Philippe Therien, Game Designer for Vegas 2, runs us through the multiplayer modes and more.
With Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on the verge of release and the series promising to close with a climatic finale, we sat down with game designer Philippe Therien to find out what surprises the game has in store for rookies and Rainbow Six vets alike.
IGN: The story in Vegas 2 runs parallel with that from the first game. How does that work?
Philippe Therien: This game actually starts off before the events in Vegas occur. You start off in a different location but you'll get to find out why things in the first game happen. After that the action moves toward a parallel to Vegas and for a while you'll be exploring places in found in Vegas while Logan was in Mexico. Then towards the end of the game it loops forward to the helicopter scene at the end of the first game and continues on from there, to draw the Vegas storyline to a close.
IGN: So no more Rainbow Six Vegas games after this?
Philippe Therien: That's correct. Vegas 2 concludes the story so as far as Vegas games go this is the last. There will be other Rainbow games but they won't be set in Vegas.
IGN: What is it about Vegas that makes it a good setting for a Rainbow Six game?
Philippe Therien: There are a lot of things. From a technology standpoint Vegas is an exciting place to recreate – it has a lot of detail, there are neon lights everywhere you look and lots of things moving around. It makes for a very loaded environment which is interesting to explore. It's also a very iconic city – it's very much a tourist attraction and people go there to have fun, so we wanted to ask the question about what would happen if bad guys took control of a place that was so iconic, a place that was associated with having a good time.
IGN: With that in mind what other cities do you feel would make great backdrops for a Rainbow Six game?
Philippe Therien: Anywhere where people are used to visiting or anywhere that's iconic. When you invade that element of comfort people get from being somewhere safe and familiar – that's what makes for a great setting. It's something that Tom Clancy often does – takes a place that feels safe and normal, then he turns it around. That's the cool thing about making games – realistically none of these events will ever happen but it's fun to pretend for a while.
IGN: So there could be a Rainbow Six: London, or maybe one set in New York?
Philippe Therien: Sure, they'd make great locations for Rainbow Six.
IGN: Can you tell us a little bit about the co-op game?
Philippe Therien: The co-op game is the complete story mode this time around and is for two players, played over Live or PSN. There's also Hunt the Terrorist, which is for four players. Other than that you'll have to wait and see.
IGN: How will the ACES upgrade system affect your character in the game?
Philippe Therien: It's purely weapons and options, so as you unlock achievements you're rewarded with new guns and so on – it doesn't affect stats such as accuracy or anything like that. Vegas 2 is very much designed with multiplayer in mind so everything has to be as balanced as possible – we don't want people to feel threatened when they jump into a game for the first time, so you're rewarded with weapons that are not necessarily better than the ones you already have, they're just different. Each weapon is allocated a certain number of points – you'll see in the game they're rated on accuracy, damage, rate of fire, that kind of thing. The stats are actually a lot more complicated and in-depth than that but each weapon has the same number of points, so one weapon could fire rapidly but do little damage while another could tear someone to shreds but take longer to reload.
IGN: Why did you feel it was necessary to overhaul the shotgun and the light machinegun?
Philippe Therien: They're a lot more balanced now than they used to be. The shotgun is now extremely deadly at close range, but it's very bad at long range. The problem with the shotgun in Vegas one is that if you hit your target you got a kill, but if you missed you were dead – it took too long to reload. That's now been changed to make the shotgun more practical. The problem with the LMGs is that the player had to really struggle to keep it under control, so what we did is cut down on the kickback and make the initial accuracy on the weapon lower, so while it fires at a wider radius it's much easier to control.
IGN: You mentioned there was an area of the game set in the Nevada desert. Are there more open sections in Vegas 2 compared to the first?
Philippe Therien: Some of the areas will certainly feel different and you'll go places that don't just look like casinos, which is nice because a lot of the maps in the first Vegas were just casinos. Of course, there's still a lot of that in the game – it's still set in Vegas after all – but we wanted to explore some of the areas around the casinos a little more. As for the night-time Nevada desert level, it's not really an entire outdoor area – you start outside and then move in, but I can't say much more about it at this time. Put it this way, we wanted to have more variation and give the game a more worldly feel. We wanted to avoid the traditional 'start in the town square' approach and create something that is more dynamic.
IGN: How big a part of the game is multiplayer in Vegas 2?
Philippe Therien: Multiplayer is as important in Rainbow as single-player. In the past Rainbow was very much led by multiplayer and the single-player was almost non-existent. That's not to say it wasn't good, there just wasn't the same emphasis on it. I think now it's pretty much 50-50, nothing has just been tacked on. Everything is very polished.
IGN: Rainbow Six and GRAW compliment each other perfectly – they offer a similar experience but are still very different. Do you work closely with the Ghost Recon team?
Philippe Therien: It's funny because the guys working on Ghost Recon are very much outdoors types of guys and always want to create outdoor environments, whereas we're always working on indoors areas. We work separately from one another – we do talk once in a while but there's no direct co-operation. We're aware of what each other is doing but we don't step on each other's toes. It's almost by accident but we each have our own direction.
IGN: Would you like to team up with the GRAW guys to create the ultimate tactical shooter?
Philippe Therien: That would be an insanely ambitious project! It would be the ultimate game though, with the guys from Ghost Recon doing all of the outdoors areas and us working on the indoors areas. That would be amazing, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be for a team of 400 people to work on one game.
IGN: With Vegas 2 completing this part of the series, what would you do if had a clean sheet and create the ultimate Rainbow Six game?
Philippe Therien: That's the question we'll probably be asking ourselves if we do another Rainbow game down the line. We'd probably push co-op even further, maybe add additional online options. I think we've got pretty close to where we want to take co-op but I think there's still room to take it further - pushing the experience even more, adding more choices and including more areas to explore so it's got just as much to it as single-player. As far as multiplayer goes it's really a case of how much we can put in there – maps, game modes, that kind of thing. We always have an abundance of ideas but time is always the key factor.
IGN: Finally, do you plan to support Vegas 2 with downloadable content?
Philippe Therien: It's not announced right now but we've supported DLC before so I would be surprised if we didn't do something similar on this game.
by Alex Simmons, IGN UK
