Rainbow Six Siege – The Tactical AI of TerroHunt

We’ve told you all about the new TerroHunt in Rainbow Six Siege. We dug in on the little details like “What modes are part of it?” and “Who are we fighting this time?” But what is it like to actually play TerroHunt? Better yet, what’s it like to play TerroHunt on the hardest setting in the game? After spending a good chunk of time with TerroHunt on Normal, my team and I decided to give Realistic a shot in the newly revealed Consulate map and what followed was an adventure full of surprise Bombers, accidental team kills and seemingly impossible scenarios.

Breaching the Consulate

Not only did we decide to step outside of our comfort zone for the difficulty setting, we all chose to pick characters we weren’t particularly familiar with. In a game like Rainbow Six Siege, most people will settle on a few select Operators and perfect their tactics with the characters that suit their playstyles. For me, that’s often the slow, heavily armored characters like Castle on the defensive side, or the newly revealed Montagne on the offensive. With his old-school riot shield, Montagne is a mountain of a man and is excellent for Diffuse Bombs, where you have to hold down an area for a certain period of time as enemies attempt the breach your position and stop you.

So in this match, we all tried something a little different. For me, that meant retiring Montagne and picking up Thermite instead with his powerful breaching charge, which I figured would be handy for powering through the enemy AI’s heavily reinforced walls. After identifying the location of the two bombs, we breach through the garage and encounter very little enemy resistance, but there are a few nitro cells to track down and disable, including one in the room with the first bomb.

With such little resistance, we start getting overly confident. We don’t watch our backs as well as we should and when we start defusing the first bomb, we pay for our mistakes. One of us goes down quickly when the first wave hits. A few point men enter with shields, leading the way for two Bombers to head down the stairs. A moment of panic sets in. These Bombers are completely new to us. We didn’t encounter them at all during our Normal matches.

Team Killers

Our team captain starts shouting at us to aim for his head and not let him get too close. After getting rid of the point men, one of my teammates and I take cover behind a wall and lean out to focus our fire on the approaching Bombers. A third teammate chooses this chance to run out into the unprotected space and try to take on the Bombers himself. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t call out his plans and ended up getting shot in the back by all of the teammates he just cut in front of. Friendly fire is always enabled in Rainbow Six Siege, but on the Realistic setting it’s far more lethal. Just a few well-placed shots will punch straight through most armor.

He goes down and we’re left with four people, while the Bombers continue to slowly advance. With all of us working together and coordinating our movements, we take the two Bombers down, just as the timer hits zero and we’re cleared to move onto the next bomb, which is a couple of stories above us.

Tread Carefully

We’re much more cautious as we make our way up the stairs. We’re communicating more clearly – letting each other know when we’re checking corners and when we’re pushing ahead. Our captain tells us to be listening for audio cues in the environment to let us know when nitro cells are nearby or when enemies are approaching. One of our team members leads up ahead and as he rounds a corner, he walks straight into another Bomber. We had been listening, but not carefully enough. We missed the telltale hissing sound of his facemask. As the rest of us backpedal down the stairs, we lose a second teammate to the Bomber’s self-destructive behavior.

As we approach the second bomb, we notice this one is much more heavily guarded. Through the halls of the French Consulate we can hear the sounds of the enemy AI reinforcing walls and laying down barbed wire to trip us up. Our team captain suggests that the three of us make our own entrance and breach from a reinforced wall on the side of the room the bomb is in. I quickly set up my thermite charge and the resulting blast is big enough (and surprising enough) to take out a couple of enemies who couldn’t get out of the way in time. There are no Bombers in the room, but we do spot another point man and have to flank him to get past his shield. The bomb is set up in a small room off to the side of office area we’re in, so we start defusing the bomb and hunker down to wait out the clock.

All of us are pretty low on health at this point, so our hopes aren’t particularly high. I’m positioned near an opening in one of the walls and I’m watching out for any movement ahead of me. But in Rainbow Six Siege, just because you have some cover around you, doesn’t mean you’re safe. Shots tear through the wall to my right and I am taken out of them match, leaving only two of my teammates with 45 seconds left on the timer. Watching through their screens, I call out the number of enemies approaching. 20 seconds to go and the fourth team member meets his end at the hands of 3 enemies breaching into the room we’re in.

Running Down the Clock

Only one of us left now. Our team captain holds off the incoming swarm and everyone watching goes silent. The timer is still counting down; 10 seconds to go.

5…

One point man and three other enemies enter the tiny room from the side I was killed on.

4…

Two more grunts enter from the opposite direction.

3…

Running out of options, our team captain does the only thing he can think of in that moment.

2…

He vaults over a counter and hides behind it as bullets start flying into the room from every angle. No one is breathing as he starts taking damage from the shots that pierce his meager cover.

1…

Our team captain is barely hanging on and the point-man rounds the corner of his improvised barricade and unloads on him.

0.

As the bomb is defused our captain goes down, but it doesn’t matter. The match is over. We won. Our entire team is cheering and no one can believe what they just saw. I look down and my hands are actually shaking. If it weren’t for the fact that our team captain was a developer, I know there’s no way we would have stood a chance on the Realistic setting. Not yet, at least. Give us some time to practice and we’ll be ready to put our skills to the test in the beta coming later this year.

For more on Rainbow Six Siege and our other E3 titles, check out the UbiBlog E3 2015 hub.