Splinter Cell Chaos Theory PS3 Platinum

 Hello everyone. I recently Platinumed the 2011 Remaster of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and wanted to talk about it.

 

I was surprised looking at the only Trophy Guide on PSNProfiles . It gave the game a 7/10 difficulty rating as well as stated this was the hardest classic SC game. Personally, I'd rate this as a 4/10 difficulty but maybe I am biased. I have been playing CT on and off again for years since it came out. Maybe a new player or one unfamiliar with stealth games would find it way more challenging. I'm also not complaining because this does give me something to flex on my cousins who platinum Souls games😤!

 

 To platinum this game, you need to do 3 playthroughs minimum, one on each difficulty as the difficulty trophies don't stack. So you can't play the game on Expert Difficulty and get the trophies for beating the game on Normal and Hard Difficulty. Though, to be fair, even if they did stack, I'd probably have done 3 playthroughs anyway. The game has 3 Gold Trophies that can get potentially bugged: "Makes you feel alive - Complete the game in Hard difficulty without being killed more than 5 times", "Greater Good - Achieve above 80% success rating in all missions" and "Immune - Complete the game without using medkit".  While the exact mechanism isn't clear, it's possible the game "remembers" mistakes that void these trophies even when you reload a prior save. The main culprit is probably the Quicksave/Quickload system as it might "continue to run in the background". So if you, for example, accidentally use a medkit and do a quickload, the game accidentally still remembers you use the medkit.

 

The suggestions to address this on the PSNProfiles guide are the following: 

• Delete the game data (for disc versions of the game) or delete/re-install the game (for PSN versions of the game).
• Delete the save data.
• Attempt these trophies on Normal difficulty.
• Attempt these trophies in one sitting.
• Attempt these trophies on another PS3 system.
• Both save and back up your saves regularly, as well as alternating backups between PS+ and a USB stick. Use this to cancel out your mistakes like dying 5 times.

 

My plan was the following:

 

Step 1: 

Delete my existing CT PS3 save data from my disc copy of the game. 

 

Step 2:

 Do a playthrough on Normal Difficulty and plan to hit the "Immune" and "Greater Good" Trophies. As well as any miscellaneous challenge trophies that don't involve killing people like  "Art of Unseen - Do not be detected throughout a mission", "Enhanced perception - Hack 10 terminals without scanning them", "Darkside - Disable 40 electronics using the OCP" etc as well as using saves to hit some of the story choice ones like "Not Today - Free yourself when captured", "Dead Man Hanging - Leave Morgenholt hanging", "Dignity and Honor - Free Morgenholt", "Price of Betrayal - Eliminate Douglas Shetland", " "Price of Friendship - Show mercy to Douglas Shetland".

I want to give a shout out to "Cold Duty - Sacrifice the Pilots as per order". I originally planned to save the Pilots first to get "Unsung Hero - Perform acts of untold heroism in Seoul" then reload my save and let the pilots die. But I messed up the timing and had the turret shoot at me, which killed the pilot I was carrying which caused the "Cold Duty" Trophy to pop first instead, saving me a trip.

"Worms - Hack 3 retinal scanners remotely" was an interesting one. The guide says there's only 4 retinal scanners in the entire game but there's actually 6. 1 in Bank in the laser room. 2 in Displace for the same hallway laser  for each direction. 1 in Battery as the entrance to the Meeting room. And 2 in Kokbuo Sosho where one is the entrance to the Server room and one in the server room to raise the servers. On Normal Difficulty, the timing on the first 3 are easy enough to hit without triggering alarms.

 

Normal Difficulty, at least for me, is easy enough that I can play almost every mission on autopilot at this point. There's a fair bit of wiggle room on how lit up/loud you can be before drawing attention from guards. This helps with the "Greater Good" trophy as you can lose anywhere from 5-10% score minimum from alerting NPCs and civilians are super sensitive and easy to alert which can lose up to 15%. It also makes it easier to hit optional and secondary objectives which are necessary to help keep you above 80%. You also have enough health to tank multiple shots so not being able to heal per mission is more than feasible. 

 

During my Normal Playthrough, I somehow managed to get 100% in every mission except Displace. The game glitched and counted the guard I knocked out before the retinal Scanner as a "found body" costing me 5%. Complete with alert music. My theory is that the guards trapped 1 floor below me had "vision" that extended slightly too high and were able to "see" the body. I'm lucky I was able to hit the Finicky Secondary Objective (seriously, it requires you to book it as soon as it's available, get in position and scan zoomed in. Be even a second late and it doesn't count😤). Saving me a 15% penalty.

 

 I was legitimately surprised I got Bathhouse and Seoul 100%. I was dreading them. I was prepared for that to be 82% or something because I had to use Sticky Shockers to eliminate the Thermal Vision Guards right next to each other. They even had dialogue that there's a body next to them but for some reason, the game didn't count it. I am not complaining. For the Bathhouse bomb defusal section, my strat was -1- Break the Lock when entering to slow down the first guard that spawns, then Sticky Shocker him and hide his body. -2-  Plant Sticky Cameras across the starting area to distract and stall the 2 other guards when they spawn. -3- Once I disable the 3rd bomb, run to the door, bash it open to KO the final guard right as he spawns, and book it to complete the mission with a 100% score somehow. Seoul was doable with 100% when using Smoke Bombs to distract turrets.

