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Ubisoft scrapped Rainbow Six: Patriots so they could “lead with multiplayer”

Rainbow Six: Patriots: a bit wet.

Rainbow Six: Siege is actually the second time the tangos ‘n’ tactics series has been rebooted in the last half a decade. The first time it was Rainbow Six: Patriots – a heavily narrative-driven affair which drew from anti-Wall Street feeling and domestic terrorism.

But Ubisoft Montreal’s paymasters canned Patriots before it ever saw an E3. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot says that’s because they wanted to take a nearly opposite approach.

“Before when we made games, we were leading first with single player and then taking the systems from that to do multiplayer,” he told CVG. “With Rainbow Six we said, ‘Okay, we have to change our way of doing things’.”

That led to the decision to “change the game totally” – such that it could match the 60 frames-per-second multiplayer games Ubisoft were “seeing in the marketplace”.

Guillemot went on to point out that a failure in AAA nowadays doesn’t even cover its production costs – and the publisher doesn’t want to disappoint fans.

“There are lots of factors to take into account,” he said. “We know that with all of our teams, when their game doesn’t sell, they are unhappy.”

Rainbow Six: Vegas was best played in co-op – without music, without voiceover and without checkpoints, with only the blooping of the casino machines as comfort. You lot ever try that?