Spike's Video Game Awards seem to be getting slightly less embarrassing each year, although we at GameZone are still a bit put-off by the fact that perhaps the biggest night in televised gaming is hosted by the network best known for broadcasting images of sweaty men grabbing at each other within the confines of a metal octagon. Anyhow, though plenty of reveals were made over the course of the night, no trailer had myself more intrigued than that of Ubisoft's Rainbow 6: Patriots, the latest entry in the long running counter-terrorism series.
I'm usually quick to dismiss most of these generic thrillers, each offering another boring take on the successful Modern Warfare formula. Though with Patriots, the terrorists are no longer cliched Russian or Middle Eastern war-makers, but homegrown American freedom fighters, terrorizing the bank executives and mortgage lenders who put America in our current financial crisis.
This game looks like it could hit very close to home, and cause some serious controversy for its portrayal of the 1% forcibly strapped into bomb belts, acting as forced suicide bombers on New York and other presumed city centers. Obviously these tactics are a bit more extreme than those of the Tea Party or Occupy crowds, though given how much this recession has hit regular game-playing American folks like myself, I find that I can't immediately dismiss the terrorists as “bad guys.” For the first time in a video game, I share the same enemy as the terrorists, and though dropping a guy onto a city street and killing innocent civilians seems not the best way to enact change, it leaves me wanting to know more about what drove them to such extreme methods.
My hope is that this game will not simply paint these “True Patriots” as a bunch of nutjob terrorists, and offer some depth in its portrayal of both sides of this war. Not to mention we've already seen the “good guys” take out NYPD officers in pursuit of the greater good. This game definitely looks to play loose with the simple good vs. evil morality battle common to the genre, and I'm excited to give it a shot.
