For more than a decade, Rainbow Six has meant one of the most intense real-time shooters around — a door opens, somebody fires, and a round can be over in seconds. Ubisoft's next Rainbow Six game removes the reflexes from that equation almost entirely. Announced August 25 at Gamescom's Opening Night Live, Rainbow Six Tactics is a single-player, turn-based tactical game launching in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Xbox Wire). Players take command as Six, assemble squads of up to four operators from a roster of 15, and lead them through dozens of missions across locations around the world, including ancient ruins in Egypt and a high-security prison in Denmark (GamesBeat).
On the surface, turning Rainbow Six into something resembling XCOM sounds like a huge departure — and outlets immediately reached for that comparison, with GameSpot describing it as looking "like Rainbow Six Siege and XCOM: Chimera Squad had a baby" (GameSpot). But that shouldn't be the whole story. What if slowing everything down doesn't make Rainbow Six less authentic — what if it actually gets closer to the planning-heavy philosophy the franchise was built around in the first place?
