More from Ubisoft's E3 2015 Conference
More Ubisoft announcements...
Ghost Recon: Wildlands announced
Bolivia, a few years from now: this beautiful South American country has become the largest cocaine producer in the world. The influential and vicious Santa Blanca drug cartel has turned the country into a narco-state, leading to lawlessness, fear, injustice, and violence. The cartel is on track to becoming a major underworld power and global threat. An all-out war is not the answer. A surgical, stealthy, lethal approach is the only way to stop the disease at its source. The Ghosts, an elite US Special Forces team, are sent behind enemy lines to wreak havoc, destabilize, and eventually break the alliance between the cartel and the corrupted government. Facing an almighty enemy in a massive and hostile environment, the Ghosts will need to make critical moral choices and engage in tough battles to complete their mission – their grittiest and most dangerous operation to date.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon® Wildlands is the very first military shooter in a massive, dangerous, and responsive open world that you can play entirely solo or in four-player co-op.
BIENVENIDOS A BOLIVIA From the infamous Death Road to the world’s largest salt flat, journey through Ubisoft’s largest open world actionadventure game to date. Discover massive regions inspired by Bolivia and South America, their stunning vistas and incredible diversity. Explore the hundreds of villages, landmarks, and legends populating this country in one of the many available vehicles, both on and off road, in the air, on land, and at sea. Immerse yourself in Bolivian culture as you cross paths with inhabitants reacting to their own agendas and to the game’s day-night cycle and weather system.
BECOME A GHOST Lead a team of four Ghosts, the absolute best of the US military. Play either solo or with up to three of your friends online in this gritty adventure as they seamlessly join you at any point in the game. Engage all your military missions in whatever order and manner suits you: stealth, distraction, and tactical or frontal assault always remain possible. Use the new iconic drones to recon the toughest terrains and to tag enemy outposts, or transform them into destructive weapons. Make difficult but critical choices: sabotage, interrogation, kidnapping, and assassination are but a few of the options available for you to reach your objectives. Upgrade and fully customize your Ghost with the experience and loot you gather on the battleground.
MANIPULATE AND FACE THE CONSEQUENCES Interact with different factions in the game: gather intel from the Santa Blanca cartel, bribe the aggressive Unidad military force, benefit from the local rebels’ resources, or protect the native population. Start inter-faction battles to cause distractions and help you reach your objectives. The world will react differently to each of your choices: unexpected opportunities and threats could arise from any situation, turning into long-lasting and dire consequences. Manipulate the system. Manipulate the unexpected.
Rainbow Six Seige Q&A
1. What is Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege?
A: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is the upcoming installment of the acclaimed first-person shooter franchise developed by the renowned Ubisoft Montreal studio for the new generation of consoles and PC. Inspired by the reality of counter-terrorist operatives across the world, Rainbow Six Siege invites players to master the art of destruction. Intense close quarters confrontations, high lethality, tactics, team play, and explosive action are at the center of the experience. The multiplayer gameplay of Rainbow Six Siege sets a new bar for intense firefights and expert strategy in the rich legacy of past Rainbow Six games.
2. How would you describe the Rainbow Six fantasy? What makes it different from other shooters?
A: Rainbow Six is based on the reality of counter-terrorism units (CTU). The CTU fantasy is what really drives the game’s vision, the Siege, and what truly differentiates us from the competition. Counter-terrorist units have very different tactics compared to the special forces/military units found in other FPS titles. Counter-terrorism units are experts of indoor encounters. Therefore, their training in close quarters combat and demolition is adapted to confined environments. They are “short range” specialists. The situations they handle are also very specific; from hostage rescue to airplane hijacking, the way they handle each situation is highly surgical and lethal.
3. Can you describe siege gameplay in more detail?
A: The word "siege" defines the core gameplay experience for the overall game. Rainbow Six games usually take place in indoor environments where you have one team leading an assault and an enemy team trying to counter that assault. Gameplay wise, Siege is an asymmetrical confrontation between two opposing forces, attackers and defenders, with two completely different roles and means. At the center of the Siege you have a tug of war between fortification and destruction.
Defenders need to counter the attackers by fortifying their position and building a stronghold, reinforcing walls and floors, using barbed wire, deployable shields and mines, and more. They need to control and obstruct open spaces, create bottlenecks, watch the environment carefully, and trap their attackers. Attackers, on the other hand, need to breach the stronghold and eliminate the defenders using observation drones, sheet charges, rappelling, and more. They need to find weaknesses in the defense, create entry points, and surprise the enemy using coordinated assault tactics.
4. What is the Operator system? Can you tell us more about it?
A: Operators are specialists with their own specific area of expertise within Siege operations. Following the Rainbow Six legacy, they come from the world’s best special forces units and are masters in their field. Each has their own unique personality and specialty. Some are focused on assault where as others are defense-oriented. They can be combined within the same team to create new team strategies.
5. Can you describe the different modes available in Rainbow Six Siege?
A: There are 3 main modes available in Rainbow Six Siege: Multiplayer (or PvP), Terrohunt (or PvE) and Missions:
Multiplayer (PvP): Two teams of five CTU Operators go head-to-head in a multiplayer battle to secure the objective.
Terrohunt (PvE): One to five CTU Operators work together to engage highly skilled enemy AI in varying operations. Players will be able to craft his or her own experience through multiple combinations and modes.
Missions: Pre-set scenarios expose the player to the content and mechanics of the Siege and are specifically designed to be played solo as a Lone Wolf, but can also be played cooperatively with up to four friends.
