Line #44 VideoGame/RainbowSix3


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rainbowsix3.jpg]] [[caption-width-right:300:[[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous Rainbow]] enters when everybody else fails.]]
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3	''Rainbow Six 3'' is the third installment of the ''Creator/TomClancy''-branded ''VideoGame/RainbowSix'' franchise, released in 2003 for the PC, Platform/{{Xbox}}, Platform/{{PlayStation 2}} and Platform/GameCube.
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5	The story is set in 2005 when a heavily-armed Neo-Nazi terrorist group begins to terrorize South America and Europe, leading to the deployment of the elite Rainbow anti-terrorist response team to deal with them and those secretly supporting them.
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7	The PC version, subtitled ''Raven Shield'', is a direct sequel to ''Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear'', keeping the emphasis on mission planning, coordination and careful play, with missions having multiple ways to complete their objectives; graphically is where the game primarily differs, with the presentation upgraded to (then-)modern expectations by way of VideoGame/{{Unreal}} Engine 2. Two expansions followed over the next two years, respectively the retail ''Athena Sword'' and then the freely-downloadable ''Iron Wrath''; both add several new weapons and new seven-mission-long campaigns - ''Athena Sword'' dealing with a terrorist cell, still in contact with an incarcerated bad guy from the original game, launching attacks in Italy while attempting to gather chemical weapons, ''Iron Wrath'' involving a different terrorist group kidnapping Bulgarian scientists and attempting to construct nuclear weapons - with the latter also adding [[NostalgiaLevel revised versions of three missions from previous games]] (respectively the first game's "Cold Thunder", ''Rogue Spear: Urban Operations''[='=] "Iron Comet", and ''Eagle Watch''[='=]s "Little Wing").
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9	The console version, simply titled ''Rainbow Six 3'', removes mission planning, multiple Rainbow teams and the complex level designs in favor of linear levels that still encourage some careful play. The story is set in South America and Europe when Venezuela's anti-US president masterminds a scheme to undermine Saudi Arabia in an attempt to control the oil market using various terrorists cells across the world while Rainbow is deployed to stop their plans. While compared to the PC version it seemed rather cut-down, it nevertheless became popular enough, especially for online play, that a MissionPackSequel was released the following year. Subtitled ''Black Arrow'', it expanded the multiplayer features (including two new modes) while coming with a new campaign involving a terrorist group, funded by oil bankers and Russian military officers, attempting to create weapons of mass destruction and force the creation of a new country in the Caucasus.
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11	A spin-off (technically a sequel for the consoles' version) subtitled ''Lockdown'' was released in 2005 for the Platform/{{Xbox}}, Platform/{{PlayStation 2}} and Platform/NintendoGameCube and for PC in 2006.
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13	''Note'': Most, if not all of the tropes listed here are for the PC version.
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15	----
16	!!The game contains examples of:
17	* ArgentinaIsNaziLand: The vast majority of the game is set in the Cayman Islands rather than anywhere in South America, but it does heavily involve the presence of neo-Nazis. [[spoiler:TheReveal late in the game is that the real BigBad is a former member of the Croatian Ustaše, who sent countless victims to German death camps, then liquidated assets stolen from those victims and fled to Cayman Brac, using those funds to build a more "legitimate" fortune.]]
18	* ArmorIsUseless: Due to the game's mechanics/damage output, everyone will die with one or three hits no matter the armor they are wearing as the AI is very good at targeting the head. Heavy armor might save you from one or two hits, but that's about as far is it goes.
19	* AmericaSavesTheDay: AvertedTrope, the Rainbow team is composed of people of different nationalities from the US, the European Union, Russia, South Korea, and South America. And unlike VideoGame/GhostRecon, they are beholden to NATO.
20	* ArtificialStupidity:
21	** The enemy AI is not programmed to react unless they spot or hear you, meaning that you could kill one of four terrorists in front of them no less and they would still be patrolling rather than searching for you, the same can be said for your teammates. However, their high accuracy compensates for their stupidity.
22	** Your AI teammates have a blindspot as they have problems engaging enemies that are not in front of them.
23	* BlindedByTheLight: Flashbangs can do this to anyone, even the player if they see the flash.
24	* CanadaDoesNotExist: Averted as one of the Rainbow team members is a Canadian.
25	* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The tangos have superhuman reflexes, near-perfect accuracy at long range, can hit you without actually aiming - and if they do aim, do it within two seconds, almost always score headshots (rendering heavy armor even more useless), and can shoot you from impossible angles, e.g. straight down from a balcony, sometimes when it seems they can't see you - sometimes in pitch darkness, it almost seems like they're using the same auto-aim feature the player can turn on at times.
