Some History Behind Black Thorn
Strange as it may sound, Rogue Spear: Black Thorn is
the Rogue Spear "Mission Pack" that was never meant to be. Red Storm had originally decided that
Covert Operations Essentials (COE) was to be the
last Rainbow Six (R6) series product based on the Rogue Spear (RS) engine. In fact, as early as the beginning of
2000, Red Storm Entertainment (RSE) had already dedicated many members of the original RS development
team to researching the technologies which would go into their next-generation game,
Ghost Recon (GR).
In the interim, Urban Operations (UO) and COE were published.
Although these two RS expansion packs were made with relatively small budgets and a fraction of RS's original development team, they
were solid products nonetheless. In releasing UO and COE, RSE had kept up the momentum of the
R6 series by faithfully publishing a new R6 title approximately every six months since the
original R6 came out in 1998. (See our R6 Series Overview
page for more details.) The release of the Rainbow Six Collector's Edition was a further indication that
Red Storm was ready to close the chapter on their successful Rainbow Six franchise for the
foreseeable future.
Enter Ubi Soft. The R6/RS franchise was the jewel in Ubi Soft's Red Storm acquisition in
August 2000. By that time, the R6 series had a tremendously loyal fan base, evidenced by
being one of the most popular games on Microsoft's Gaming Zone and GameSpy, and the
popularity of fan-created mods using the RS 3D Studio Max plug-ins. With fans hungering
for more, Ubi Soft made what was likely an easy business decision to publish one more
R6 product, despite RSE previously saying that they were taking a break from the R6 series.
Many veteran R6 fans disagreed with that decision, saying that COE was relatively
lackluster and already one R6 product too many, and that the series should have ended on a
high-note with Urban Ops. However, who can fault Ubi Soft for pumping out one more
product based on the well-established and stable, albeit aging RS engine that they
had just paid good money for?
By December 2000, Ubi Soft had green-lighted Black Thorn. With almost all of RSE's
resources focused on developing Ghost Recon, the task of creating one more RS mission
pack was given to Ubi Soft's Montreal studio. Black Thorn marks
the first time a brand-new worldwide R6 title had been done completely outside of Red Storm.
(Note that Kama Entertainment of South Korea developed Rainbow Six: Take-Down, but its
release was only limited to South Korea.) Red Storm previously
had out-sourced the creation of several maps in COE to Zombie Studios, but those
"Training Maps" were considered by many
R6 players as less than inspired. Doubts were raised whether Ubi Soft Montreal had the
right stuff to create a worthy addition to the R6 series. The object of this review is to
tell you how well they succeeded in this endeavor.
Black Thorn's Delay
Black Thorn was highlighted in media such as Time Magazine and National Public Radio (see
this news item) as
one of the games affected by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Ubi Soft's decision to postpone the release of Black Thorn and modify its content was
controversial amongst fans to say the least. The
official Black Thorn forums were flooded with many angry complaints arguing
that delaying the game is tantamount to letting the terrorists win.
In the final analysis, I believe Ubi Soft made a wise decision which avoided
accusations that releasing Black Thorn would be blatant profiting from the public's
anti-terrorist sentiments. Avoiding bad publicity is worth much more than the cost of
losing a few weeks of sales and some disgruntled fans. If anything, the announcement to
delay the game may have raised
Black Thorn's profile in the end. The only drawback that I can see to postponing the
game was that it may have been overshadowed by Ghost Recon which was released
only two weeks later. Other consequences of the delay will be further mentioned in this review as we highlight
some of the resulting modifications in Black Thorn.
