R6-3 Mission Breifings Parts 1 & 2 (IGN) | Forums

[XyZspineZyX]

We had these on our clans forums, thought i would share them with you guys...if you find any kewl info, and are bored, stop by our site and post it...thanks

Part 1

September 08, 2003 - Now that we've all gotten used to the fact that Halo 2 is destined for the nebulous release date of TBA 2004, Ubi Soft's Rainbow Six 3 is the leading candidate to fight the online shooter blues that could've otherwise consumed the country this holiday season. Developed by Ubi Soft Montreal, Rainbow Six 3 is the first Rainbow Six game for the PS2 and Xbox so don't let that little numeral "3" fool you. You only missed RS1 and 2 (Rogue Spear) if you dissed them on Dreamcast, PlayStation and Nintendo 64.

For its arrival on Xbox, gamers are getting full Xbox Live functionality, including online co-op play through the main campaign mode, voice commands for AI teammates in the single player game and totally revamped environments and missions. Fans flocked to Ghost Recon's online play when Xbox Live launched last year because that Tom Clancy game allowed gamers to utilize all of their online shooter techniques with teammates and work toward common objectives. At the very least, Rainbow Six 3 should improve on that concept with additional gameplay modes and upgraded graphics.

To make sure we're not just blowing smoke up our sixes we threw a bunch of questions at the development team responsible for bringing RS3 to life. Some of them were good, some were mediocre, but every single one of those questions was answered and you can read 'em for yourself below. First up is the game's lead designer, Mike McCoy, who's as big a fan of Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan as anybody.



IGN: What are the biggest and most recent changes you've made to the console versions of Rainbow Six 3 to further differentiate it from the PC version?

Mike McCoy: We have a brand new storyline. We have an entirely new campaign. No missions were re-used. We did re-use textures from some objects, but it's more of an "inspired by" thing, the gameplay and the feel on every level is different. We have three totally new levels. We enhanced the Rainbow Team AI and the terrorist AI. The reticle system is completely different to work better with the controller. Instead of fighting the controller with our existing reticle, we designed a reticle that works with the controller. So hopefully when you play, you'll have the experience that they're mated together and not slammed together.

We've added a new multiplayer mode called Sharpshooter. It was actually one of the most popular modes from Ghost Recon and allows respawn. So when you play, you set a time limit and the person with the most kills at the end of the time limit wins. Even when you mess up you pop right back out, so it's a little bit more mainstream. We've, of course, integrated everything Xbox Live can possibly offer including voice commands. We have voice commands for the AI. So instead of looking at the ground and pressing a button, you just talk to your guys. And it's natural like you've played a game where your AI does something and you're like " What are you doing!? Come here!!" Well, our guys are listening and they actually will. In multiplayer we have real-time voice communication between all players and team-only. So you can press a button and it'll just come through the headphone to your teammate. Or you can just talk and it'll emanate from your character in the world so if somebody's close they'll hear you, if they're not, they won't.

IGN: Explain how important the new targeting reticle is in Rainbow Six 3 and how it works.

MM: In the PC version, when you move, your reticle expands to show that your bullets are going to go somewhere inside this reticle, but you don't know where. On top of that there's an auto targeting system that you can activate which means that the center of your expanded reticle will snap to the targets. What we've done is we've integrated both of those things into one reticle system so that now you have a point and a circle (around it). As you move, the circle shrinks, making you put the point on the target. As you go stationary, the circle grows which means you put the target anywhere in that bigger circle and you hit them. If you're familiar with Halo, they did a very good job with their reticle. I think they were one of the first shooters to really take a step forward and make a reticle that plays towards the controller rather than force a PC reticle. What we've done is take that to the next level and now you get rewarded for being stationary and taking careful aim versus moving fast. Now if you're a good aimer you can run through and play the game very Quake-like and put the dot on his forehead, pull the trigger and it's easy. But if you stop and take your time, the circle is quite big and you put that anywhere over his body, pull the trigger and he goes down.