26	* CriticalExistenceFailure: Averted. Even nonfatal hits are crippling, and shots to the head or center mass are one hit kills.
27	* ElitesAreMoreGlamorous
28	* ExpansionPack: Two for PC, the paid ''Athena Sword'' and then the free ''Iron Wrath''. The Xbox went the MissionPackSequel route with ''Black Arrow''.
29	* FluffyTheTerrible: "Team Rainbow," a collection of the World's Biggest Badasses.
30	* GameMod: Rainbow Six 3 2.0 balances and tweaks both the team and enemy AI, replaces old textures with crisper ones and adds new weapons and sound effects.
31	* GasMaskMooks: Appear in the levels containing toxic gas canisters the player(s) must secure before they are activated.
32	* GoodGunsBadGuns: Mostly averted. The terrorists use weapons ranging from your typical AK-47 to high-end Western firearms. The player's available arsenal meanwhile has positively exploded from the first game's limited options, including the same [=AKs=] as the terrorists, two different Desert Eagle variants, several machine pistols like the MAC-11, Skorpion and Micro-Uzi, and even a Chinese gun in the QBZ-97B, alongside the more standard good-guy guns like the M16 or M4, FAL, and [=MP5=].
33	* InstantDeathRadius: If an enemy shoots you at point-blank range, it's an instant kill.
34	* LuckBasedMission:
35	** The behavior of your AI teammates ultimately becomes this. Sure, good tactical planning can help stack the odds in your favor, but you can run ''the exact same'' tactical plan a dozen times, and for every run where the AI-controlled squads pull the assault off flawlessly, there'll be a run where they get wiped out completely by the first bad guy they see. This is due to your AI teammates' blindspot and the randomized enemy spawnpoints.
36	** Also, when clearing a room, team members will stand right in front of the doorway to toss in a grenade, almost always getting themselves killed in the process.
37	* MauveShirt: The named members of team Rainbow are this, as they all have a short biography and different stats and specializations, but anyone and everyone - up to and including "Ding" Chavez, the apparent protagonist - can easily die.
38	* MenAreTheExpendableGender:
39	** Averted in the intro, which shows Neo-Nazi terrorists casually gunning down a female civilian in cold blood.
40	** Also, female hostages and Rainbow operatives can be killed just as easily as their male counterparts.
41	* MultinationalTeam: The whole point of Rainbow.
42	* NintendoHard: One-Hit Kill (even with the heaviest armor you can get) gameplay combined with the inability to save mid-mission resulted in very high game difficulty. Additionally, characters killed during a mission were gone forever and would be replaced on the team roster by generic Red Shirts with much lower stats, while injured team members had decreased stats.
43	* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: The Rainbow unit is made up of soldiers from all over the world, yet they all sound like generic North Americans. At least in the PC version; in the console version they do have their proper accents as the roster is much smaller and thus can be given more individual character.
44	* OneHitKill: One or two bullets was sufficient to kill any character in the game, both players and enemies. This made combat much more tactical, involving slow and steady searching and room clearing rather than the standard First-Person Shooter "run in guns blazing" approach.
45	* OnlyMostlyDead: The ''incapacitated'' status; they aren't dead, but they can't fight anymore.
46	* {{Permadeath}}: Both PlayedStraight and [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] as teammates can either be killed, incapacitated (not dead but no longer usable) or just wounded when they fall in battle.
47	* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Naturally, as the baddies are Neo-Nazis, led by an actual Nazi from World War II.
48	* PurelyAestheticGender: There's no gameplay or visual changes (outside of the eyes and voice set) based on the gender of the Rainbow agents.
49	* StealthBasedMission: A mission where you have to infiltrate a building without killing anyone or being detected while bugging electronic devices.
50	* StupidSurrender: [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]: Enemies may occasionally surrender when low on health or when they are assigned the ''coward'' personality at the start of a mission, not bothering you for the rest of the mission and counting as kills. You can still execute them for no penalty, though.
51	* ThoseWackyNazis: The main antagonists are a group of Neo-Nazis led by a real Nazi wanting to leave a mark on the world [[spoiler:before succumbing to cancer.]]
52	* WesternTerrorists: The game was pretty widely mocked for having Neo-Nazis as the bad guys in 2005, four years into UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror[[note]]As an amusing example of how cyclic tropes are, more than ten years later in the late 2010s, games are now being mocked for ''not'' having Neo-Nazis as the bad guys years into the controversial Trump administration[[/note]]. There are also the French terrorists that appear in some custom missions. Averted in the console version, where the bad guys (after the first two missions) are Venezuelan terrorists secretly being controlled by the President of Venezuela.

Context VideoGame / RainbowSix3