In-Depth Preview of Rainbow Six Vegas 2: Story, Setting & Character Customization

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It seems we’ll be revisiting Vegas through the eyes of Team Rainbow a little sooner than expected, with Rainbow Six Vegas 2 hitting in three short months. Anyone who’s finished the first Vegas may be wondering how that “To Be Continued” story is going to, uh, be continued. Worry not! We here at Ripten are prepped to give you the full mission brief.

In Vegas 2, you no longer play the role of the modernly generic-named Logan. Instead, your character is your own. Much like Mass Effect’s star Commander Shepard, you play as Bishop – male or female, black or white.

Ubisoft Montreal has included a full customization tool that let’s you configure your Bishop to look any way you can imagine, including your gear. You can reasonably recreate yourself in the game, or craft the devilishly handsome man-whore you always wished you could be.

Essentially, the PEC mode (Persistent Elite Creation) from the original’s multiplayer is fully implemented into the single-player experience, only this time they’ve added significantly to it and cleverly named it ACES.

ACES stands for Advanced Combat Enhancements and Specialization. It tracks everything you do and assigns you experience points in one of three categories:

+ Assault - shooting with reckless abandon (“spray and pray”) nets you Assault points, which eventually rewards you with additional automatic machine guns and SMG options.
+ Marksmanship – essentially the complete opposite of Assault – one shot, one kill. Marksmanship rewards include sniper rifles and other long-range weaponry options.
+ Close-Quarters Battle - kills within a certain distance of your enemy accumulate CQB points, rewards of which include in-your-face weapons like shotguns.

One of the coolest things about ACES, though, is that it’s an all-encompassing feature. They didn’t just add PEC mode to the single-player, they made the entire game a single-character experience. Your multiplayer face-shooter and single-player terrorist-stomper are one in the same. Your experience and rewards carry over across all game modes.

No longer will the rank-obsessed sluts be “forced” to play multiplayer in order to excel. Even better still, the objectives your pals complete in cooperative play earn some experience points for everyone on the team.

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So now that you know how awesome your Bishop will be, what the hell is he doing in Vegas again?

Bishop begins the game alongside longtime Rainbow buddies Jung Park and Michael Walter. Their storyline starts at a point before the events of the first Rainbow Six Vegas, runs concurrently with the first game’s story, and then ends at some point after the original’s cliffhanger ending.

Ubisoft Montreal stresses that the story is the main focus of the game this time, and tries to keep you immersed in your character by planting your view in Bishop’s eyeballs during cutscenes.

You’ll also find yourself in all sorts of environments within the Vegas city limits (and some outside as well). You’ll still find plenty of casinos and neon lights, but Ubisoft Montreal has added a great deal of outdoor locales to mix things up. Take to the streets, blow up cars, shoot some terrorist fools in some rich dude’s back yard – plenty of time will be spent in the residential areas of the city.

Even with these larger, open environments, the team promises better graphics and a smoother framerate. They’ve also fine-tuned the gameplay with little things like bullet penetration and the ability to sprint.So what does all this mean? While I don’t think most Rainbow Six Vegas players played the game for the story, it’s nice that Ubisoft Montreal wants to improve it. Some games with shitty gameplay are actually brought up in value by a quality, well-presented story.

Now, of course, I don’t expect Vegas 2 to be shitty, but it certainly won’t hurt the game to up the immersion factor and make you really care about your character. Then again, most players don’t pop terrorist melons and then sit around and philosophize about it, so let’s not forget why we play these games in the first place. Any terrorist in Vegas, stays in Vegas… because he’s dead.

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  • Dan Landis

    This game is headed to 360, PS3, and PC – just in case anyone was wondering.

  • Tetsuryu

    What I’m interested to know, if the PS3 version will run on a optimized build of the Unreal Engine 3.

  • Dan Landis

    Yes. Supposedly the updated engine code used in Unreal Tournament III has been distributed to all licensees. Additionally, the work done porting the original Vegas to PS3 has also benefited the performance of the sequel.

  • Tetsuryu

    After all the allegations revolving around Epic for failure to distribute its licensees with an updated build of their engine and that lawsuit filed by Silicon Knights, I was tempted to ask. Thanks for clarifying. Although I would like point out a mistake in the article. The main protagonist from R6V was Logan Keller, instead of Gabe Logan of the Syphon Filter series. I can see how the two can get mixed up.

  • Dan Landis

    Well jizz and nuts, you are correct. I’ll try to get that fixed.

  • blah

    Is that rendered in-engine?

  • heh

    so its rainbow six: call of duty 4?

  • mikey

    Rainbow Vegas was very dissapointing.

    I have COD4 and it more like an arcade. Cant someone come out with a realistic shooter?

  • Dan Landis

    The first picture is artwork, not an image from the game. The second image is from the actual game. The trailer, to be completely honest, I’m not sure about. Based on the screens I saw of the game, graphically it’s not far off. Due to how stuff moves in the trailer, however, I would assume it’s not in-engine.

    And yes, heh, it does seem a lot like Call of Duty 4, like taking the level up system from multiplayer COD4 and adding it to Vegas. Sounds like a recipe for sweetness.

  • Greg

    The game is good but I want map editing. The first one had to few maps to play on. The story was great so I wills till buy it to find out what happens.

  • Paul

    The realistic shooter is back.

    Ground Branch
    http://blackfootstudios.com/forums/

    Hopefully, this game will be the unofficial sequel to Ghost Recon.

  • SkullWolf

    “And yes, heh, it does seem a lot like Call of Duty 4, like taking the level up system from multiplayer COD4 and adding it to Vegas.”

    If anything, Call of Duty took a few lessons from Rainbow Six Vegas’s leveling system. It was fully implemented in the multiplayer portion of the first game.

    While COD4 does a great job of using it, it’s not the first game to do so.

  • streetsweeperz

    rainbow63 and vegas are great games and pushed the envelope.I hope they fix it where the clan whores don’t pick all the higher ranked guys with better weaapons against all the lower ranked. even it up and see who wins. allow random/even selection of the teams.

  • Dennis

    It’ll be sorta like COD$ and kinda like RSV. But, better in such a manner that makes playing it more fun! Ubi will take the greatness from RSV and the sweetness from COD and make RSV2 greatly sweet! Cuz, Ubi pwns!

  • Dan Landis

    Yes, SkullWolf, you are right. I mentioned several times that PEC mode from the original R6V was returning, and then I go and say in the comments that it’s COD4′s level-up system. That was dumb, and I apologize. What I MEANT to say was that they are adding some elements of COD4 to the level-up system that was already in Vegas, and that it will be slightly different than the PEC you are used to.

    And yes, COD4 was not the first, nor was Vegas, to have a level-up system. Videogames have been doing that for hundreds of years.

  • S. Ratcliff

    I pray that Dan Landis was being sarcastic when he said “Videogames have been doing that for hundreds of years”, because video games have not been around that long dude. Otherwise my grandfather would own me at vegas (in which few can do). If you were being sarcastic, then lol lol lol…….if not, then you are a freakin idiot.

  • needtocontrol

    It’s called exaggeration, not sarcasm. If he was being sarcastic he would have said “video games have never done that before”. Although if you were being ironic, apologies for being pedantic.

  • Josh

    anyone know if this can have up to two players playing on xbox live or if they can have guests join in