Shooting terrorists and blowing things up – two hallmarks of the modern first-person shooter. Two hallmarks that merge very nicely in Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six: Siege, which combines slow-paced, methodical combat with real cinematic flair thanks to its excellent destruction mechanics. Breaching and clearing has never been so much fun. I chatted to animation art director Scott Mitchell to find out what we can expect from the final version of the game when it launches this December.
GameWatcher: Siege is very much a stripped-down, methodical tactical shooter, which is something we don’t see too much these days. What was the initial inspiration for that idea? Did you see a gap in the market?
Scott Mitchell: Really, where the inspiration came form was what the destruction brought to us, and how the whole siege aspect played out – the idea of attackers and defenders – that’s really where the game comes from. The tactical part comes into play because everything’s exclusively indoors. I mean, you have a preparation phase for the attackers that happens outdoors, but your objective is to always go inwards. So you go in with your drone first. Tactics are forever changing, because the map is forever changing. I think that makes it interesting in that you don’t end up with a single tactic all the time for a specific map - the same tactic pretty much never works twice.
GameWatcher: Yeah, the destruction is a pretty big deal in the fact that it doesn’t bottleneck attackers in the same way that a lot of games do.
Scott Mitchell: The destruction is huge, it’s really the backbone of Rainbow Six: Siege. It means that the maps are forever changing. Maps never play the same way twice, sight-lines are always changing absolutely everywhere. Anything that’s not a supporting part of the building can be blown up. The idea of respawning in a map, where the respawn points are always the same, going towards your objective all the time and then just camping out somewhere and trying to wait it out does not work here.
GameWatcher: Have you seen any tactical approaches from players that have surprised you?
Scott Mitchell: There was something interesting we saw happen in the plane map, in a match earlier. During the first round the attackers breached into a room that the defenders had set up a stronghold in, and they flanked from either side, two came in from either side and that didn’t go so well. So the next round, the defenders thought the attackers would use the same approach, but they didn’t. They went above and breached through the floor, and the defenders were down below looking out at all of the doors they had barricaded, so the attackers came through the floor above and the match was over in a second. It was brilliant.
GameWatcher: Obviously the destruction gives the game a really cinematic feel, which is great for eSports. Was that something you were hoping to push from the start?
Scott Mitchell: What’s interesting is that in the beginning that really was not our focus. What we wanted to deliver was a great online shooter that followed the legacy of those successful Rainbow Six games of the past. But the more we brought the community in, the more they were getting involved and talking about the fact that there’s serious potential behind this game, the team said “okay, well let’s support that”. Then you get features like the caster cam and spectator cam, both taken very, very seriously.
GameWatcher: How does character selection in singleplayer work? Do you still have access to all the different Operators from PVP?
Scott Mitchell: So as you’re playing through solo you still have access to your operatives and weapon attachments et cetera. You do start as just a recruit, in either PVP or PVE, then slowly build up your operatives based on the ‘renown’ that you get. But in the solo experience you’re against enemy AI that plays just like the player does. So it’s quite a similar experience; the AI has access to the destruction mechanics just as the player does, and they will also react to the destruction, which is something new for us. In past Rainbow Six titles we didn’t have that, so you would tactically wait and watch for up to twenty minutes sometimes, to see if the AI made any moves or any mistakes and then you’d plan and execute. It’s a lot more dynamic now. Everything’s indoors and the AI is very, very reactive.
GameWatcher: Does that mean they’ll aggressively attack the player?
Scott Mitchell: They’re quite aggressive, depending on their role. We have different classes of AI that will have different jobs to do, but they all play like another player would. For someone breaking into the experience we do offer difficulty levels, especially with the concept of just the one life, because once you get shot in both PVE and PVP you’re out.
GameWatcher: You’ve gone for a kind of MOBA feel with the Operatives, where they each have unique tools and skills. Is that hard to balance in a competitive shooter?
Scott Mitchell: It’s extremely difficult to balance when we have twenty different Operators – ten defenders and ten attackers. Each attacker will have a defender that can counter them or the device they use, and it’s incredibly difficult to balance all that. Thankfully the community involved during the Alpha, their feedback was invaluable. Things like the point men with the shields, which were ridiculously overpowered, we’ve done a lot of work to kind of tine them down a bit. They move slower, reload slower, the screen shakes and it’s hard to see when the shield is getting shot, plus the shield actually comes down if you aim down the sights. All that was from player feedback.
GameWatcher: Are you considering custom game and mod support for the PC version of Siege?
Scott Mitchell: Well you’ll see the same experience across all the platforms, so there is nothing specific for any platform; PS4, Xbox or PC. They will all be the same experience. When you’re playing solo there is some match customisation, you can add other friends in to play with you as well, but we’ll be going further into the solo stuff in a little bit.
GameWatcher: The core game ships with ten maps, am I right? Presumably you’re looking at DLC map packs down the line.
Scott Mitchell: There will be DLC, and I know we released a statement a couple of weeks back saying there will be additional maps, but we’re not being specific at all about DLC right now. More info is coming soon, because we know people are very serious. Contrary to popular belief, none of it is being worked on while we’re working on the final release – we have to shift our efforts towards integrating feedback as much as we can, so it’s something that is happening after we’ve looked at that.
Many thanks to Scott for cahtting to me. You might have been enjoying the Siege open Beta recently, and there’s not long to wait for the full game – it’s out this December 1.
