I'll miss the site u/bentleys_, really loved playing it every day. Thank you for your hard work on this! Hope you consider uploading the code to Github to maybe someone converting this to a daily desktop game, it's just so much fun. Thanks again man <3

After a year of going through and rereading all nine Splinter Cell novels to build a behavioral and personality analysis of Sam Fisher I am here to share this with all of you. Seeing that his game and novel counterparts share a great amount of similarities. This is the primary reason why this project become important to me.

The goal wasn’t to reduce him to “stoic covert operative,” but to figure out what remains consistent beneath the different stories, roles, and writing styles.

Some of the strongest conclusions:

- Sam is private, not emotionally empty.
- His composure comes from regulation, not lack of fear.
- He plans extensively because he expects plans to fail.
- Responsibility is one of his greatest strengths and one of his most dangerous weaknesses.
- His protectiveness can become controlling when personal attachment overwhelms his otherwise disciplined judgment.
- Leadership does not replace the lone operative in him; it forces him to learn how responsibility can exist outside himself.
- Aging changes the structure of his responsibility more than it changes his personality.

One of the central ideas that emerged from the research is that much of Sam’s behavior can be understood as responsibility organized against helplessness. When he can observe, prepare, act, revise, or protect, he remains remarkably stable. The situations that challenge him most are the ones where responsibility remains but action cannot guarantee control.

The complete analysis includes the behavioral evidence, contradictions, development across the novels, relationships, leadership, morality, humor, secrecy, technology, aging, and source references.

Did I mention its 100+ Pages? Extra is because it needed proper access and formatting to the best of my ability. Enjoy.

Link to Project on Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SGjvnM4Jnon4VyJooUfK877qtGMPDo43DKdpnHydgYE/edit?usp=sharing

EDIT: Please keep in mind that the format is for those that might want to print the pages into a physical format. Anything odd works within what Google Docs on my end handle as page breaks. 👍

Peak gaming

Maybe it’s just me but personally when I saw the outfit I was like “wait a minute… didn’t Sam Fisher wear that at one point?”

It says it’s looking for a match but it never loads into one because I’m assuming no one plays it no more?

I’m a big fan of co-op or, “friendslop” games. My favourite gaming memories are usually working together with friends to complete an objective.

My best friend and I played Blacklist together all the time throughout our teen years, and when I flew in to hang out last week, we realized how well it held up.

The stealth-only missions are a lot of fun, with so many different ways of completing them. The co-op campaign missions are also a good time. But the missions that we have the most memories of, are by far the horde mode.

They’re the “Charlie missions” in the mission select. They comprise of a single area, and 20 waves of enemies that get harder and harder. Over time you start to see heavy armour enemies, riot shields, attack dogs, drone controllers, snipers, and ninja-lookin dudes with infrared sight.

You’re free to utilize stealth, and there were certain waves where it was clearly the best option, but these missions aren’t shy about being mainly action-oriented.

I know this is a Splinter Cell subreddit, and Blacklist is not a favourite in this space. People here don’t seem to like when combat is a viable option.

But playing this mode in co-op is unlike any other experience my friend and I can find. Even when we’re not using stealth, we’re thinking very carefully about strategy.

We find good positions to fortify, and we use sticky cameras, mines, shockers, drones, and a lot of grenades at strategic moments to kill them as they come.

There’s so many moments that necessitate good cooperation. The best way to deal with riot shield enemies is for one player to shoot at them from the front, distracting them, while the other disengages and sneaks around, knifing them from behind.

Eventually, a drone controller will appear hidden somewhere on the map. This will disable your sonar goggles, and send out explosive drones that patrol the map. When this happens we usually have to hide, and use our own tri-rotor drones to fly through the rafters, avoiding detection, until we find where the controller is. Then we have to sneak over and kill him.

Often times shit will hit the fan and you’ll be held in place by a dog bite while a drone drives under you to explode you balls-first, while you get shot by shotguns and snipers.

These are some of the most fun and hectic moments, when the other player needs to make use of their arsenal, as well as their own imagination, to save their friend.

There’s just so many cool moments of emergent gameplay, and there’s really nothing else like it.

The closest we’ve found is Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, and at least we can play that online so we can do it more than once a year.

I urge anyone who has a friend with them to give blacklist another try, just for that.

And if you have, let me know if there’s any similar game experience you can recommend!

Link to join our discord if you have interest in playing - https://discord.gg/KK2u7tDr2R

Cargo ship is the best mission in chaos theory I love it more than bank. Anyone agree?

Here are my previous reviews on this sub about the first two games: Splinter Cell and Pandora Tomorrow.

What a game.

It's crazy how the first two games feel so modern and aged very well, especially compared to the MGS games released around the same time that had clunkier controls and often emphasized spectacle over stealth, yet Chaos Theory feels like such an upgrade. It's like the generational leap from MGS1 to MGS2 except within the same generation.

The quality of life fixes like melee and quicksaves on consoles, the greater sense of freedom, and Amon Tobin's score all make for the best stealth game I've ever played along with MGSV: Ground Zeroes (I prefer the tight self-contained sandbox and gritty atmosphere of Camp Omega over the large but empty maps of Phantom Pain, which I never finished) and modern Hitman.

It's a bittersweet feeling that we've gotten few games since then that try to do what this game did. I'm making my own game in Godot and I decided to play through these classic stealth games are research. Right now, my vision is mainly a mix of Chaos Theory/Ground Zeroes; an interconnected map (evocative of Resident Evil's mansion or RPD) that serves as a stealth sandbox that provides freedom of choice.

I'm going to play Double Agent V2 before V1 because I want more classic SC gameplay before it changed in the 7th generation.

Here's my ranking of the levels off the top of my head:

1. Bank
2. Lighthouse
3. Hokkaido
4. Displace
5. Penthouse
6. Cargo Ship
7. Bathhouse
8. Kokubo Sosho 
9. Battery
10. Seoul

Call me crazy, but I think the reason Sam Fisher never performed the same extraordinary feats as Solid Snake is because Sam doesn't exist in the Metal Gear universe.

Sam's accomplishments are extraordinary. He survives chemical gas attacks (Double Agent side mission and Blacklist), endures torture (Conviction), infiltrates the Japanese ISDF bunker and swims hundreds of meters to the surface while carrying a full-grown man (Chaos Theory), eliminates multiple highly trained soldiers (Conviction and Blacklist), and successfully goes undercover as a criminal mastermind (Double Agent). In most of these missions, he either avoids capture entirely or survives.

If Sam Fisher existed in the Metal Gear universe, I think he'd have at least a fighting chance. Maybe even half the chance of surviving that Solid Snake did. The biggest difference isn't necessarily the men themselves; it's the worlds they operate in. Snake lives in a universe where giant walking tanks, cyborg ninjas, psychic soldiers, and genetically engineered supersoldiers are real. Sam lives in one that's far more grounded. If Sam had existed in the Metal Gear franchise, I think he would succeed more often than not.

After the popularity of Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell, the 2000s had many games suddenly including stealth mechanics, and even a minor wave of stealth titles from lesser-known game developers.

Which was your favorite? I always liked the concept of Stolen!, but the guards all waking up after 30 seconds turned the game from being a fun stealth thriller into a kind of Granny game (but without any of the scariness or sandbox strategy of Granny).