After having bestowed our Best of E3 award on Redstorm Entertainment’s Rainbow Six, I was eager to speak with Producer Carl Schnurr. With the help of Wendy Beasley I was able to nail Carl down long enough for an interview (the crunch is on to finish this eagerly awaited title).

I spoke with Carl at length about what the team at Redstorm wanted to achieve in this first person shooter that I’m confident will re-define the FPS genre. 

Csim: Thanks for taking some time out to go over Rainbow Six with us. This game looks really hot and I can’t wait to see the final, I was so blown away by the demo at E3.

Carl: Thanks for the kind words and we’re very happy to hear you enjoyed the demo. The team here has worked real hard to bring this topic (counter terrorism) into a very playable game. It’s not an easy job (being a real life CT operative) as the players will see from their experiences in the game. 

Csim: Being a big Tom Clancy fan I was wondering which came first: the novel or the game?

Carl: Well, I wasn’t on board at the time the idea was born but I believe it was actually kicked around the office a bit and then the idea got to Tom and it grew from there. The game idea was originally tested out as a Quake mod, where realistic effects of weapons were first tested to see if it would enhance playability. We found it to be far more challenging and we went from there.

Csim: I see you have done plenty of outside research to ensure the game is tactically realistic and weapons were modeled properly.

Carl: Yes, we spent a lot of time with the guys from H&K (Heckler and Koch) as well as ex-SWAT, SAS, and a former director of the FBI. All the character animations are motion captured using the guys at H&K once again to bring vivid lifelike movement.

Csim: I saw that at the E3 demo and was struck by how realistically these guys move, especially the one guy climbing the ladder to get up the fire escape - very convincing looking. What type of entry’s can we expect to see in room takedowns? Dynamic or stealth or both?

Carl: Both actually, it will be up to the player to decide as to which method he would rather use. The player can set up a couple of teams at different entry points and use “GO” codes to launch them simultaneously. This way if the player just wants to storm in he can, but he could take heavy casualties including those of the hostages.

There will be a few methods to move such as Advance, where your team will move as quickly as possible in a column formation with little security. Engage will afford you some security in a staggered column type movement and Clear which will mean you want your team to just wipe out the targets.

Csim: So the AI is set so that the enemy may kill the hostages if he knows he’s going down? Or is it in the heat of battle the CT operatives might shoot a friendly?

Carl: Again it’s going to be both and a combination of all of the above plus more. We really wanted to get the player thinking about what he’s doing and not just make it a shoot-em-up with no consequences. To do this we factored in a lot of things. For the R6 team members as disciplined and professional as they are they can still snap under pressure.

If you order your team into a room or another area in a “Blitz” for example, meaning they must move with maximum speed with little care for security and they get into a severe firefight you could have trouble on your hands. Your team members might either break and run to the extraction point to await you there or they might disobey orders altogether and refuse to do what you order. Better yet, they might even go into a berserk mode and just hose everything in the room.

Csim: Not a good thing to have happen when you have friendlies and  hostages in the room.

Carl: No, not a good thing at all. Besides that you can also have some problems with hostages as well. If you shoot a terrorist who’s right next to a hostage that hostage can snap as well, which could cause them to jump up and run around the room in the middle of a firefight. We’ve really tried to tweak the AI to be as close to real-life as possible and be very playable. 

Csim: I really like the ideas you guys came up with, it’s nice to see such attention to detail paid to AI. Especially in a situation such as you are creating with terrorist/hostage situations. So there will be a lot of morale checking done by the AI?

Carl: Yes, there will be constant “stress test” that will be run for each character, team members, hostages and terrorists. If your team is taking heavy casualties this will effect them in different ways as I mentioned before they can break and run, or go nuts with their weapons. The whole point of what we wanted to convey in this game is that the player is NOT alone. A lot of games get heavily into making the player control every aspect of their characters movement and such on the team. In R6 our goal is to make you the team leader of a very capable bunch of characters that can and do act accordingly on their own.

Csim: Sounds great! How about recovering hostages, how will this be accomplished?

Carl: You can pre-set the escort team to get to the room in which the hostage is held and from there to escort the hostage to safety. Again you can use GO codes so that the escort team can wait for another team to provide security if you want or they can just move out right away. 

Csim: What about weapons loadouts, will we have a choice as to what we send team members in with?

Carl: There will be prepared “kits” which you can modify. For example your heavy breachers will have the proper equipment to accomplish their task, but if you wish the change it you can easily.

Csim: How about Multiplayer? What kind of head to head and co-op type of play can we expect to see?

Carl: There will be several variations for multiplayer including survival which is your standard deathmatch. Team which is team deathmatch. Capture the hostage which is a variant on the Capture The Flag theme wherein the hostage is the “flag” and you must make it to the other side with your hostage alive. You must also try to kill the other teams hostage.