IGN: We've seen it where you send your guys to open and clear a room and they get shot up anyway. Even though there are endless ways to command and play, there's really nothing we could've done differently in that situation. What's a good field commander supposed to do to keep his guys alive in this game?

MM: For sure, the game plays any way you want to play it. If you want to send the team out front always, go for it. The game will play perfectly fine. If you want to leave the team and play by yourself, the game plays perfectly fine. It's a different gameplay experience. I think the "funnest" experience, the way I like to play it, is to work with the team. I send the team up, once the team is in position, then I move past the team, take position to cover them, then send the team up again. It's the bounding over watch idea. It's a very tactical maneuver where you always have a stationary shooter covering the moving members of the team. To me, that seems the best and it tends to work the best. But if I get shot up really bad, I tend to send the team out in front of me for a little while. If the team gets shot up really bad, I tend to take the lead for a little while. I don't ever want the team to all have only one health point and I have all of mine, or vice versa. I want the team to survive the whole mission because the more of them that are surviving, the more powerful they are and the more they can help me. If I just send them off and get all three killed in the beginning then I'm in real trouble because I have to cover 360 degrees when I can only see 90 degrees and you tend to get hammered.

IGN: How deep is the voice command system? How many terms will the AI recognize?

MM: Well the voice command system is tied directly to our order system. We have a circumstantial action icon that'll pop up --when you look at a door, you'll get a door icon-- if you press and hold the A button you get this door command menu. Well, there's actually 16 different commands you can give them to interact with a door. There's the (basic) four, then add "clear" for four more, then add "zulu" for four more and then you have "zulu" and "clear" and there's four more so you end up with 16. You look at a door and you can say any combination. Open and clear on zulu. Open, flash and clear on zulu. Open, flash and clear. Breach and clear on zulu. Any of those things, they'll understand completely, but it's contextual. You wouldn't look at a door and give them a move command, so you have to know what's going on. But all of these commands are intuitive. If you look at the ground and say "move," they'll move. Look at a door and say "open," they open. If you look at a ladder and say "climb" they climb.



We're also implementing something that I think players are really going to like because when they first start to play they only have to remember one thing. Say the words "go, go, go," and they'll do the default order for wherever you're looking. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be a ladder, it could be diffusing a bomb, it could be anything, but it does the default order, which is the top order on the Quick Order Interface. Once you learn more what those commands are, then you get a little bit more of the role playing. When you're sitting there in a room and you say "open, flash and clear now!" well, they don't understand the "now" but they do understand the "open, flash and clear" and they do your order. I've actually heard people in the office playing and saying "I need you to go there now" and they hear "go" and zoom they're gone. "Cover me!" Boom, they hear that and they go take cover. So there's different commands and you can actually talk to them but the interesting thing is they're listening and they understand what you're saying.

IGN: When playing over Xbox Live will we only be able to hear our teammates over headphones or will the spatial audio work when they're nearby?

MM: No matter where your teammates are if you press the talk button that's "talking to teammates only" and you're gonna only send the command and it'll only come through their earpieces. So if the three of us are sitting here right next to each other and you two are on the other team and say Max sent me a command saying "Hey, get that IGN guy, he doesn't know what he's doing" If he says that, you guys don't hear anything because it all comes through my earpiece. Now if I don't have a voice communicator it's still going to come through my television because you have to be able to hear it someway. If you just talk openly through the open mic, where we're all sitting around it the lobby or at the beginning of the game and I say "I see you," you'll hear this voice off in the distance saying "I see you." And you go "crap, who is that?" And that adds a lot of life to these animated characters. The more life you give them, the easier it is for you to forget that it's all fantasy and you really start to get into your role and really experiencing it.

IGN will have more on Rainbow Six 3 in the coming days. For now enjoy the fresh movies and screens in the media section.

