Splinter Cell Blacklist Invokes the Fifth Freedom in Latest Trailer (VIDEO)

The apparently just-sworn-in president in this trailer for Splinter Cell Blacklist is shown giving Sam Fisher clearance to use the super fancy Fifth Freedom to correct whatever the hell has gone wrong in this story. It got me to thinking: if there is such a thing as a license to kill for American intelligence operatives does that mean Jack Bauer had one on 24? That guy stacked more bodies than a Chinese cemetery, to quote the late great Proposition Joe from The Wire.

I mean let's go through the list of Yank action heroes through the years and look at who, if any, had a license to kill. Tom Cruise, Chuck Norris, Harrison Ford, Jesse Ventura and the rest always seem to get away with killing all kinds of folks for the sake of the mission without the cops ever slapping the cuffs on even for a minute. They must have had some kind of Fifth Freedom type of immunity, right? Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme clearly didn't need immunity because they're not even suppose to be jay-walking in America, let alone shooting people. Anyway this Fifth Freedom seems prety cool even if it doesn't sound as cool as a "00" license to kill from Her Majesty. Turns out English Bob was on to something in Unforgiven when he was BSing about the power of royalty. Then again, he got beat up for merely having a gun while Clint Eastwood got drunk, shot the sheriff and got away with it all.

Anyway, Sam Fisher is the head of the Third Echelon organization in Blacklist and in a very James T Kirk-style he seems to be hands on when it comes to dealing out death under that Fifth Freedom protection. Much of this trailer features scenes from the E3 demo we showed you back in June.