Rainbow 6 Siege Announced As Ubisoft Shelves Patriots [Trailer Added]

Ubisoft has announced the return of Rainbow 6, but not how you might think. Rainbow 6 Patriots, which saw a tense trailer and a spotlight on our December 2011 cover, has become a distant memory. A new title in the series has been announced, with a new team. Patriots is on the shelf, but you probably won't mind after you hear about Rainbow 6 Siege.

Siege has been in development for a year and a half, with a new team and a new vision. "It's a complete new team on a new mandate, which is delivering a tactical shooter on the new-generation of consoles," says brand director Alexandre Remy. Xavier Marquis, who was the art director on Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, is leading up the latest entry in the long-running counter-terrorism franchise.

Siege puts multiplayer at the forefront, focusing on asymmetrical play. "You will never find in real life a symmetrical assault, so we tried to capture all of this directly in a short amount of time," Marquis says. "In three minutes, you will have everything: preparation phase, assault phase, observation, barricading." Terrorists can direct the flow of combat by choosing where to set up defenses and choke points. Assault can disrupt those plans by breaching through walls and using other tools.

Two teams of five players alternate between playing as Team Rainbow and terrorists. With three minutes to observe, plan, and execute your attack, the six rounds of each match move quickly. There is no respawning, and players are very fragile. The games always have elimination as an option to win. However, accomplishing a secondary goal (like safely extracting a hostage), might award an additional round point for success.

A single-player campaign is planned, and Rainbow 6 Siege is a premium title (and not free-to play), in case you were concerned it would follow in the footsteps of EndWar Online or Ghost Recon Online.

The first trailer showcases some of the destruction that is woven into the experience. Instead of entry points limited by level design, players can use a variety of technology to ascertain the threat, tactically enter the building through doors, windows, and walls, and escort the hostages out. Alternatively, the terrorists can prepare defenses to make things more difficult for intruding counter-terrorist players.

Environments feature full destructibility, and the trailer demonstrates how breaching through walls affects the way gameplay rolls out. Rainbow 6 has always featured interior environments with tight hallways that create tactical challenges. That ethos carries through to Siege.

Rainbow 6 Siege features a full, single-player mode that is not simply a training ground for multiplayer. "For the campaign, you will play only one side, the assault side," Marquis says. "The other side will be played by AI. It's not purely the same thing, but everything in the single and co-op will be based on all the features, all the tools, of the multiplayer first."

Rainbow 6 Siege will hit Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC only. "It's because of the procedural destruction," Marquis says. The pure advantage of this technology is to bring all the creativity of the player around the destruction." Ubisoft will be sharing more about the single-player portion of the game as we get closer to the title's 2015 release. Additionally, the team is not planning second-screen support at this time.