With the unveiling of Rainbow Six Siege at E3 2014, fans of the tactical shooter franchise are wondering what ever happened to the previously shown Patriots, which was originally announced in 2011. Though it was presumed the FPS would be killed off and rebranded due to the untimely death of Tom Clancy, Ubisoft has finally give an exact reason for the title’s cancellation, stating Patriots couldn’t offer a “next-gen experience.”
Technical artist Oliver Couture says the decision to ditch the game and start a brand new one was made due to the launch of the next-gen consoles: the PS4 and Xbox One.
“To be completely transparent, I worked on Patriots—on Rainbow Six for three-and-a-half years—and Patriots was old-gen. Xbox 360 and PS3. Next-gen consoles were just around the corner, and we were like, ‘OK, we want to also have a next-gen experience. What can we do for that?
We were trying stuff out with destruction technology, and we realized destruction really changes the game. We tried to see how it could fit with old-gen, but it just didn’t work out. So for us it was just a better solution to clean the slate, reset, and make what’s best for the players.
We’ve been working hard for the past year-and-a-half [on Siege].”
Rather than remake Patriots from scratch, seemed like the smarter move was to move forward with a new installment in the series. Maybe one day Ubisoft will revisit its now-cancelled game and release it, but for now, it remains in the vault.
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