The Tom Clancy franchise has been taking a bold and potentially controversial new direction recently. Joining the upcoming Rainbow Six: Extraction is Ubisoft San Francisco’s XDefiant. It is a free-to-play class-based first-person shooter where two teams of six will go head to head. With shades of Apex Legends and Overwatch with a bit of Call of Duty, XDefiant is looking to be the next big shooter on the already very crowded block.
Right off the bat, the name is a bit questionable as it brings up high school feelings/trauma with the “rawr xd” vibes that it gives off. Aside from that, the aforementioned similarities to Apex and Overwatch are a bit glaring. Some of those character designs are…pretty close. It could just be that the marketplace of ideas has very well run dry. All that being said, it’s always best to not judge a book by its cover though. There may very well be a good game in here.
It is pretty cool to see factions from Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, and The Division all in one place and it looks as though the gunplay is getting a fair bit of polish. If there’s one area that these titles have excelled with in the past it’s definitely the shooting. If that’s any indication of the caliber of shooter we’ll be getting here then this might turn out to be a real contender. At the end of the day, that’s what is going to make or break any shooter on the market these days.
It’s easy to rag on Ubisoft for some of their decisions, but it is surely an interesting direction to take the Tom Clancy brand. It’s safe to say that it won’t be for everyone or even for everyone who enjoyed many of the previous Tom Clancy titles, but let’s cross our fingers for a fun FPS experience in the end. If the team behind XDefiant truly put their heart and soul into it, then it could very well be a pleasant surprise over the coming months.
Ubisoft will be running a closed beta for XDefiant on August 5th and it is currently open for registration.