 

I feel the biggest worry I had here are the limited save slots. CT PS3 only gives you 3 manual save slots to alternate between. 2 regular and 1 quicksave/quickload which I had to avoid using to glitch the trophies. Bathhouse 100% with only 2 save slots was scary as at any point, I could lose points and not even realize it and not have a save slot far enough back to fix it.

Step 3: 

 Once I finished my first Normal Playthrough and got those associated Trophies, I then reloaded Missions 1, 2 and 7 to mop up all the miscellaneous kill/loud trophies that weren't feasible before like "Life's Edge - Neutralize 20 enemies with the combat knife", "Knock, Knock-out - Knock out 5 guards by bashing doors", "Good ol' Pump-action - Take out 5 guards with the shotgun".

Shout out to "Topsy turvy - Take out 5 guards from ledge or over the rail". From Memory, I figured there would require me to get to Mission 4 since there's 3-4 guards hanging close to railings. But no. There's 2 spots in Lighthouse funnily enough. One across the Bridge and 1 on the Lighthouse. And I was able to get 3 railing kills in Cargo Ship as on the top of the ship, those railings count. I did try fishing for Railing Kills earlier like in the starting area and Engine Room but apparently, those don't work for railing kills.

 

"Silent Death from above - Take out 5 enemies by inverted neck grip" was interesting. Off the top of my head, I only counted 2 possible places to pull this off in the entire game. But no. You can get 2 in Mission 1 in the room before Morgenholt. There is a pipe there! Plus 2 in Cargo Ship in the Pump Room. But.... this gave me the trophy? Even though I only did 4/5? I am not complaining. I had a backup spot in Mission 4 in the Bedroom as my 5th choice so it saves me a trip.

 

Step 4:

Delete my Save file entirely again. Now all I have left are the trophies for Hard and Expert Difficulty.

 

Step 5: 

Do a playthrough on Expert Difficulty. Seems odd to do an Expert Playthrough before a Hard One. But there's no other challenge aside from just beating it on Expert. So I took the chance to "chill" with an "easier" Expert Any% run before an "Hard with < 5 deaths" run.

 I did die/reload a lot on Expert because I was trying to rush through the game at this point but I was completing almost every mission in around 12-17 minutes each. The main challenge here is that if you are even slightly lit up or make even 1 more "loud sound than the environment", it makes nearby guards suspicious. You also die in 2-3 shots so it's often better to reload saves as you play through the mission.

But overall, since my goal was just to complete the game, it was a lot less stressful. I was able to go on "autopilot", Sticky Shocker and Ring Airfoil most enemies and zoom through a lot of the game while watching YouTube or TikTok Videos on the side. I can't skip the mandatory dialogue sections like you can on PC since that requires repeatedly quicksaving and quickloading. Even if that didn't glitch the trophies, the PS3 takes forever to quicksave and quickload so it might actually be faster to just tough out the dialogue sequences. It's funny imagining Brainrot Sam scrolling TikTok while Shetland and Otomo are giving their speeches lol.

I want to shout out the gas grenade. The "most useless gadget that ended up having some use here". As a stealth gadget, this is useless because it takes a few seconds to activate and this alerts guards and have them shoot at you. But as an "easy way to KO groups of guards", it's really good. If you can shoot this and get a hiding spot, this can potentially KO 3-4 guards, especially if it gets other guards to run into it without seeing the gas. With careful usage, this let me get through areas faster and safer than sneaking or manually knocking out guards.

Even Bathhouse was less stressful. I can use my Stick Shockers on the 3 guards in the shower room, then in the Bomb Room, break the lock and plant wall mines to kill the guards that investigate the broken lock and then dead body. It took a lot of attempts but was ultimately doable.

Step 6:

Delete my save file one final time. Now for the Hard Playthrough with < 5 deaths.

Step 7:

Going into this run, I had 4-5 "problem spots" I was worried of. The first Turret in Seoul, the "destroy the plane "section in Seoul since the guards and turret can sometimes shoot you even when you're way above them (I died a few times on my Expert run up there), Bathhouse showers and bomb room, and second last room in Kokbuo Sosho as you are in a time limit and the 3 guards that spawn can be a challenge if they see you. But as soon as I got into the laser hallway, the trophy might as well be mine. I was home free and the rest of the level was just muscle memory. The most stressful part there was just the worry the trophy had glitched.

I died 3 times on this run and in places I didn't expect. My first death was embarrassingly in Mission 2 in the Engine Room. I was distracted laughing at a Taylor Swift Blank Space TikTok that replaced the lyrics with gay so I didn't notice a guard creeping up on me and firing which caused the ship to blow up. That was terrible and I was genuinely considering deleting my save and starting again to restore my chances. But I pressed on. My second death was in Seoul but not where I was expecting. It was in the areas after the first portable radar. I was going too fast, made slightly too much noise and was shot dead by 3 guards before I could react.

