Rainbow Six Siege has remained one of the biggest competitive shooters since it launched way back in 2015, and not even a new Rainbow Six game in the form of Extraction can stop it. Siege‘s close-quarters gameplay has become beloved and iconic, and so it’s natural that Ubisoft would want to extend the reach and lifespan of that game beyond last-gen consoles and PC.
The mobile shooter market has grown swiftly over the last few years, with games like PUBG Mobile, COD Mobile, and Fortnite proving that the platform is finally able to provide fast-paced competitive experiences. Apex Legends is due to get in on the fun very soon, and Rainbow Six Mobile is Ubisoft’s attempt to make its own mark on the growing ecosystem.
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“The main thing is that we really wanted to stay true to what Siege is. So you’re going to have that core experience, but we have adapted systems to optimize your experience on mobile,” Rainbow Six Mobile‘s lead game designer Olivier Albarracin tells GLHF. “You’ll still have the same feeling of attack and defense, unique operators, team synergies, close-quarters combat. There are moments in Siege that we’ve encapsulated and tried to capitalize on.”
Make no mistake, this is essentially Rainbow Six Siege on mobile. The game engine has changed from Ubisoft’s own to Unity, and the game balance, controls, and mechanics have changed slightly with it, but this is a new iteration on what has become a modern classic. You’ll still be infiltrating buildings to defuse bombs while defenders hastily close off openings and lie in wait. Despite the move to mobile, this is a tense and cautious game to play at its core, but everything plays out in a faster timeframe.
The vision is the same, but Rainbow Six Mobile is its own beast, separate from the mainline Siege game. This game will see different gadgets, operators, weapons, maps, and content to the flagship game on console and PC, but Siege fans will still find everything to be very familiar until you try a new mode.
“Actually, my favorite game mode we have in the game is one round matches, you’re randomly put on defense or attack, you play one three minute round, and then you’re done,” RSM‘s creative director Justin Swan explains. “Once you combine loading the game, going into menus, matchmaking, all the pre-match, mid-match, in-match flows, and the one round, you’re looking at about six to seven minutes in total. And that feels pretty nice on a phone.
“We really wanted to stay true to the core of Siege, and that meant not removing core Siege features, but seamlessly executing them. One example would be transitioning between movement speeds, from walk, to sprint, to vault, we turned that into one finger movement, whereas on console and PC it’s multiple inputs,” Albarracin tells us.
Looking at gameplay in action, it looks and feels like Rainbow Six: Siege. Operators rappel from rooftops and kick through windows, defenders hurriedly put up barriers and shoot through walls – the game speed might be faster, but it’s just as intense. “We still have a fast time to kill, although it is a longer time to kill than what you have in Siege,” Swan says as he breaks down the differences between the two. “You’re always going to go down-but-not-out, which I think is really cool, because DBNO opens up this really stressful, tense moment where, hopefully, your teammate will come in and revive you. It makes the game more forgiving. I remember when I first started playing Siege, you can just die, and won’t even know how, because it happens in three seconds. It’s pretty frustrating.”
But despite being the new game on the scene, Rainbow Six Mobile isn’t trying to detract from Siege, thus launching on different platforms, with no real gameplay crossover outside of potentially unlocking a few items for playing both. “The biggest thing between our two games that we share is the world and lore,” Swan says. “The world of Rainbow Six is an object that we’re looking at through different windows. Or another way I’ve often put it is, if Siege is The Avengers movies, big massive events that everyone goes to the theatre to watch, we’re Wandavision and Loki. We let you get a little deeper into those individual nooks and crannies of the world, and can experience that from anywhere, or from home.”
Rainbow Six Mobile will have live tests before a full launch, and you can sign up now on Rainbow Six Mobile‘s official website to get a chance to play before anyone else. Rainbow Six Mobile‘s 5v5 action seems like a great iteration on the foundations that Siege laid down but simplified for touch screen controls. While it’s hard to say how the game will compare with its big brother without playing it ourselves, the competitive experiences already presented by other shooters on the market leave us with high expectations.
Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.
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