After spending countless hours on the last Rainbow Six: Vegas, the first thing we wanted to know about the new version was why we would still be playing in Sin City. Fortunately, the developers were ready for us with the following statement: "When we finished the last Vegas, we found that there were still a lot of things that we hadn't been able to do with that game, so we wanted to go back to Las Vegas to give players a deeper look into the setting... get them beyond the façade of Vegas into the more seedy side -- the kind you'd expect from 'CSI: Las Vegas.'"
As good an answer as that may have been, once we sat down to play a little of the single-player campaign, the story could have been about saving a cardboard box full of puppies or helping the president find his daughter a heart-shaped balloon, because the only thing that mattered to us was that it featured the same ultra-tight gameplay found in the original Vegas.
Chess Team
As a combination prequel/sequel to Rainbow Six: Vegas, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 will provide you with background intel on the forces acting behind the scenes in the first game as well as what led up to the events of the first game and what happens afterward. As such, you'll command another Rainbow team separate from Logan Keller's, which allows for the first major departure to traditional Rainbow games: a completely customizable main character.
Named Bishop, the protagonist of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 is what you make of him... or her. Similar to character creation in the multiplayer side of Vegas, Vegas 2 incorporates the same Persistent Elite Creation (PEC) system in its single-player campaign, enabling you to design your own main character. Incidentally, that also means that Vegas 2 will let you snap a photo of your face to be displayed as Bishop's in-game (even on the PS3 and PC).
High Rollin'
If you recall the events of Vegas, you'll remember that Logan Keller didn't begin the game with his usual squad. That's because Michael and Jung were busy helping Bishop in Las Vegas while Keller was running around Mexico uncovering the shady plot that would eventually bring him to Sin City as well. This fits the goals of Vegas 2 because, while Keller is mucking about in Central America, you'll get a heftier helping of intel regarding what is actually going down in Las Vegas before the events of the previous game.
The shadier tone of Vegas 2 will have Bishop's team working just below the substratum of Keller's higher-profile Rainbow team, commensurate with the events of Rainbow Six: Vegas and beyond. Part of Vegas 2 will be about (spoiler alert!) investigating the root cause of Gabriel's eventual betrayal during Vegas, discovering what could make an elite member of one of the world's most successful anti-terrorist strike forces turn on his fellow spooks.
During our playthrough of the initial tutorial, we were gratified to see that this chord of storyline picks up right away and got us back into the Rainbow Six frame of mind extremely quickly.
