Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six is a 1998 tactical shooter video game developed and published by Red Storm Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, with later ports for the Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Mac OS, Game Boy Color, and Dreamcast. It is the first installment in the Rainbow Six series. Based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same name, the game follows Rainbow, a top secret international counterterrorist organization, and the conspiracy they unravel as they handle a seemingly random spike in terrorism.
In singleplayer, the player advances through a series of missions in a campaign. Before each mission, the player is briefed on the situation, selects and organizes their operatives and equipment, and plans their movement through the level; during missions, the player controls an operative leading computer-controlled teammates as they follow the player's plan. In multiplayer, players cooperate in player-versus-environment missions or battle to complete objectives in player-versus-player matches. The game features realistic gameplay factors, weapon lethality, and consequences for failure, forcing players to plan their approach carefully and promoting replayability for more streamlined completion.
Rainbow Six began as a concept by Red Storm following their formation in 1996. The game was developed in parallel with the Rainbow Six novel, with a design philosophy of realism and strategy guiding all aspects of development; however, numerous setbacks stymied the game's development and forced the developers to crunch. Though his name is in the game's title, Tom Clancy's involvement in Rainbow Six development was very minimal. Red Storm developed the PC version, while all other ports were developed by their respective companies.
Rainbow Six was released on August 21, 1998 to widespread critical acclaim, though the console ports received relatively lower ratings than the PC version. For most releases, praise was directed toward gameplay, multiplayer, immersion, and the game's combination of strategy and action, while criticism mainly centered on AI issues, glitches, and the graphics and controls of some ports. The game sold over 200,000 copies in its first year of release and continued to sell hundreds of thousands more copies well into the early 2000s. Rainbow Six was nominated for numerous accolades and has been deemed one of the best video games of 1998. It is considered a milestone in the history of first-person shooters and made a lasting impact on the then-fledgling tactical shooter genre.
An expansion pack, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Mission Pack: Eagle Watch, was released on January 26, 1999. A sequel, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear, was released in 1999. A loose mobile game remake, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard, was released in 2011.
Gameplay
Rainbow Six is a tactical shooter, in which characters are affected by realistic factors and can be killed with a single bullet; therefore, wise tactics and planning are encouraged to complete missions over sheer force and firepower.
The game follows a campaign of several missions, with the plot being advanced in the mission briefing of each. Missions in each version differ: the PC and Game Boy Color versions have 16 missions, the Nintendo 64 port has 12 missions, the PlayStation port has 14 missions and the Dreamcast port has 21 missions. Objectives in missions include defeating enemies, rescuing hostages, defusing bombs, gathering intelligence, and planting surveillance devices. Players are encouraged to find their own ways to complete objectives using a variety of tactics and methods, ranging from stealthy infiltration to a frontal assault (except in missions where stealth is mandatory). Successful missions often last just minutes, but may require dozens of repetitions and planning changes to account for failures, new plans, or simply faster or cleaner completion.
Before each mission is a planning stage, in which the player is briefed on the situation, chooses the Rainbow operatives to be involved in the mission, organizes them into color-coded teams, and selects their weapons, equipment, and uniforms. Operatives are categorized into five classes based on their skill specializations: Assault, Demolitions, Electronics, Recon, and Sniper. The vast majority of operatives are named characters with their own backstories and skillsets, but generic "reserves" are also available for each class should players wish to avoid risking named operatives, although they have greatly reduced skills. In the planning stage, the player is shown a map of the area of operations to set team orders, such as AI pathing, team "go" codes to hold until ordered, where AI operatives will deploy equipment such as flashbangs or door breaching charges, and rules of engagement; alternatively, the player can skip this by choosing to follow a preset plan instead.
During gameplay, the player directly controls a team leader, and can use their weapons and equipment, manually lead their team, and see stats for the controlled operative and their team on the HUD. The player can take control of any alive team leader at will. Operatives and teams not under player control follow the orders given to them in the planning stage. Injured or fatigued operatives require time off after a mission to recover (they can still be used, just with lower health or reduced skills), while deceased operatives are permanently lost and cannot be used for the rest of the campaign playthrough, forcing players to plan carefully to avoid casualties.
Online multiplayer for the PC version was available on the MPlayer.com and Zone.com services. Multiplayer modes include cooperative modes, deathmatch, and team deathmatch, among others. Most other console ports lack multiplayer, though the Nintendo 64 port includes a two-player split-screen cooperative mode.
