomb. With Third Echelon on high alert, Fisher is told to collect a sample from the safe in the meeting room. While he's doing that, Carson Moss, JBA's head of security, radios in and orders him to steal notes from Aswat's hotel room. The NSA then orders the assassination of Dr. Aswat.

With both the red mercury and Dr. Aswat's notes, the JBA constructs a bomb which they wish to test. Emile sends Fisher to Cozumel to blow up a cruise ship. The success of the bomb is determined by the player and is therefore the first of the three major events. Fisher can choose to either let the bomb detonate, maintaining his cover with the JBA, prevent the explosion by jamming the signal, or framing Enrica by using her disarm code, if the player acquires it from her office during the JBA HQ mission. Jamming the signal makes player lose JBA trust, while framing Enrica maintains both NSA and JBA trust. In both of these cases, non-detonation causes Dufraisne to kill Enrica in a fit of anger.

Emile then goes to a meeting in Kinshasa with Alejandro Takfir and Massoud Ibn-Yussif, allies of the JBA. Fisher bugs the meeting and finds out that the three terrorist leaders each have Red Mercury bombs. They plan to destroy Mexico City, Los Angeles and New York City. During the meeting, Hisham Hamza's cover is blown.

Emile orders Fisher to kill Hisham, who has fled to the Congolese presidential palace in Kinshasa. Fisher makes his way through Kinshasa, which is an all-out war zone between government forces and rebels. Fisher takes up a position from the top of a radio tower with a sniper rifle. Fisher may shoot Hisham, but if he spares his life, another section of the level is unlocked where Fisher extracts him safely from the palace. Fisher saves Hisham from the rebels, who took control of the presidential palace and rigged it with explosives.

When Fisher returns to the headquarters, he is ordered to shoot Lambert, who was captured sneaking around the complex. The player can decide to either shoot Lambert or Jamie Washington (the player can also miss their shot on purpose, but this causes Washington to shoot Fisher in the head, killing him instantly). Shooting Lambert will maintain the JBA's trust, while shooting Washington will send the JBA into high alert and reveal Fisher as a traitor. Enrica, if she is still alive, discovers Fisher's NOC status, but allows him to pass into the labs underneath the HQ, even giving him his equipment if he does not have it already. When Sam arrives at the labs, he manages to kill Emile (and Washington if he didn't kill him earlier) and disarms the bomb.

A SWAT team then storms the compound, crashing in through the ceiling. If Sam saves the cruise ship, CIA Agent Hisham, and Lambert, or only two out of three with NSA trust above 33%, then he evades capture and escapes the compound, incapacitating a SWAT officer, and donning his stolen suit. In the unlocked bonus level, the NYPD pursues Fisher through New York, but he boards a stolen Coast Guard boat that Carson Moss is using to deliver the last bomb. Fisher kills Moss, disarms the bomb, and escapes the boat seconds before it is destroyed. This ending is the only one that ends with "To be continued..."

If Sam only saves one out of three, or two out of three with NSA trust below 33%, he is captured by the NYPD, charged with murder and conspiracy to commit terrorism, and pleads 'not guilty'. Before his trial begins, however, Sam breaks out of prison and is on the run. If Sam does not save any of the three, or only one with NSA trust below 33%, he is initially captured by the NYPD, but escapes using a smoke grenade.

Gameplay

As part of the JBA, Sam must complete objectives set by them to gain their trust as well as complete objectives from the NSA. The decisions he has to make will become increasingly difficult as he progresses through the game. Earlier decisions, such as deciding whether or not to free all of the prisoners during the prison breakout, will just affect his score, but as the game progresses, Sam is faced with serious choices that could kill thousands if made wrong, but may blow his cover if he does not do it.

Despite this, Sam must make the JBA trust him. If he is seen in restricted areas before, it will dramatically affect his trust with the JBA. Similarly, if he is caught using an NSA gadget or picking a lock in JBA HQ, his cover will be blown on sight.

He is also watched by the JBA in most of his missions, if he is seen completing NSA objectives or is thought to be doing something out of the ordinary, his trust will go down. Killing people apart from those ordered to be taken out will affect his NSA trust in the same way.

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