Rainbow Six: Patriots – Scott Crisostomo

// overview

A cancelled Rainbow Six with a vertical slice that reached greenlight

Rainbow Six: Patriots was a tactical first-person shooter set in New York City, pitting Team Rainbow against a domestic terrorist group called the True Patriots. The game was announced in November 2011 after Ubisoft discovered internal footage was about to leak – the trailer that went public was a pre-rendered concept piece, not in-engine gameplay.

Development ultimately shifted away from Patriots and toward what became Rainbow Six: Siege. The project was officially cancelled in 2014.

I joined the project in 2009, two years before the public announcement, and led design through the vertical slice phase. My tenure ended in 2011 when I moved to a new project at Ubisoft San Francisco. The greenlight that vertical slice achieved was a direct measure of what the design team built during that period.

// what I designed

Design contributions

What are the 3Cs? Character, Camera, and Controls – the foundational layer of how a player's body moves through the game world. On a tactical shooter, the 3Cs define the relationship between precision and lethality. A Rainbow Six game demands player movement that feels deliberate and weighty – decisions about positioning and exposure have to carry real consequence, and that starts with how the character moves and how the camera communicates threat.

3Cs and core combat systems Designed the foundational character movement, camera behavior, and control systems – the layer that determines how the game feels before any encounter design, level design, or AI behavior is layered on top. On a tactical shooter, getting the 3Cs right is what makes every other system work.
Vertical slice for executive greenlight Led the design team through the vertical slice phase – the playable proof-of-concept presented to executive leadership to secure production greenlight. A vertical slice has to demonstrate the game's feel, tone, and mechanical identity in a short playable window. Patriots' slice achieved that greenlight.
Design team leadership Directed design across game design, level design, and narrative design disciplines, translating abstract creative direction into production-ready systems and documentation that engineering and art could execute against.

// details

StudioUbisoft Montreal

RoleLead Designer

DatesJul 2009 – Jun 2011

StatusCancelled 2014

GenreTactical FPS

PlatformsPS3, Xbox 360, PC (planned)

Tactical Shooter Vertical Slice Cancelled 3Cs

Target gameplay trailer (2011) VGA 2011 debut trailer Wikipedia entry

// trailer