It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster for Rainbow Six: Siege‘s pre-launch period. First the release date was pushed back to December, but then it was revealed that the DLC maps would cost nothing, so players were a bit whiplashed. As if to confuse them, now, it was recently revealed that the final product would not include a campaign mode of any sort. Ubisoft’s Scott Mitchell, Art Director of the game, spoke at EGX 2015, stating:
There is no story mode per se. You go through training, where you get to experience different operators and their devices. You can play against enemy AI in co-op through all the maps. You can customise matches, so that’s what we’re offering on the single-player side of things…It’s a pretty good training ground, and on top or that you’re unlocking the same content as you would playing in PvP. You’re still gaining stars, renown points, and new operatives
So, no campaign. Pretty straight forward. Instead, Ubisoft has opted to go the route past players of Brink will be familiar with. Brink, like RS:Siege, features maps and game variants that were playable with AI on single player and oftentimes felt like a single player campaign, going as far as to push the player to play the maps and variants solo before diving into multiplayer to run them over and over again.
For many long-time fans of Rainbow Six games, this is a rather significant letdown. Siege isn’t even the first multiplayer-centric game to simply drop single player campaign. Titanfall, Star Wars: Battlefront, and Evolve players will all join the campaign-less choir. While Ubisoft clearly believes the AI controlled multiplayer variants will suffice for preparing new players, there are surely many dissenters. Either way, the game becomes available December 1st, 2015.