My 3rd death was in Kokbuo Sosho. In the main atrium, I accidentally walked past a computer that was lit up, started getting shot at, and took too long to pause the game and reload a manual save so I died. I was actually worried now. Also, I had a hard crash going into Seoul 2. I was worried that would hurt my run.

Hard difficulty mostly wasn't too bad. Enemies were still faster to react to me but it's still more lenient than Expert. I could move through each mission in usually around 11-13 minutes (minus Bathhouse and Kokbuo Sosho which took around 20 minutes). All 3 of my deaths were because I was distracted or rushing so would have been easy to avoid. For the most part, this trophy might as well be called "beat Bathhouse and Seoul without dying more than 5 times" since those are the only missions with actually problematic sections where even a skilled player can mess up. 

 

Step 8: Probably delete my save again for the meme. 

 

After getting the platinum and thinking more on it, I feel CT PS3 might be the easiest SC game to platinum. The only other SC game I have all the achievements on is the PC version of Blacklist because Ubi retroactively added only the singleplayer achievements to it in an update (I also have all the singleplayer trophies in the PS3 version of Blacklist). 

 

CT, at least compared to its predecessors, is harder in a few ways. The Guard AI is smarter and isn't as easily distracted by whistling or thrown objects. Pandora Tomorrow can let you conga line enemies with whistles. CT also removes the pistol laser from PT and the SWAT Turn and corner aiming so headshots and panther style takedowns are harder in a few places. But by in large, CT's additions and improvements make the experience far more playable and even modern in many cases. The sound meter gives proper feedback on how much noise you and environment are making so you can probably use that info instead of just guessing. SC1 and PT didn't really have environmental sound masking your noise.

 

CT gives you instant melee takedowns with no strings attached, the Ring Airfoil and Sticky Cameras are way more powerful, the OCP can instantly and safely disable lights temporarily without alerting guards, a proper map that shows you primary objectives (even if it can be a bit cumbersome) etc. But moreover, the game is far less rigid and reliant on "one way trial and error". PT and SC1 had missions like the Oil Refinery and Submarine where you could easily make a single mistake without realizing it and get a mission failure like spooking one guard you had to grab with no workarounds.

 

CT almost always gives you primary objectives that can't be failed, or have multiple workarounds, or offer multiple chances. There aren't even any missions that fail you for getting spotted once and alarms also don't trigger mission fails. The game doesn't even dock marks for KOs like Double Agent V1. Another example, at the start of the Seoul Mission, you have to interrogate one of the NK Guards. It's your primary objective and if you kill or KO both of them, you get a mission fail. But the game tells you upfront you have to do that, have them literally on your path, they naturally move on their own into prime position to be interrogated, and there's 2 of them. Whereas PT would mission fail you if you spooked even one of them.  I'm just saying, when PT PS3 gave me a trophy for beating the game without dying, I was like "I literally died like 30 times this game lmao. Thanks for the trophy because I would never grind for that one on its own!"

 

As another example, if you kill the general and co in Battery, there's a computer nearby that contains the info to progress the mission. A lot of doors can be hacked or lockpicked instead needing to find the code or force a guard to open them. This is why the final parts of the Bathhouse and Seoul missions are often the low point of the game in terms of pure gameplay. It's CT briefly returning to the style of SC1 and PT where the game forces you into very specific and janky scenarios that have few ways to work around them.  

I think all this also makes CT arguably the most accessible SC game (aside from maybe Conviction and Blacklist). It being so lenient and generally polished makes it easier for a new player to learn the game and graduate to getting good enough to Platinum it. I could be wrong but I feel that, for a new player that never played SC before, once they get to grips with how sneaking and the general controls feel, a lot of other aspects of CT would probably click into place a lot easier.

 

I do feel that, it was a missed opportunity to not do more with the guard behaviour on Expert Difficulty. There's no "guards wake up and become alerted if you knock them out" system which would have been a great way to have the player weigh up their options between Ghosting, KOs and kills (which get rid of the enemy at the cost of your score). But at least it makes getting the platinum easier.

 

That being said, some of the difficulty from CT's platinum comes from the optional and secondary objectives that you have to hit to not lose 15-20% score. Many of which are well hidden or easy enough to overlook, especially for new players. Expert and Hard can be easy to die on, especially if you aren't aware of upcoming threats you should be ready to load a save on. But overall, compared to Blacklist's achievements, Blacklist was like 30% memory/knowledge and 70% execution. Getting all the Assault Masteries was a test of my abilities and skills. I feel that even if I knew what was coming up, pulling it off was the hard part. Whereas CT is like, 40% execution and 60% memory/knowledge where just knowing what's coming up and how exactly it works generally helped way more than say, my reaction times and aiming skills. As sneaking, once you get the hang of it, is often sufficient for a lot of the game

 

I guess what I am trying to say is that Ubi retroactively adds these achievements to the PC version of CT and/or ports the game to PS4/PS5, I feel CT would be a fun game to platinum there as well (assuming the glitches were fixed). Most of the trophies are about beating the game and messing around with the cool moves Sam has, and the truly hard ones are doable with practice and patience. I certainly had a fun time with this platinum.