Most versions of Rainbow Six have considerable differences. The PlayStation port was developed by Rebellion and features visible weapons in first person, entirely new mission layouts, and a smaller team size (4, opposed to 8 in other versions). The Nintendo 64 port has a simpler HUD design and completely reorganized missions, including some from Eagle Watch. The Game Boy Color port is the most notable example, having radically different gameplay and presentation due to the platform's technical limitations: gameplay is slowed and simplified, crossfire is removed, and the 3D graphics from other releases are replaced by a 2.5D top-down perspective.
Plot In 1999, in response to a post-Cold War rise in terrorism, the world's special forces units, police tactical units, and intelligence agencies form "Rainbow", a covert international counterterrorist organization led by John Clark.
In 2000, Rainbow responds to a series of terrorist attacks linked to the Phoenix Group eco-terrorist organization. Rainbow's operations against Phoenix are assisted by John Brightling, chairman of the powerful biotechnology corporation Horizon Inc., whose facilities are frequently targeted by Phoenix; Anne Lang, the Science Advisor to the President of the United States and an acquaintance of Brightling; and Catherine Winston, a biological expert working with Horizon who is rescued by Rainbow following an attack in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
After a raid on a Phoenix compound in Idaho that reveals unethical human experimentation, Rainbow learns the Phoenix Group is a front for Horizon. Viewing humanity as an environmentally destructive "disease", Brightling plans to exterminate most of humanity using a highly contagious manmade strain of the Ebola virus called "Brahma", sparing only his chosen few (including Lang), who will rebuild Earth into a scientific environmental utopia. To achieve this, Brightling has engineered terrorist attacks to exploit heightened terrorism concerns and secure a contract for his private security firm Global Security at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Global Security's personnel, led by William Hendrickson, will then release Brahma at the Olympics through Stadium Australia's cooling system, spreading the virus worldwide when the athletes and spectators return home.
After gathering intelligence and rescuing Winston from a last-ditch attempt to silence her, Rainbow apprehends Lang and Hendrickson and prevents Brahma's release at the Olympic Village, foiling Brightling's plans. Brightling and his collaborators flee to their Horizon Ark facility in the Amazon rainforest, where they planned to weather out the Brahma pandemic. Rainbow assaults the Ark, neutralizes Brightling's collaborators, and takes Brightling into custody.
Development
The idea of the game that would become Rainbow Six originated from early concepts Red Storm Entertainment had conceived following the company's formation in 1996. Selected from around 100 other ideas, the original concept, titled HRT, followed the FBI Hostage Rescue Team rescuing hostages from criminals and terrorists. HRT was gradually expanded in scope with the addition of covert operations and an international setting, and the game was rechristened Black Ops. With the initial FBI HRT concept dropped and gameplay branching away from just hostage rescue, multiple alternate settings were proposed for Black Ops—including World War II, 1960s spy fiction-esque Cold War espionage, the near future, and a dystopian antihero-centered story called Jackbooted Thugs—before finally settling on contemporary counterterrorism. Red Storm CEO Doug Littlejohns, a former Royal Navy submarine commander and a close friend of Tom Clancy, did not want to develop an arcade shooter with "mindless violence", but also did not want a "boring" slow-paced strategy game, so Black Ops was designed to focus on realism and action, with a strong emphasis on planning and strategy. Lead game designer Brian Upton, recalling Rainbow Six development process in the May 1999 issue of Game Developer, described the game's design philosophy from the initial concept:We knew from the start that we wanted to capture the excitement of movies such as Mission: Impossible and The Dirty Dozen—the thrill of watching a team of skilled specialists pull off an operation with clockwork precision. We also knew that we wanted it to be an action game with a strong strategic component—a realistic shooter that would be fun to play even without a Quake player's twitch reflexes.Rainbow Six—both the game and the novel—originated from a discussion between Littlejohns and Clancy during a Red Storm company outing in 1996, when Littlejohns mentioned Black Ops. When Clancy mentioned that he was writing his own novel about a hostage rescue unit, their conversation led to Littlejohns noting the protracted diplomatic delays in authorizing a foreign counterterrorist unit's deployment overseas, and he suggested the formation of a permanent counterterrorist unit that already had authorization to deploy internationally. The name "Rainbow" came from the term "Rainbow nation", coined by Desmond Tutu to describe post-apartheid South Africa under Nelson Mandela's presidency. "Six" came from the American rank code for captain (O-6); though John Clark would more accurately be described as a major general (O-8), "Rainbow Six" read better than "Rainbow Eight". Upton objected to the addition of "Six", believing having a number at the end of the title would affect a potential sequel, but he was overruled.