It goes without saying at this point that Ubisoft's previously known as Rainbow Six Quarantine) or something down the road.
It's worth ing Rainbow Six was originally a 1998 novel, written by Tom Clancy himself. Though Clancy used plenty of over-the-top ideas in his writing (the enemies of the novel were eco-terrorists), he was also a stickler for grounding details in realism, which the original PC game tried to emulate. "Rainbow," specifically, was a spec ops team comprised of soldiers from various NATO armies, as well as experts at agencies like the CIA, FBI, MI6, and Mossad. Rainbow Six was a codename for the team's commander, John Clark.
That leads to the first potential change, which would be resurrecting the planning system. The earliest Rainbow Six games were as much or more about preparing for an operation as executing it; players would decide when and where operators would enter the battlefield, how they would team up, and what paths they would take. Players could also decide how and when they would breach a room, which was absolutely essential if expecting to encounter hostages or heavy resistance. The series ultimately ditched any planning, but in so doing abandoned not only real-world tactics but the satisfaction of a perfectly-executed plan. It's not hard to imagine a modernized version of the concept having appeal.
Reconnecting to the Real World
Less likely but potentially appealing is the idea of bringing back realistic weapons and damage to the next Rainbow Six game. In early titles an operator could be taken down by one or two bullets, which is part of why planning was so central. This might be a hard sell in an age when first-person shooters often require half a mag to down an opponent and reloading takes a second, but Ubisoft could theoretically strike a compromise that would make combat feel more authentic. Likewise, it would be interesting to see the company scale gear back to what spec ops teams actually use - it could force different ways of thinking while retaining plenty of pyrotechnics. Breaching charges do exist, after all.
The thorniest thing to re-integrate would be geopolitics. Although countries like China and Russia are acknowledged to be some of the West's biggest threats, they're also potential game markets, hence why Nazis, terrorists, rogue agents, or North Korea often make for convenient bad guys. It's hard to capture that Clancy flavor without broader geopolitics though, so Ubisoft might attempt it if it's ever feeling ambitious. Really, they might need it to capture the spirit Rainbow Six began with.
