In an interview with Tim Cummins, Senior Manager at Ubisoft, I got to ask a few questions about Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Good times, and look for more next week!

 

 

 

 

Tim Cummins: You know game stores have to do that so they can enter the pre-orders in their system, right? However, while no official date has been announced yet, I think it is reasonable to assume somewhere in the middle of March, maybe the week after March 12.

 

TC: *laughs* We haven't even released the game yet, and obviously all of our resources right now are focused on making sure we get that out the door. However, Ubisoft has a great history of releasing DLC for other Tom Clancy games, such as the pack for GRAW 2 that just came out and the Red and Black map packs for Vegas. I think it is safe to assume that we will be releasing some DLC for Vegas 2 as well.

 

TC: We tweaked most of the adversarial modes that were in the first Vegas. We received quite a bit of feedback from gamers, and we tried to incorporate much of that into the game to make it even better. One good example of this was conquest mode that was released in some of the DLC last year. In conquest mode you have three satellite locations, and you scored points by capturing and holding a point. Based on gamer feedback, in Vegas 2 your team now has to capture all three of the points before you can score any points. Regarding the two new adversarial modes, those will be announced on February 7th, but you won't be disappointed.

 

TC: I am definitely not qualified to speak on the programming of the AI, those guys are brilliant. However, I can tell you what I know from overhearing their conversations. We did not aim to do a complete rebuilding of the AI, just to improve upon their actions. We added more options for them, made them more responsive to the actions of the players, and more flexible in those responses. In addition, the equipment that they have access to makes for a more challenging approach. If you use the snake cam to look into a room and one of the terrorists has a shield, your best approach may be to take a different route, or to send your teammates in through a different door to cause a distraction. You may even be in the situation where a room may have two opponents with shields and several without, which can be very challenging.

Part of this includes the fact that the first Vegas really had the multiplayer story mode as an add-on to the other various multiplayer modes, and that was not the best experience for gamers. For Vegas 2 the campaign was designed from the ground up to support drop-in/drop-out multiplayer. This means that we had to look at multiple entry points all throughout each map, and incorporate into the AI the ability to react to this dynamic. This required a very open architecture and the ability for the AI to adopt a completely different strategy as players join or leave the game. I think that you will definitely notice the changes in AI behavior. Playing even the same room multiple times has the potential for different behavior each time you play it.

 

TC: Even I don't know the achievements yet, but keep in touch with me and I will share them when I can.

 

TC: Much of what I discussed about the AI before applies to the terrorist hunts as well. The AI is harder to beat, is smart, and changes behavior based on actions you take. However, if you played a lot of terrorist hunt in the first game, you may have noticed that the spawning sometimes had some problems. Terrorists would spawn directly in your line of site, or even behind you, which just wasn't fair and didn't make for a great experience at times. We have completely fixed that for Vegas 2 by really optimizing the spawning. It is not as predictable, much more reasonable in how it happens, and is never visible to players.

 

TC: Most of that I won't be able to talk about until February 7th, but I can give you an overview. The experience system now fully incorporates the campaign and online multiplayer. Certain actions you take provide you experience that is directly related to that skill set. So if you pull off a headshot, you will get experience points that will eventually unlock a better sniper rifle. Basically, different styles of play are monitored by this system, and unlock specific equipment that is designed to help that style of play be more effective.

 

TC: On normal mode, I think the goal was to have an average gamer be able to get through it in about 10 hours, maybe up to 14 hours. On realistic it is definitely going to take a bit longer, depending upon your skill.