Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six
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Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (often shortened to Rainbow Six or R6) is a tactical shooter video game series by Red Storm Entertainment and Ubisoft, marketed under the Tom Clancy's banner of military-themed video games. Based on the novel Rainbow Six by American author Tom Clancy, it revolves around a fictional international counterterrorist organization called "Rainbow". Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six started in 1998 and as of 2024 consists of 13 entries with 6 expansion pack from early installments.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six is one of the most popular and most influential tactical shooter series, and early installments in the series helped propel the tactical shooter genre into the mainstream. Since the mid-2010s, a significant esports scene has formed around newer Rainbow Six games. As of 2016, over 32 million units have been sold.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Setting
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six follows a secret international counterterrorist organization called "Rainbow" (or "Team Rainbow"; capitalization varies between "Rainbow" and "RAINBOW"). The series is set in the canon Tom Clancy's universe, which is mostly shared with Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon.
Formed in 1999 by the world's military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies to combat the post-Cold War global rise in terrorism, Rainbow is a rapid reaction force consisting of "operators" from nations and organizations worldwide, ranging from special operations personnel and police tactical unit members to intelligence officers and field experts, trained and equipped to be the most capable counterterrorist professionals in the world, able to resolve any terrorist attack, hostage-taking, bombing, or raid that local authorities cannot handle in an effective, reliable, or timely manner. Rainbow is headquartered at Stirling Lines in Hereford, England, but has global jurisdiction and can base themselves at any intelligence agency's headquarters (such as the Pentagon) should their continued presence in a region be necessary.
Due to the sensitive nature of their operations, such as being deployed in multinational incidents or against threats possessing weapons of mass destruction, and to simply prevent terrorists from knowing of their existence, Rainbow operates in absolute secrecy with complete plausible deniability, with only the most top-ranking government, military, and intelligence officials knowing they even exist. Cover-ups are often conducted after Rainbow's deployments to disguise operators as local police or military units, omit details that could alarm the public, or prevent the reporting of certain deployments.
The leader of Rainbow is designated "Rainbow Six" (or just "Six"), a reference to the American rank code for captain (O-6).<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref> The first Six was former U.S. Navy SEAL and CIA operations officer John Clark, who led the organization from its founding until his retirement.Template:Efn Since then, numerous individuals have taken the role of Six, the most recent being Harry Pandey.Template:Efn
Though the Rainbow Six universe is generally grounded in reality and maintains its basic premise, newer installments and plot events partially depart from the series' established setting or Rainbow's traditional policies, with Rainbow hosting a publicly visible tactical competition,Template:Efn recruiting non-government or independent operators such as private military company "Nighthaven",Template:Efn and being deployed to defeat invading extraterrestrials.Template:Efn
Video games
The first game was developed by Red Storm Entertainment, while the novel was being written.<ref name="gamasutra01">Template:Cite web</ref> Red Storm was acquired in 2000 by Ubisoft, which has continued to manage the series ever since.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
List of games
Games in bold indicate main installments.
Notes
References
External links
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