6. What engine and technology does the game utilize?
A: We are using a heavily customized version of the Anvil-Next engine, which is the same engine that is used for the Assassin’s Creed franchise. It is common practice within Ubisoft to share technology and key learnings between projects. Among other things, the improvements that the Rainbow Six development team made to Anvil-Next are the addition of a real-time, fully procedural destruction engine called RealBlast, a rendering pipeline capable of running smoothly and consistently at 60FPS, and super low latency input management system to guarantee the best PVP experience. Additionally, we’ve partnered with Havok to implement their new technology, Havok FX, in Rainbow Six Siege on all platforms. This will allow us to enable true-to-life explosions and debris fragments, realistically simulating the fallout of in-game destruction which is one of the pillars of Rainbow Six Siege’s gameplay.
7. What are you showing at E3?
A: We are excited to reveal the return of Terrorist Hunt, aka Terrohunt, the solo and cooperative experience in Rainbow Six Siege in which players will confront challenging AI in different game modes. Terrohunt will let players craft their own experience through multiple combinations of variables like maps, game modes, time of day, and difficulty levels to ensure high replay value and a constant challenge. At the Ubisoft booth, we will be demoing one of our Terrohunt game modes, Disarm Bombs, inside a brand new map, Consulate. Also, we will be demoing a new PvP game mode called Secure Area on a new map, Hereford, the legendary base of the British SAS units.
8. What is your main message for E3 2015?
A: We want to show the broad variety of content that players can expect in Rainbow Six Siege, from the highly competitive multiplayer modes, to the challenging and highly replayable PvE modes.
9. Terrohunt is a classic Rainbow Six mode, how did it expand in Siege?
A: In previous Rainbow Six games, Terrohunt was a game mode where a player could run through a series of standalone missions/scenarios where the end objective was always clear: take out all of the Terrorists. But in Siege, it is a larger and much more important part of the game. We’re amplifying all of the elements that made Terrohunt so popular in past Rainbow Six games and adding on a wealth of new content, including different game modes and a matchmaking system. To ensure a constant challenge and a high replay value, players will have the ability to select game modes, maps, time of day settings (day or night), and difficulty levels (casual, normal or realistic). Players can also create their own custom Terrohunt game sessions or play random scenarios generated by the Siege Generator. In addition to the Disarm Bombs mode we’re showing at E3, there will be three other Terrohunt game modes at launch:
Terrohunt Classic: the successor of the classic Terrohunt mode from previous Rainbow Six games, where players will have to attack a location and take down several waves of enemy AI.
Hostage Extraction : as an attacking team, players will have to secure and extract the hostage being held by the AI.
Protect Hostage: as a defending team, players will have to protect the hostage against the AI.
10. The Rainbow Six community is still playing Vegas Terrohunt seven years after its release and posting their score online. Can you explain what is special about Terrohunt that keeps players coming back for more?
A: Terrohunt is so popular among Rainbow Six fans because of its challenge and replayability. The only way to improve is to play more so you can refine your skills and perfect your tactics. Players are drawn to that experience because they feel they can always improve and they really want to!
11. Why is the AI so important in Terrohunt? What was your objective when developing Terrohunt’s AI?
A: In Terrohunt, the enemy artificial intelligence is the main character. Its real purpose, besides recreating the fantasy of being a CTU operative, is to challenge you to be the best player that you can be. Our main goal when developing the AI for Rainbow Six is to create systems that are highly challenging for players of all levels but never felt unfair to them.
12. Can you tell us more about how the AI will behave?
A: Rainbow Six Siege is built on the core concept of Siege gameplay, with opposing attacking and defending forces. That asymmetry is also the foundation of Rainbow Six Siege's AI. In Terrohunt, players will face highly skilled AI enemies who guard against your attacks by barricading windows, reinforcing walls, setting up traps, laying barbed wire, or executing sneaky ambushes. Other times, players will defend against determined groups of AI equipped with explosives and rappel equipment, ready to breach their way to kill you or the hostage you're trying to protect.
13. How does the progression work in Rainbow Six Siege? Will it be possible to unlock content for Multiplayer mode in the Terrohunt mode?
A: We have a unique and seamless progression across all the modes available in Rainbow Six Siege. Whether you play Terrohunt, Multiplayer or Missions, the XP you will earn will allow you to unlock new operators, new game modes in Multiplayer or Terrohunt, or weapon attachments and skins.
14. What’s being done to make sure Terrohunt is accessible to newcomers, yet challenging for veterans?
A: In Terrohunt, there are three difficulty settings: normal, hard and realistic. Each player and team will be able to choose the difficulty mode that matches their skills. Based on how you play, the AI enemies’ skills will improve and their behavior will adapt to make the higher difficulty setting very hard to master.
15. What happens if I want to play Terrohunt alone? Will the challenge be different?
A: Playing Terrohunt alone as a Lone Wolf makes for a much more difficult challenge. You only have one life, as in Multiplayer, and you won’t have any revive possibility since you will be playing solo.
South Park: The Stick Of Truth sequel announced 'The Fractured But Whole'
DELVE INTO THE CRIME-RIDDEN UNDERBELLY OF SOUTH PARK
From the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, comes South Park: The Fractured but Whole, a sequel to 2014’s award-winning South Park: The Stick of Truth.
Players will once again assume the role of the New Kid, and join South Park favorites Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman in a new hilarious and outrageous RPG adventure.
In South Park: The Fractured but Whole, players will delve into the crime-ridden underbelly of South Park with Coon and Friends. This dedicated group of crime fighters was formed by Eric Cartman whose superhero alter-ego, The Coon, is half man, half raccoon. As the New Kid, players will join Mysterion, Toolshed, Human Kite, Mosquito, Mint Berry Crunch and a host of others to battle the forces of evil while Coon strives to make his team the most beloved superheroes in history.
More to come in coming months.
