Mike : I'm the lead designer and creative director for both the PC and console versions of Rainbow Six 3. I came from Sinister Games, also owned by Ubisoft where I worked on 'Shadow Company'. Before that I grew up coding my own games at home on my Tandy TRS-80, but these were just for myself and none were published. Ubisoft needed someone with an interest in Rainbow Six as the project wasn't heading in the direction they wanted, so Ubisoft moved me to Montreal to work solely on it and get it out in time for Christmas.

In Rainbow Six 3, OPEC has a falling out with the United States and stops their oil flow. Secretly, Venezuela (another OPEC member) continues to sell oil to them, a G8 meeting is held to settle the dispute before people start getting killed but the meeting fails. Terrorists come in but let everyone go, except the delegates from Venezuela. Help is needed and Rainbow Six is called in. Through the games 14 single player levels there are some really cool plot twists to keep you on your toes and guessing as to who the real bad guys actually are.

We were definitely looking for a more action-oriented experience on the Xbox, but at the same time, we wanted the trademark realism that Rainbow Six has offered in the past. It's still a very tactical game, and on Elite difficulty you won't last long if you run in alone and start blazing. At the same time though, we wanted to make the game as accessible and fun to play as possible, so we've included things like a grenade launcher that the Rainbows would never really use as it's too indiscriminate. Ultimately, it's about role-playing; you can play as realistically as you want to, by not using the grenade launcher, or only using it with CS or something. But the game won't end if you kill too many terrorists a tango who has surrendered or even if you accidentally kill a Rainbow. Some things haven't changed though, Rainbow Six is still a no jump, no knife style of game.

That scene from the movie definitely was our inspiration for that part of the map. We wanted to put the player into a 'killing bowl' scenario with danger coming from all directions. We didn't actually visit Alcatraz though as while some levels in RS3 are 'based' on real life places, the last thing we would want to do is actually create blueprints of real world locations so while we may use one or two recognisable features in a 'real world' level, such as a hotel lobby, we wont map the rest of the level as it is in real life. Firstly because only a small percentage of gamers would know the difference and for the reason already mentioned where we can't and don't want to create 'blueprints' of real locations.

No the terrorists won't react to your voice commands as your speech is only heard by the other guys in your squad. When you talk in single player and co-op you are talking into a headset and only your other team mates (A.I or real friends) over Xbox Live can hear what you are saying. However, in the Adversarial modes where it's a free for all, everyone can hear you so you can take cover and tease the guy trying to kill you or taunt the guy you have just injured. It is also based on distance so someone on the other side of the map won't hear what you are saying.

With the headset you can tell them where to go simply by pointing, hold 'A' and saying 'MOVE' and they will go to the spot you pointed at. When you move your gun sight over different objects such as doors you can command your squad to do things such as 'open and clear', 'breach and clear', 'open flash (or frag) and clear' and also tell them to wait for your command. Then they wait for your go command which is 'ZULU' before moving in. Depending on the situation other commands are available such as when you might need to defuse a bomb, you can simply aim at the bomb and say 'defuse it', 'use it' or 'do it' and your squad is smart enough to know what you want done.

Not really. It's still English, just American English [laughs]. The Canadians picked it up really easily, within one or two goes. For the English it was about thirty seconds, so it shouldn't really be a problem. Eventually it just flows naturally.

No, there's no extraneous conversation between you and your squad. They'll talk to you though, so if you run into a room and drop two tango's quickly, they mike say "nice shooting",, but they won't respond if you try to converse with them. Maybe in future there'll be a bit of banter, but we really didn't want to divide our focus; we have this really cool voice activated command system, and we didn't feel it was necessary to complicate it with conversation.

You press 'X' quickly to reload your weapon but if you hold it down another menu appears that lets you switch weapons. If you move your gun sight around, all you do is press 'A' to make your team move to that location. Once in position you will see them take cover and a defensive posture, look around corners and await your orders. Without the headset simply hold 'A' , a menu appears and you simply select the option you want. It's very responsive but playing with the headset adds a whole new level of control to the game that's very cool.

Co-op mode over Xbox Live is definitely in. There is Mission Mode, Terrorist Hunt which both feature Co-operative play for 1-4 players and then there is Adversarial, Last man standing, Team Survival (Last team standing) and Sharp Shooter which is a death match mode with instant respawn. We are finishing up on 4 extra maps that will be ready for download by the time RS3 is available.

We worked on them at the same time as the normal maps so I can't really remember which ones are included in the game and which ones are for download, sorry! But we plan to support the game with more downloads in the future as well.

Definitely. You can quietly open a door by moving to it and pressing the D-pad up and down, then it's just a matter of throwing in a flashbang, waiting for it to go off and then move in. You can also command your squad to do this for you if you like.

No that's not what Rainbow is about, as a Rainbow operative if I see you, you're already dead. You can arrest the terrorists if you so choose but you aren't penalized for killing them as this would make the game less fun to play. If you accidentally shoot a team mate John Clark chips in over the radio and tells you to watch your fire.

We licensed the Unreal engine for Rainbow Six. The reason for this being that by using a pre-existing engine, our development time could be better focused, so we spent about 20% of our time customising the engine, and the other 80% on actually developing the game. As the development cycle of games gets shorter and shorter, there's more emphasis on using off-the-shelf engines like Unreal and Karma. And by taking a modular design, we can remove or add aspects as we need them, and we can turn around to the Unreal guys and say “hey we need this feature in the engine” and we can negotiate its addition. This allows us to basically triple our programming staff.

Well I love SOCOM, it's a really great game and I've played quite a lot of it at home. But Rainbow Six has a tension, this kind of anticipation I've never felt in a game before. Anticipation that you're going to get jumped, anticipation of spotting a terrorist hiding, anticipation of a grenade rolling around a corner at you. It's almost a relief when the combat finally comes, you know? You just don't get that kind of tension in SOCOM.

I doubt if any other FPS game will be able to match the immersion level we have in the game.

The graphics, in game physics and voice control are really amazing. The way the bad guys react is great as well and you'll see them do things such as hold their weapons above their cover and just spray bullets so you'll see them do some pretty cool things. Also a lot of the enemies are spawned at different locations with different clothing and weaponry at the start of each level so if you replay a level and pop around the corner expecting the same guy to be there the chances are that he won't be! The feeling of insecurity that can come from this really adds to the excitement level in the game.

Rainbow Six 3 for Xbox is also the culmination of 3 years from from the Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six teams and the graphics really reflect this. We have 4 player Co-op support over Xbox Live! and 16 player Adversarial modes as well as the excellent single player story so there's something for everyone!

My pleasure :-)