Ubisoft had a different idea for Rainbow Six. Patriots was meant to be a tactical shooter inspired by the Vegas sub-series
Today, not everyone remembers that before Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege was released, the series was set to receive another installment. Rainbow 6: Patriots could have been the spiritual successor to the Vegas sub-series.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six is a series that, for many years, has primarily attracted fans of the tactical shooter genre, who aren't afraid of its high level of difficulty. The situation changed in 2006 with the launch of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas, which opened this series to new players. This game got a sequel, and it seemed like the franchise would follow the same path with the next installment.
However, this didn't happen because Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Patriots, announced in 2011, ultimately had to give way to another project, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege, which is still doing great to this day (right now in the form of Siege X). It's worth recalling this somewhat forgotten project and checking out what we could have expected from it.
Uphill from the start
Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Patriots had a tough life from the very beginning. The official announcement of the game in November 2011 was a response to the possibility of a leaked promotional video. Kind of out of the blue, Ubisoft decided to reveal their new project ahead of schedule. The trailer published at that time, however, didn't present the final version of the game, but only conceptual material from 2010, which was supposed to show the general tone and style of gameplay.
Vegas on steroids
The gameplay would remind players of everything they have become accustomed to in the Vegas sub-series. During it, for most of the time, we would watch the action from the first person perspective. Sometimes, though, the camera would switch to a third-person view, for example, when taking cover behind obstacles. Although shooting would be the highlight of it, our role wouldn't be limited to just aiming and pulling the trigger.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Patriots would indeed be a tactical shooter in the full sense of the word. Therefore, the success of our actions will be determined by careful planning of the next steps, cooperation with the other members of the titular team, and the use of various gadgets that facilitate our anti-terrorist work.
This work would be made more challenging by the improved artificial intelligence of the opponents. The devs boasted that while opponents in the Vegas subseries lived an average of 4 seconds, they aim for Patriots to stay alive ten times longer. The enemies were supposed to act as realistically as possible, stumbling and falling during shootouts or dropping clips while reloading their weapons.
Patriots, who are they?
Our main enemies in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6: Patriots would be the so-called True Patriots, who would carry out terrorist attacks supposedly in the name of justice and to stop corruption on Wall Street. The ranks of this group would be filled with war veterans forgotten by their homeland, led by the influential Jonah Treadway.
The protagonist of the game would be Echo Leader, whose goal would be to stop The Patriots regardless of the costs incurred for this purpose. He would be encouraged to engage in less ethical behavior by his mentor, James Wolfe, a former member of the Navy SEALs who leads Team Rainbow.
What's interesting, the described title was supposed to allow us to view the events presented in it from different perspectives. We even would have the opportunity to become The Patriots. As can be read in the announcement published on Kotaku:
80% of the campaign will be played from the perspective of the counterterrorism team Rainbow 6 (Who have changed their name from "Rainbow Six," as it was in past games) but the remaining 20% will be played from the perspective of other characters, from innocent civilians to first responders like ambulance drivers and firefighters, to even the terrorists themselves.
Not only for one
Although Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Patriots was expected to offer an extensive story campaign, the game was also supposed to feature a multiplayer mode. The multiplayer gameplay was supposed to be divided into two phases. In the first, we would sit over a virtual map called a sandtable and establish tactics, planning our next moves. Next, we would end up in a lobby that looked like the interior of a jet, from which we would jump onto the map and proceed to the actual action, constituting the second phase of the game.
Problems and canceling
Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Patriots was created under the supervision of David Sears (creative director), Richard Rouse (narrative director), Philippe Therien (lead designer), and Brent George (animation director). In 2012, when the Ubisoft Montreal studio behind this project went through a restructuring and the mentioned creators were removed from the project, things started to look grim for it.
Although Yannis Mallat, the creative director of the studio, insisted that these changes didn't affect the vision of the project, in reality, it was just putting a brave face on a bad situation. The situation was further complicated by the release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, as Patriots were designed with earlier generation consoles in mind. As a result, the whole project fell apart like a house of cards. As Laurent Detoc, the head of the American branch of Ubisoft, said:
There's an editorial group in Ubisoft, a big group, very influential. If the game is not good enough, they say it's not good enough.
And it was this group that was supposed to say, "This won't work." As a result, the described Rainbow 6 had to be remodeled... or rather created from scratch, under a new name and based on fresh gameplay ideas.
Officially, Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Patriots was canceled in June 2014. Under such circumstances, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege was born, which probably everyone has heard of by now. But that's a topic for another story...
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