Time was, Rainbow Six was top dog. Talk of the town. King of the hill. When Rainbow Six: Vegas arrived back in 2006, it rocketed to the top of the Xbox 360’s most popular shooters list. All across the world, virtual casinos were filled with the sound of people accidentally fragging themselves with grenades.

But here we are, some five years later, and the FPS landscape has changed dramatically. Call of Duty now has a vice-like grip on online gunplay, cover-based shooters are everywhere, and it’s been four years since Team Rainbow last took out a tango. But Rainbow Six: Patriots creative director David Sears has an absolutely straight face when he says that he expects to take the Rainbow Six name back to the very top of the Xbox Live charts. That means, by implication, beating whatever Activision and EA have to offer in the process. That’s a hell of a gauntlet to throw down. “Let’s just say we are matching the competition in terms of overall features and systems,” Sears says. “But Rainbow Six has a long history of being a forefront innovator.”

It’s a tease, no doubt, but at the very least, the team has the luxury of time to get it right. The game won’t surface until 2013, and remarkably, much of it is already in place — from A.I. and shooting systems all the way to specific story-led mechanics. And this isn’t due to the use of the Unreal Engine — because that’s no longer true. This new Rainbow is instead powered by the same Anvil engine as Assassin’s Creed, but it’s been hammered into a shape that’s suitable for an FPS.

As good as it looks, though, the priority isn’t as much technology as it is humanity. Sears points out that very few players remembered the names of their squadmates in the previous Rainbow games. He’s right; we can only recall Ding Chavez from the very first game, and that’s thanks to his silly name rather than a dazzling personality.

This time, the face-obscuring ballistic helmets have been left at home and you’ll be stepping into the boots, chiseled jaw, and thousand-yard stare of James Wolfe, a former Navy Seal who’s been hand-selected as squad leader of the elite Rainbow Six team. His adversary is Jonah Treadway, the leader of a domestic terrorist group called the True Patriots who’s fully prepared to martyr himself for his cause. This is a story of America being attacked from within by members of its own disgruntled population — meaning that identifying who’s an enemy and who’s an innocent civilian will be a constant struggle. Get that call wrong and there will be consequences, but not game-ending ones — Sears explicitly stated that you won’t be able to complete the game without enduring collateral damage, but it’s up to you to minimize it.

TOUGH DECISIONS
Where things get muddy is when you have to make snap decisions that require sacrifice. What if there’s a terrorist using a civilian as a human shield and his finger is hovering over a button on a mobile phone that will detonate bombs across the city, potentially killing thousands? Attempt to save the hostage and you could condemn a far greater of number of people to death; open fire and you’ll be personally punching someone’s ticket as they beg for you to save them. To quote Dennis Hopper in Speed at his scenery-chewing best: “Pop quiz, hotshot: what do you do?”

In order to capture that human side of the conflict better, Patriots takes a cue or two from Modern Warfare. The action hops between the perspectives of the Rainbow team, civilians, and first-responders who arrive at the scene of terrorist attacks. The twist in Patriots is that this perspective shift can happen at any time mid-mission, whisking you out of the skull of one character and into another. It’s an effective way of giving you multiple views of the same potentially confusing event while still maintaining a frantic, panicked pace.

Longtime series developer Ubisoft Montreal isn’t afraid to lay it on thick, either. The “mission” we saw actually began in the relative tranquillity of comfortable, middle-class suburbia. A Christmas tree sits blinking in the corner of the room as your average-Joe player character watches a news report about a viral attack at the Pebble Beach golf course and browses news stories on a tablet computer. Your beautiful, scantily clad wife approaches with your birthday cake, and you press A to blow out the candle. Then you press A to kiss your wife. The baby is asleep upstairs, and…

It’s archetypal domestic bliss — the American Dream in heavy-handed, ultra-distilled form. But the peace is broken when the doorbell rings; when your wife answers it, she’s shoved out of the way by intruders who attack you both and ultimately knock you out. When you come to, you’re both gagged and the terrorists advance on you, holding a vest covered in ominous-looking wiring. “You cashed in from the foreclosures; you’re going to make up for it,” Glen, the bearded one, growls. Then you’re knocked out again.

When you come to, you’re in the back of a van, a detonator wedged into your hand as bullets pepper the vehicle. You’re told to hop out onto the rain-lashed Brooklyn Bridge, get to Times Square, and (most importantly) hold on to the detonator — release the right trigger at any point and you’ll go up like a fireworks factory. Survival is key as you duck between the vehicles scattered across the bridge. A moment later, the camera lurches into the sky, soaring along the length of the bridge and finally settling behind the sniper scope of Rainbow’s team leader, who is perched on the bridge’s distinctive arched supports. After a minute or two spent plugging bad guys with the hefty rifle, it’s time to rappel down the iconic brickwork to the roadway below. You won’t be gradually backing off the edge and bouncing your way down this time, though. Instead, using tactics inspired by South Korean Special Forces, you dive headfirst off the side and sprint down the vertical surface, casually gunning down terrorists as you go. Rappelling is no longer a time-consuming form of navigation, and you’re nowhere near as vulnerable as you used to be while doing it.

Once our guy’s on the main part of the bridge, we witness a moment that affects us far more than the suburban sequence at the beginning, yet lasts only a fraction of the time. A woman, trapped in the back seat of a cab, pleads for help, but before you have time to think, she’s silenced by gunfire — resulting in a thick rivulet of blood running down the door. Sears explains that there’s nothing you can do to save her, no matter how quick you are on the draw. It’s a shocking reminder of the lethality of the firefights — something that applies to you as well. Headshots mean instant death, and if you’re hit at point blank range with a shotgun, it’s all over.

Asked if he was concerned about generating controversy by showing the human side of terrorist attacks, Sears doesn’t seem concerned. “By its very nature, our subject matter resonates with a lot of people, so we’re careful to not be exploitative or crass,” he says. “I think what’s really key and what’s really cool and different about Rainbow is that while in the real world, terrorism is on the minds of most informed, concerned world citizens, we’re not empowered to act. We have guardian agencies, and our governments are looking out for our well-being, but part of the fantasy is, ‘I would do that different; I would be a hero.’ Rainbow allows you to play the role of that hero from multiple perspectives.”