Fortress and double fortress are the other styles of play in which it’s basically an attack and defend situation in both, with the first one only one team attacks and defends and in the second both teams have a base to defend. So the multiplayer angle we feel will be well covered. You can also play any of the single player missions in multiplayer co-op mode as well, which is nice and everyone is part of the team, up to 8 players. 

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Csim: Now going back to the single player format for a moment, how many missions will there be and will there be any mission editor?

Carl: There will be no mission editor but we will be releasing the format in which the missions are created. In doing this we’ll be allowing those savvy players out there a chance to change around the missions we’ve already created. Not the maps themselves but the placement of objects and characters and their levels of difficulty so as to increase replayability and to allow new multiplayer missions.

There will be 16 storyline missions and 8 training missions including some time in a 2 story “kill house”. The training missions will greatly help players get used to the tactical command of their unit and to know their capabilities.

Csim: What types of movement options will be available to the players in the game for their characters?

Carl: In the game the players can use either a tactical walk, tactical run or they can crouch. From the crouching position they cannot move but can pivot in place. There is no prone position as this is something you wouldn’t see an entry team using. Takedowns are very dynamic and fluid and movement is constant, we were advised against having a prone position in the game from people in that line of work. Again, it’s realism we want to achieve and we believe we’ve done so.

Csim: Going back to multiplayer as well as single player, what about the voice comms I’ve heard about?

Carl: In single player mode there are somewhere between 50-100 pre-canned radio messages that will be a vital tool to the player. In multiplayer we are using Vox-Ware Technology to allow in game voice comms between players. There will only be allowed one message at a time as would be on a real radio, no cross talk will happen using this technology.

We feel this to be important to the gameplay online and will really give an added level of realism and atmosphere, not to mention teamwork. Be aware though that this voice comms situation is only ideal for up to 3 players over a standard 33.6 connection as it uses up 3k of bandwidth, but with services like Mplayer that supports multicasting this will work for larger groups as well. 

Csim: Well, I really liked what I saw at E3 and I’m liking even more what you’ve been telling me. What about the team members the player will be in charge of, tell me more about them.

Carl: There will initially be a pool of 20 of the top elite soldiers from around the world from which to build your team on. If they die on a mission, they’re dead. No respawns here. ? So it’s important that the player thinks about that when setting up his mission as replacements will be available but they will be green recruits not on par with what you start with. If any member of your team gets wounded while on an op, he’ll need to recuperate and that takes time. Depending on the severity of the wound he could be out for a week or two to upwards of a few months.

In the beginning of the game this is ok as the missions are spaced several weeks apart, but as the game moves on the ops are run closer together. By the end of the game you are running ops every 24 hours, so this also is a factor you must worry about as fatigue will play a factor on your team members as much as injuries and wounds. 

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Csim: I really like the heartbeat monitor and how you guys have added it to the game. It looks like it’ll play an integral part in your thinking on your feet when the op is on.

Carl: Yea, we really liked the idea too. It’s a great tool and will help you to know if there is someone near you so you can plan accordingly as you move along. The radius for a stand alone heartbeat monitor will be about 20 meters or so. It can help you as sometimes you may find a door barricaded and a terrorist just waiting in ambush for you to come through.

Csim: Speaking about wounds, what about when a team member gets hit? Do you have to give him medical attention or just leave him? What about enemy casualties, will they be the same?

Carl: There will be no medical attention given until after the mission, then your guys can get the rest they need. So if one of your guys goes down during an op with a wound, he will not bleed-out on scene. He will just sit out the remainder of the op until he can be recovered and he will heal between missions.

As for the terrorists though we’ve done something a bit unique. We’ve factored in the cause the terrorist follows. If he is a strong believer in his cause he will be harder to put down and may take several hits to the body before dying. One shot to the head will kill anyone in this game regardless of cause as in real life, but a fanatic can fight harder and longer than a non-fanatic. 

Csim: What are the preliminary plans for add-ons or sequels to R6?

Carl: We’re thinking of an expansion pack for possibly end of this year and if the game is received well, we would love to do a sequel.

Csim: How about the novel and the game, will they be similar and to what extent?

Carl: The game and the novel parallel in that the team concept and characters are the same, but the game is after all a game and Tom has written the novel. So there will be a lot of parallels but the game and novel will take different directions. 

Csim: Both will be enjoyable I’m sure. Tom Clancy is the true master of techno-thrillers and I can’t wait to read the book. Thanks for your time Carl, our readers will appreciate the info and we’re eagerly awaiting this release. I think this one is not going to bend the genre of first person shooters, it’s going to re-define it!

Carl: Thanks for the kind words, we feel the same about it. Hope you all enjoy it!