One of the most recent things we've done to really differentiate the two games is enhance the terrorist AI so they know much more about the level and they take advantage of the level more. When we did that we brought that to the Rainbows as well and that's a huge thing. With Rainbow now, you tell them to go somewhere and they don't go to that exact spot. What they do is look for cover around that spot and they take cover. So if you burst into a room with Rainbow behind you and you get into a huge gunfight, you just hit the "hold" button and your team immediately deploys into the room and ducks behind a bed, behind a barrel, behind a bookshelf, whatever and starts returning fire. So your AI feels more human, which is what we want it to do.

IGN: How do you have all new missions and three new levels? What does that mean exactly?

MM: For one the storyline is completely different. We have an Alpine mission in (the Xbox version). The Alpine mission you see in the Xbox looks and feels nothing like the Alpine mission that we had in Raven Shield (on PC). What we did was we leveraged some of the textures and objects and some of the buildings and staircases and things like that so we had a bunch of the building blocks. Then we completely rebuilt the level to be something totally different just for Xbox. So in a way all the levels are brand new, but if you played the PC version, you may say "Oh, I remember that wall texture from the PC version," or "I remember these buildings with these kinds of posts in them." But you won't find the same layout of the level. You won't find the doors in the same place. You won't find the same buildings. You won't find any of that stuff. It's all been moved around and changed.


Part 2

September 10, 2003 - Now that we've all gotten used to the fact that Halo 2 is destined for the nebulous release date of TBA 2004, Ubi Soft's Rainbow Six 3 is the leading candidate to fight the online shooter blues that could've otherwise consumed the country this holiday season. Developed by Ubi Soft Montreal, Rainbow Six 3 is the first Rainbow Six game for the PS2 and Xbox so don't let that little numeral "3" fool you. You only missed RS1 and 2 (Rogue Spear) if you dissed them on Dreamcast, PlayStation and Nintendo 64.
For its arrival on Xbox, gamers are getting full Xbox Live functionality, including online co-op play through the main campaign mode, voice commands for AI teammates in the single player game and totally revamped environments and missions. Fans flocked to Ghost Recon's online play when Xbox Live launched last year because that Tom Clancy game allowed gamers to utilize all of their online shooter techniques with teammates and work toward common objectives. At the very least, Rainbow Six 3 should improve on that concept with additional gameplay modes and upgraded graphics.

Today we double up on the mission briefing by talking to the game's producer, Chadi Lebbos and the woman reponsible for creating the AI of Team Rainbow, Rima Brek. Both are veterans of the Tom Clancy universe and heartily agreed with us that Sean Connery needs to make his way into a videogame, Tom Clancy-inspired or not, as soon as possible.


IGN: What's going to separate Rainbow Six 3 from the other online first person shooters, including other Tom Clancy games, available on Xbox?

Chadi Lebbos: The main reason for doing this title is that we saw there wasn't any tactical shooter on the market right now, especially on Xbox, that can have that quality of graphics that we can bring, that kind of gameplay we can bring and that kind of AI and multiplayer experience that we're able to bring. Basically, there have been some Rainbow Six titles in the past on consoles, but they were not adapted for console players. They were mainly just ports from the PC versions that were already done. They still had all of that team micromanagement. Whereas on Rainbow Six 3 for Xbox, it's more streamlined where the player will be able to press three buttons and, bang, you'll be in the game. And all of the gameplay itself with the grenade launcher, soft body physics, the dynamic lighting --minute stuff like setting a terrorist on fire and seeing him running-- that's all just very mass market. That's where people like you, somebody else on the street will just take it as pure fun.

The reason why the PC game is called Raven Shield and this one is called Rainbow Six 3 is Raven Shield is part of the storyline that is in the PC version. Now we have a completely new storyline that is proper to this title. Therefore, it's very actual in terms of story. That's why we went without the Raven Shield because it's a completely new game and not a port.

IGN: When did you make the decision to go with voice recognition technology?

