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Rainbow Six Siege will be nine years old in 2024, but in terms of live service, it’s more like 90. When Ubisoft’s 5v5 FPS first launched in 2015, Overwatch was still months away, PUBG didn’t exist, and Fortnite was a game of zombies that we thought. maybe it will never come out. Siege has been practicing live service gaming for longer than the term has been part of our vernacular.
That makes Siege one of the oldest games to receive content updates regularly. Ubisoft still plans to support Siege through Year 9 and beyond, but the game’s numerous revisions and the increasing age of its engine have led veteran players to ask a reasonable question lately: Does Siege need a sequel?
The answer, according to Siege creative director Alexander Karpazis, is a resounding no.
“I can safely say that we have probably one of the best engines in the world when it comes to live PvP shooters,” Karpazis said in a group interview held at the Siege Invitational 2024 in Brazil. “The team is incredible and we have a huge team of engines that every month incrementally improves the way we can deliver content faster, stronger, more stable and hopefully as much as possible.”
Siege’s engine, Ubisoft Anvil, is a frequent target of ridicule when problems arise in the game. As new seasons introduce new batches of bugs, many players like to blame old technology, characterizing Siege as a creaky old building held together by duct tape and stubbornness. The truth is that Siege has had bugs since I played it and, in my experience, it is now more stable than in its beginnings. Still, Siege shows its age in other ways, such as its functional but unremarkable graphics.
For Karpazis, who joined the Siege team in 2018 as presentation director before moving up to the lead role in 2022, the idea that Ubisoft should invest in a Siege sequel with a new engine is not only unnecessary, but potentially A big mistake.
“The idea of changing engines to something that can be out of the box just doesn’t meet the needs of a really competitive and demanding game like Siege,” he said. “I’m not going to name names, but you see games that went through fallout and they just completely dropped the ball because they have to redo every single thing they did in that first game.”
Karpazis compares the practice to losing the assignment and then having to redo it, except “you’ll never (do it) exactly the same way” as the original.
“It can be very frustrating, very expensive, and in the end it doesn’t even give you anything that’s a benefit. If you know what to start with and you build on it, that’s where we see success.” . And that’s where we know we can take Siege into the future.”
While an engine change could bring several obvious improvements (modern graphics, for example), Ubisoft hasn’t spent nine years standing still. The studio has shown an impressive willingness to improve or reinvent important aspects of Siege.
Changing engines to something that can be out of the box simply doesn’t meet the needs of a truly competitive and demanding game like Siege.
Alejandro Karpazis
For nine years, Ubisoft has overhauled everything from Siege’s weapon handling, operators, and maps to its rules, modes, and user interface. Siege weapons do not behave in 2024 as they did in 2015. Almost all maps that were released with the game have been replaced with reworked designs that reflect feedback from millions of players. Modern Siege has match replay, in-game reporting, 50 more operators, a solid shooting range, arcade mode, cross-play, cross-progression, an Apex-inspired ping system, a reimagined tutorial, AI bot training, features which would have been pitched for a sequel in a more traditional development cycle.
Maybe Siege needs an engine. improvement, presumably to a newer version of the Anvil engine that also powers modern Assassin’s Creed games, but even this has potential downsides. Pull-out shooter Hunt: Showdown has plans to upgrade to a newer version of its CryEngine, and when it does, it will drop support for two platforms.
For some games, a complete break with new technology is worth sacrificing. I’m not sure Siege is one of those games. Karpazis sure doesn’t think so.
“We really know that this is a game that can last forever with the people, the talent and the tools we have today.”