Rainbow Six Tactics director says turn-based format was 'a natural fit' for the series
Game director Martial Potron says an XCOM-style turn-based approach suits the tactical DNA of Rainbow Six, though the team first had to convince Ubisoft and the Rainbow Six team.
Potron argued that the core of Rainbow Six is already tactical, and that only the perspective and pace of play would change. "When you look at Rainbow Six, its DNA is tactical," he said. "It's just that it's first-person. The camera is placed in the eyes of the players. It's a real-time game. But if you look at all the DNA, finding the best line of sight, finding the best cover, finding the best targets, taking care of your operators, destruction... In fact, it's very tactical in a sense."
He said designers habitually explore alternative versions of the projects they work on, and repeated that a tactics take on Rainbow Six was an idea the team wanted to pursue. "It happened that in [Ubisoft] Paris we have experience with tactical shooters, but we have experience with tactical turn-based games with Mario + Rabbids, and we love tactical shooters and tactical turn-based games," Potron said. "So in fact, it became a natural fit for the team and for the genre to try to do that, and we just had to convince Ubisoft and the Rainbow Six team."
The interview, published by TechRadar Gaming, is the studio's most detailed public explanation so far of why the spin-off departs from the real-time first-person format used by the mainline series. Potron described the shift as a question of translation rather than reinvention, pointing to elements such as sightlines, cover, target selection, operator management and destruction as material that carries over into a turn-based structure.
Ubisoft has not announced a specific release date beyond 2027, and the platforms confirmed so far are PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.