CL: The first time Microsoft came to visit and we presented them the concept, they told us about all of the technologies around the Xbox in terms of hardware capacity, what we could do with it and especially the peripherals that came with it. And when we saw that we had the Voice Communicator we said "hey, we've already got the windows where we can give our order by pressing a button, so why not have the possibility of having the player give the order directly through voice?" At first, we had it where you'd press a button, talk and release. We found that it was a bit awkward, so we tried something new where it would just always be open. When its always open you don't have to press a button and you can speak how you want and the team will obey your orders.


IGN: Microsoft is preparing to promote the connectivity between the Xbox and PC. New initiatives like XSN and Xbox Live Web are going to get huge pushes. Will Rainbow Six 3 take advantage of any of that innovation?
CL:The beauty of Rainbow Six 3 is we have downloadable content. You will have new maps etc. But in the future you will have continuous support for the title. There's a possibility of having an official mod release and stuff like that. So the door is still going to remain open to the new innovations from Microsoft. We just need to see how and when.

IGN: How important is it to have somebody like your technical advisor, Mike Grasso, working with you to make Rainbow Six 3?

CL: Mike is great in terms of helping out, he's a game freak and like Rainbow Six a lot. Mike works on the PC version as well and that's more of a simulation so he brought his expertise on that part. Rainbow Six 3 is a little more arcadey and action-oriented, so he took that Hollywood experience of his --because he worked in the movie industry-- and brought us some pointers. So things like the cover spots and the right deployments when you tell them to hold and to move have been worked out with Mike Grasso. Same thing with grouping the team members and having them pick out the right equipment for a level, he helped out here as well.

IGN: How is Ding Chavez, the new hero on the block in Tom Clancy's world, going to be brought to life in Rainbow Six 3?

CL: You'll be playing Ding Chavez, he's the hero of the team. We're going to see him in the cinematics. Clark is going to be speaking to him and speaking to the team so we're going to see his personality really come out in the cinematics. And in the story itself we're going to have a few surprises out of him. Because it's the console version, a person will only have to view the cinematics to understand 80% of the storyline.

Using big name voice talent was discussed and we began negotiations, but due to the deadlines that we had, there wasn't any time for any further negotiations. What we did we remained with the original voices from the Rainbow Six series. And we have some voice talent that fits exactly to the characters like Ding and (Eddie) Price.

IGN: How is the Team Rainbow AI developed differently from the enemy AI in the game?

Rima Brek: When you're telling them what to do and when you're not telling them what to do, they've got their regular behavior. When they're following you, when they're backing you up, when they're covering for you, this is their normal behavior. They engage terrorists when they see them, they tell you things they think you should be aware of. And then there's behavior when you issue orders to them. You tell them to do certain things, the way that's carried out and the way they make decisions is what's different.

IGN: Since there's no planning in this game and the whole concept is to get you into the role of field commander, how did you know what commands and procedures to include and which ones to ditch?

RB: A significant part of the AI (programming) was the AI lead. Which you don't have when you have just one team because you are the leader. And the rest of the team has their behaviors. When we had the planning phase (in the PC games), there was a leader AI where they'd just execute the planning. They would just collect all of the information you set up at the beginning and they would just go through it step by step. So that was real easy for us because we just removed the planning. But then all of the rest of the AI was pretty common. An AI-lead team still had the same behavior that a player-lead team does, except there were no orders given on the fly. All of the orders were already set up in the planning.

IGN: How do you handle the challenge of keeping everything real-time? It would be easy to quickly command the guys to go all over doing al sorts of things.

RB: For one thing they're aware of the environment, so having them move around in an intelligent way was important. Sometimes spaces are very restricted. So one of the challenges was getting them to move around without bumping into stuff and getting in each other's way. Some of the other challenges was getting them to be more aware of their environment and being able to use that information. For example, now when you issue an order, the one that's closest to where you want them to go will lead the group of three. But it will allow them to have much more smoother movement and allow them to move towards their destination in a more elegant way.


IGN will have more on Rainbow Six 3 in the coming weeks, days and months.





