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Rainbow Six: Raven Shield

by James Sterrett

Article Type: Interview
Article Date: June 19, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: Rainbow Six: Raven Shield
Category: Squad-based Tactical Shooter
Developer: Red Storm Entertainment
Publisher: Ubi Soft
Release Date: Fall of 2002
System Spec: TBA
Files & Links: Click Here

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Ubi Soft’s Montreal studio is hard at work on the next title in the Rainbow 6 line, Raven Shield, with close cooperation from Red Storm (the makers of the previous games in the Rainbow 6 line). Due out this fall, Raven Shield went home from E3 with numerous accolades and is shaping up to be a worthy successor, taking the Rainbow team on another globe-hopping adventure. Three of their team consented to assist in our reconnaissance: Chaddi Lebbos, the Producer; Eric Begin, the Lead Programmer; and Mike McCoy, the Lead Designer.

The last door before the interview...

James Sterrett (J.S.) How do you view the issue of games using the same engines tending to seem similar to players, and how does this affect your use of the Unreal3 engine?

Raven Shield Team (R.S.T.) The engine we are using is the new Unreal Technology. There is a little confusion about how must be called this engine. A lot of people are talking about Unreal II, Unreal Warfare, and Unreal Championship. Just want to make sure that your audience known that the next Rainbow Six is using Epic's new Unreal Technology, nothing else.

At first, when we evaluated different engine, the weakness of Unreal was that each game using this technology was looking the same. So, with this in mind, we focused on how we could modify or create maps that don't have THE Unreal look. Lighting, more realistic environment and less cubic levels were major points to get rid of this look. There are currently 3 projects at UbiSoft using Unreal, and each project focused on different things. XIII developed Cell Shading to give a cartoon look to their game. Splinter Cell puts a lot of effort on the renderer and lighting (and the current results are awesome) and on Raven Shield, we put everything we have on the realism of locations, weapons and characters. So, yes, I think that it's possible to get different visual with this engine, but who want to do it have to do it all the way. But that's not all. We don't just have to modify the engine itself once, but we also have to merge with the new code bases received from Epic at each 3 or 4 months, which is not always an easy task. Since we heavily modify the engine on different aspects (Sound, AI and renderer), it takes us a long time before everything works fine with the new code.

So for the next Rainbow Six, don't expect to see Unreal type of graphics and/or environment: you won't see big rockets leaving fire trails and stuff like that. Expect realism and you'll be fully satisfied. After all, that what our game is all about: Realism.

Preparing to bust into a bank

J.S. Your press notes state that you intend to set a new standard for AI. Could you give some examples of what you hope to accomplish? Are you more focused on scripted AI or situational AI? Which is more useful in Raven Shield?

R.S.T. The main objective is to make the behavior of the NPCs in Raven Shield as humanlike as possible. Ideally, a player would not be able to tell the difference between playing against an AI controlled character and a human controlled one. Our focus is definitely situational AI. The player will know they are playing against crafty enemies whose reactions are logical, yet not predictable, and secondly they will feel that they are truly a member of a team of elite operatives, and that their teammates support their commander, the player, and follow orders intelligently.

For example, when a player approaches a closed door, their teammates will take a formation around the player to best prepare for what awaits on the other side. And say the player decides to open the door and rush right, his teammates will then enter and clear the center and left.

The NPCs in Raven Shield react and adjust to your actions as well as to their surroundings, and audio/visual stimulus. There are so many different ways players can choose to play the missions, Raven Shield will provide them with a unique experience each time.

J.S. Equally, what improvements do you plan to make to the control of the player's own team? Will the pre-planning of Rainbow 6 and Rogue Spear be retained, or will a more dynamic command system be used?

R.S.T. Both! We’ve put a lot of effort into making the pre-game planning much more user friendly, while maintaining the same functionality of Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear. To compliment this we’ve made an intuitive Quick Order Interface (QOI), which allows you to dynamically order your team during a mission. You can even coordinate the activities of all three teams using the QOI.

A vacation barracks in the tropics....

J.S. What lessons have you learned from developing Black Thorn that you are applying to Raven Shield?

R.S.T. Beside learning and deepening our knowledge in Rainbow 6 level design and gameplay, we had the opportunity to make contact with the Rainbow 6 online community. We learned that they were a very important resource for us since they probably know more about the R6 game than we do. Having hardcore fans is great when you do a game like ours because if we do it well, it'll be everywhere on the Internet and it's very rewarding for the development team. However, if we only miss a single detail or the game is not what they were hoping for, they'll be very critical of it. These little incentives incite us to always do the little effort needed to make everything perfect

The team shows off its Crouch-N-Hold capability

J.S. What challenges did you face in writing the storyline? What impact does the war on terrorism have on the storylines you can create?

R.S.T. The storyline for Raven Shield took many months to create and has evolved greatly during the process. Similar to previous Rainbow products, our story is totally fictional and has no basis on present events or organizations. Our goal is not to reenact or capitalize on modern day events, but to present a believable, albeit fictional tale.

J.S. Recently it seems that all the Red Storm games have 15 missions in the primary game and 8 in the expansion pack. What makes 15 a magic number?

R.S.T. I really have no idea. We basically started out by creating the story. From the story we extracted mission locations and the basic ideas for exactly what should occur in each mission. We then sat around a table and selected the best locations/missions and created our campaign. Call it dumb luck that we ended up with exactly 15 missions.

Crashing luxurious parties is hard work

J.S. How do you balance realism with gameplay? Where do you reduce realism in the name of fun?

R.S.T. This is a great topic. To ensure that we keep our game on the cutting edge of realism we employ technical advisors, like Mr. Mike Grasso of LAPD Tactics. Make no mistake that Raven Shield is a realistic game, but we do have to occasionally make decisions that are somewhat unrealistic for the sake of gameplay. For example, take hand held mirrors. Real life operatives never enter a room without knowing exactly what they are going to encounter, but this is not fun in a game. Imagine going to watch a movie and always knowing what was coming up next. Most people hate this total lack of suspense. As movies and games are similar in this regard, having hand held mirrors, while realistic, are not fun. For this reason we’ve decided not to include them in Raven Shield.

J.S. The Rainbow 6 franchise broke open the infantry simulator genre. What were the key elements in its success, and how can you move the genre in new directions with Raven Shield?

R.S.T. I would have to say one shot, one kill is the biggest thing. Until Rainbow Six came out everyone thought it wouldn’t work. They thought players wouldn’t like that kind of uncompromising realism. Boy, did Rainbow Six ever prove them wrong. And the realism didn’t stop there. The weapons, operatives, and even mission planning were as realistic as they could be. The heart pounding suspense and tension completed the experience. When you play Rainbow Six you really get the feeling that you’re an elite counter-terrorist operative and with the auto-targeting system even new and novice players feel like they’re James Bond.

Showing off the smoke effects

J.S. If you could change one thing about the game industry, what would it be, and why?

R.S.T. Being part of the game industry means that developers always keep a look out for competition: competition brings better games and with better games we have happy customers. We (the game industry) always surpass ourselves to make it better than so and so, but again we still see on the market too many games that are still bugged with Class A (crash) bugs, or do not have the quality standard they should have and that’s personally just plain bad. One thing I would change in the industry is to have a centralized QA company that does the final approvals of all the games before being shipped to the consumer. Like dealing with first parties (Sony, Xbox, Nintendo), they should have the right to accept or refuse your game, basing themselves on a standardized checklist.

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I want to thank all the members of the Raven Shield team for their answers! We’re all looking forward to the release of Raven Shield this fall, and trust that it will live up to its predecessors. COMBATSIM.COM readers can expect a review soon after its release.



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