via cvg

Tomorrow, here in the UK, Ubisoft is firing out the latest round of Rainbow Six tactical shooter operations with the arrival of Vegas on PC. And in an interview to be published in full on R6 Vegas' PC assault day, we asked Ubisoft how the latest instalment on the beige box raises bar in the tactical shooter genre.

"We are actually putting a lot of emphasis on what we call the OPA. Observe, Plan and Assault," says producer Stephane Roy. "We're not inventing anything here; it's the way spec ops work. But we are designing the game and our features to fully support this."

He continues: "For the observation, we added the ability to snake cam under a door so that players would have better information about a room before they storm in with their team. As for the planning, we have revised the way the player gives orders to his team mates. Our new way is more intuitive, and it allows the player to control his team mates remotely without needing to be right next to them. Finally, for the assault, we've added rappelling and fast roping, allows player and their team mates to enter locations in new tactical ways."

We took the opportunity too to ask about improvements over Rainbow Six: Lockdown, Roy explaining that the goal with Vegas was to take what has made Rainbow Six games so popular and bring the player's experience to the next level.

"This means focusing on core elements like tactics and realism, but it also means accepting to stop doing things we've done in the past. The format of the game for example. Since we want players to feel the experience we created, we decided to do our storyline in real-time", Roy informs, adding that a lot of time and effort has gone into AI.

"...one of our major focuses is the AI, not only the enemies but the team mates as well. Your team mates will have their own skills and will help you out on the field. Regarding the enemies, you'll see a progression in their abilities. At the beginning, you'll encounter some guerrilla-like terrorists but near the end, they'll be organized and expertly-trained to increase the challenge."