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[XyZspineZyX]

We had these on our clans forums, thought i would share them with you guys...if you find any kewl info, and are bored, stop by our site and post it...thanks

Part 1

September 08, 2003 - Now that we've all gotten used to the fact that Halo 2 is destined for the nebulous release date of TBA 2004, Ubi Soft's Rainbow Six 3 is the leading candidate to fight the online shooter blues that could've otherwise consumed the country this holiday season. Developed by Ubi Soft Montreal, Rainbow Six 3 is the first Rainbow Six game for the PS2 and Xbox so don't let that little numeral "3" fool you. You only missed RS1 and 2 (Rogue Spear) if you dissed them on Dreamcast, PlayStation and Nintendo 64.

For its arrival on Xbox, gamers are getting full Xbox Live functionality, including online co-op play through the main campaign mode, voice commands for AI teammates in the single player game and totally revamped environments and missions. Fans flocked to Ghost Recon's online play when Xbox Live launched last year because that Tom Clancy game allowed gamers to utilize all of their online shooter techniques with teammates and work toward common objectives. At the very least, Rainbow Six 3 should improve on that concept with additional gameplay modes and upgraded graphics.

To make sure we're not just blowing smoke up our sixes we threw a bunch of questions at the development team responsible for bringing RS3 to life. Some of them were good, some were mediocre, but every single one of those questions was answered and you can read 'em for yourself below. First up is the game's lead designer, Mike McCoy, who's as big a fan of Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan as anybody.



IGN: What are the biggest and most recent changes you've made to the console versions of Rainbow Six 3 to further differentiate it from the PC version?

Mike McCoy: We have a brand new storyline. We have an entirely new campaign. No missions were re-used. We did re-use textures from some objects, but it's more of an "inspired by" thing, the gameplay and the feel on every level is different. We have three totally new levels. We enhanced the Rainbow Team AI and the terrorist AI. The reticle system is completely different to work better with the controller. Instead of fighting the controller with our existing reticle, we designed a reticle that works with the controller. So hopefully when you play, you'll have the experience that they're mated together and not slammed together.

We've added a new multiplayer mode called Sharpshooter. It was actually one of the most popular modes from Ghost Recon and allows respawn. So when you play, you set a time limit and the person with the most kills at the end of the time limit wins. Even when you mess up you pop right back out, so it's a little bit more mainstream. We've, of course, integrated everything Xbox Live can possibly offer including voice commands. We have voice commands for the AI. So instead of looking at the ground and pressing a button, you just talk to your guys. And it's natural like you've played a game where your AI does something and you're like " What are you doing!? Come here!!" Well, our guys are listening and they actually will. In multiplayer we have real-time voice communication between all players and team-only. So you can press a button and it'll just come through the headphone to your teammate. Or you can just talk and it'll emanate from your character in the world so if somebody's close they'll hear you, if they're not, they won't.

IGN: Explain how important the new targeting reticle is in Rainbow Six 3 and how it works.

MM: In the PC version, when you move, your reticle expands to show that your bullets are going to go somewhere inside this reticle, but you don't know where. On top of that there's an auto targeting system that you can activate which means that the center of your expanded reticle will snap to the targets. What we've done is we've integrated both of those things into one reticle system so that now you have a point and a circle (around it). As you move, the circle shrinks, making you put the point on the target. As you go stationary, the circle grows which means you put the target anywhere in that bigger circle and you hit them. If you're familiar with Halo, they did a very good job with their reticle. I think they were one of the first shooters to really take a step forward and make a reticle that plays towards the controller rather than force a PC reticle. What we've done is take that to the next level and now you get rewarded for being stationary and taking careful aim versus moving fast. Now if you're a good aimer you can run through and play the game very Quake-like and put the dot on his forehead, pull the trigger and it's easy. But if you stop and take your time, the circle is quite big and you put that anywhere over his body, pull the trigger and he goes down.

IGN: We've seen it where you send your guys to open and clear a room and they get shot up anyway. Even though there are endless ways to command and play, there's really nothing we could've done differently in that situation. What's a good field commander supposed to do to keep his guys alive in this game?

MM: For sure, the game plays any way you want to play it. If you want to send the team out front always, go for it. The game will play perfectly fine. If you want to leave the team and play by yourself, the game plays perfectly fine. It's a different gameplay experience. I think the "funnest" experience, the way I like to play it, is to work with the team. I send the team up, once the team is in position, then I move past the team, take position to cover them, then send the team up again. It's the bounding over watch idea. It's a very tactical maneuver where you always have a stationary shooter covering the moving members of the team. To me, that seems the best and it tends to work the best. But if I get shot up really bad, I tend to send the team out in front of me for a little while. If the team gets shot up really bad, I tend to take the lead for a little while. I don't ever want the team to all have only one health point and I have all of mine, or vice versa. I want the team to survive the whole mission because the more of them that are surviving, the more powerful they are and the more they can help me. If I just send them off and get all three killed in the beginning then I'm in real trouble because I have to cover 360 degrees when I can only see 90 degrees and you tend to get hammered.

IGN: How deep is the voice command system? How many terms will the AI recognize?

MM: Well the voice command system is tied directly to our order system. We have a circumstantial action icon that'll pop up --when you look at a door, you'll get a door icon-- if you press and hold the A button you get this door command menu. Well, there's actually 16 different commands you can give them to interact with a door. There's the (basic) four, then add "clear" for four more, then add "zulu" for four more and then you have "zulu" and "clear" and there's four more so you end up with 16. You look at a door and you can say any combination. Open and clear on zulu. Open, flash and clear on zulu. Open, flash and clear. Breach and clear on zulu. Any of those things, they'll understand completely, but it's contextual. You wouldn't look at a door and give them a move command, so you have to know what's going on. But all of these commands are intuitive. If you look at the ground and say "move," they'll move. Look at a door and say "open," they open. If you look at a ladder and say "climb" they climb.



We're also implementing something that I think players are really going to like because when they first start to play they only have to remember one thing. Say the words "go, go, go," and they'll do the default order for wherever you're looking. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be a ladder, it could be diffusing a bomb, it could be anything, but it does the default order, which is the top order on the Quick Order Interface. Once you learn more what those commands are, then you get a little bit more of the role playing. When you're sitting there in a room and you say "open, flash and clear now!" well, they don't understand the "now" but they do understand the "open, flash and clear" and they do your order. I've actually heard people in the office playing and saying "I need you to go there now" and they hear "go" and zoom they're gone. "Cover me!" Boom, they hear that and they go take cover. So there's different commands and you can actually talk to them but the interesting thing is they're listening and they understand what you're saying.

IGN: When playing over Xbox Live will we only be able to hear our teammates over headphones or will the spatial audio work when they're nearby?

MM: No matter where your teammates are if you press the talk button that's "talking to teammates only" and you're gonna only send the command and it'll only come through their earpieces. So if the three of us are sitting here right next to each other and you two are on the other team and say Max sent me a command saying "Hey, get that IGN guy, he doesn't know what he's doing" If he says that, you guys don't hear anything because it all comes through my earpiece. Now if I don't have a voice communicator it's still going to come through my television because you have to be able to hear it someway. If you just talk openly through the open mic, where we're all sitting around it the lobby or at the beginning of the game and I say "I see you," you'll hear this voice off in the distance saying "I see you." And you go "crap, who is that?" And that adds a lot of life to these animated characters. The more life you give them, the easier it is for you to forget that it's all fantasy and you really start to get into your role and really experiencing it.

IGN will have more on Rainbow Six 3 in the coming days. For now enjoy the fresh movies and screens in the media section.

One of the most recent things we've done to really differentiate the two games is enhance the terrorist AI so they know much more about the level and they take advantage of the level more. When we did that we brought that to the Rainbows as well and that's a huge thing. With Rainbow now, you tell them to go somewhere and they don't go to that exact spot. What they do is look for cover around that spot and they take cover. So if you burst into a room with Rainbow behind you and you get into a huge gunfight, you just hit the "hold" button and your team immediately deploys into the room and ducks behind a bed, behind a barrel, behind a bookshelf, whatever and starts returning fire. So your AI feels more human, which is what we want it to do.

IGN: How do you have all new missions and three new levels? What does that mean exactly?

MM: For one the storyline is completely different. We have an Alpine mission in (the Xbox version). The Alpine mission you see in the Xbox looks and feels nothing like the Alpine mission that we had in Raven Shield (on PC). What we did was we leveraged some of the textures and objects and some of the buildings and staircases and things like that so we had a bunch of the building blocks. Then we completely rebuilt the level to be something totally different just for Xbox. So in a way all the levels are brand new, but if you played the PC version, you may say "Oh, I remember that wall texture from the PC version," or "I remember these buildings with these kinds of posts in them." But you won't find the same layout of the level. You won't find the doors in the same place. You won't find the same buildings. You won't find any of that stuff. It's all been moved around and changed.


Part 2

September 10, 2003 - Now that we've all gotten used to the fact that Halo 2 is destined for the nebulous release date of TBA 2004, Ubi Soft's Rainbow Six 3 is the leading candidate to fight the online shooter blues that could've otherwise consumed the country this holiday season. Developed by Ubi Soft Montreal, Rainbow Six 3 is the first Rainbow Six game for the PS2 and Xbox so don't let that little numeral "3" fool you. You only missed RS1 and 2 (Rogue Spear) if you dissed them on Dreamcast, PlayStation and Nintendo 64.
For its arrival on Xbox, gamers are getting full Xbox Live functionality, including online co-op play through the main campaign mode, voice commands for AI teammates in the single player game and totally revamped environments and missions. Fans flocked to Ghost Recon's online play when Xbox Live launched last year because that Tom Clancy game allowed gamers to utilize all of their online shooter techniques with teammates and work toward common objectives. At the very least, Rainbow Six 3 should improve on that concept with additional gameplay modes and upgraded graphics.

Today we double up on the mission briefing by talking to the game's producer, Chadi Lebbos and the woman reponsible for creating the AI of Team Rainbow, Rima Brek. Both are veterans of the Tom Clancy universe and heartily agreed with us that Sean Connery needs to make his way into a videogame, Tom Clancy-inspired or not, as soon as possible.


IGN: What's going to separate Rainbow Six 3 from the other online first person shooters, including other Tom Clancy games, available on Xbox?

Chadi Lebbos: The main reason for doing this title is that we saw there wasn't any tactical shooter on the market right now, especially on Xbox, that can have that quality of graphics that we can bring, that kind of gameplay we can bring and that kind of AI and multiplayer experience that we're able to bring. Basically, there have been some Rainbow Six titles in the past on consoles, but they were not adapted for console players. They were mainly just ports from the PC versions that were already done. They still had all of that team micromanagement. Whereas on Rainbow Six 3 for Xbox, it's more streamlined where the player will be able to press three buttons and, bang, you'll be in the game. And all of the gameplay itself with the grenade launcher, soft body physics, the dynamic lighting --minute stuff like setting a terrorist on fire and seeing him running-- that's all just very mass market. That's where people like you, somebody else on the street will just take it as pure fun.

The reason why the PC game is called Raven Shield and this one is called Rainbow Six 3 is Raven Shield is part of the storyline that is in the PC version. Now we have a completely new storyline that is proper to this title. Therefore, it's very actual in terms of story. That's why we went without the Raven Shield because it's a completely new game and not a port.

IGN: When did you make the decision to go with voice recognition technology?

CL: The first time Microsoft came to visit and we presented them the concept, they told us about all of the technologies around the Xbox in terms of hardware capacity, what we could do with it and especially the peripherals that came with it. And when we saw that we had the Voice Communicator we said "hey, we've already got the windows where we can give our order by pressing a button, so why not have the possibility of having the player give the order directly through voice?" At first, we had it where you'd press a button, talk and release. We found that it was a bit awkward, so we tried something new where it would just always be open. When its always open you don't have to press a button and you can speak how you want and the team will obey your orders.


IGN: Microsoft is preparing to promote the connectivity between the Xbox and PC. New initiatives like XSN and Xbox Live Web are going to get huge pushes. Will Rainbow Six 3 take advantage of any of that innovation?
CL:The beauty of Rainbow Six 3 is we have downloadable content. You will have new maps etc. But in the future you will have continuous support for the title. There's a possibility of having an official mod release and stuff like that. So the door is still going to remain open to the new innovations from Microsoft. We just need to see how and when.

IGN: How important is it to have somebody like your technical advisor, Mike Grasso, working with you to make Rainbow Six 3?

CL: Mike is great in terms of helping out, he's a game freak and like Rainbow Six a lot. Mike works on the PC version as well and that's more of a simulation so he brought his expertise on that part. Rainbow Six 3 is a little more arcadey and action-oriented, so he took that Hollywood experience of his --because he worked in the movie industry-- and brought us some pointers. So things like the cover spots and the right deployments when you tell them to hold and to move have been worked out with Mike Grasso. Same thing with grouping the team members and having them pick out the right equipment for a level, he helped out here as well.

IGN: How is Ding Chavez, the new hero on the block in Tom Clancy's world, going to be brought to life in Rainbow Six 3?

CL: You'll be playing Ding Chavez, he's the hero of the team. We're going to see him in the cinematics. Clark is going to be speaking to him and speaking to the team so we're going to see his personality really come out in the cinematics. And in the story itself we're going to have a few surprises out of him. Because it's the console version, a person will only have to view the cinematics to understand 80% of the storyline.

Using big name voice talent was discussed and we began negotiations, but due to the deadlines that we had, there wasn't any time for any further negotiations. What we did we remained with the original voices from the Rainbow Six series. And we have some voice talent that fits exactly to the characters like Ding and (Eddie) Price.

IGN: How is the Team Rainbow AI developed differently from the enemy AI in the game?

Rima Brek: When you're telling them what to do and when you're not telling them what to do, they've got their regular behavior. When they're following you, when they're backing you up, when they're covering for you, this is their normal behavior. They engage terrorists when they see them, they tell you things they think you should be aware of. And then there's behavior when you issue orders to them. You tell them to do certain things, the way that's carried out and the way they make decisions is what's different.

IGN: Since there's no planning in this game and the whole concept is to get you into the role of field commander, how did you know what commands and procedures to include and which ones to ditch?

RB: A significant part of the AI (programming) was the AI lead. Which you don't have when you have just one team because you are the leader. And the rest of the team has their behaviors. When we had the planning phase (in the PC games), there was a leader AI where they'd just execute the planning. They would just collect all of the information you set up at the beginning and they would just go through it step by step. So that was real easy for us because we just removed the planning. But then all of the rest of the AI was pretty common. An AI-lead team still had the same behavior that a player-lead team does, except there were no orders given on the fly. All of the orders were already set up in the planning.

IGN: How do you handle the challenge of keeping everything real-time? It would be easy to quickly command the guys to go all over doing al sorts of things.

RB: For one thing they're aware of the environment, so having them move around in an intelligent way was important. Sometimes spaces are very restricted. So one of the challenges was getting them to move around without bumping into stuff and getting in each other's way. Some of the other challenges was getting them to be more aware of their environment and being able to use that information. For example, now when you issue an order, the one that's closest to where you want them to go will lead the group of three. But it will allow them to have much more smoother movement and allow them to move towards their destination in a more elegant way.


IGN will have more on Rainbow Six 3 in the coming weeks, days and months.





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sorry but just a link to part 3. Still no word on how many can play in squad games but the limit for online co-op is 4! No-one take more than their 25%!!!