Our love for the Rainbow Six reboot is hardly a secret: we loved what we played at E3 2014, naming the destruction-tastic, 60fps first-person shooter our Game of the Show . It went dark shortly after its unveiling, though, with the Ubisoft Montreal development team quietly toiling away on the return of the beloved franchise ever since. Our interview with game designer Andrew J. Witts marks the first noise the team's made about the game in a while.

Pull the pin and make the bad guys pay.

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"'House' was simply the first map that we felt showed how different and claustrophobic Siege’s [close-quarters combat, or CQC] gameplay can be," Witts told IGN when asked if we'd see other types of environments in the final game. "Rainbow Six is an international intervention group that carries out operations all over the globe and this will not be different in Siege. Expect to travel to diverse locations, each one being a lot different from the one map that we have shown so far."Another question on my mind, as a Rainbow Six fan going back to the original in 1998, was about continuity. Does Siege have any ties to the Vegas games or previous series entries? Is it a reboot? "I can’t dive too deep into the setting of the game yet," Witts said. "But what I can say is that Siege is its own branch from the previously established Rainbow lore. We want players to feel invited to play inside the Rainbow Six universe without the previous games being mandatory for entry."He elaborated: "This entire project was born and has grown out of an in-depth study that looked to distill what the Rainbow series is at its core in terms of both fantasy and gameplay. At the end of the day, the Rainbow Six fantasy about being part of the greatest counter-terrorist organization and impersonating the best of the best operators, working as a team, [and] carrying out dangerous operations (hostage rescue) anywhere on the globe. Each of the operation the players will be facing are 'sieges' situations where two sides are confronting each other; attackers are trying to breach and overwhelm the defenders who are trying to hold it off by laying fortifications and traps and creating an impenetrable stronghold."OK, let's talk about the return of an old-school Rainbow Six game mechanic: leaning! "The decision to reincorporate the lean was two-fold for us. First, it was a feature that was prominent when we did our study of the Rainbow franchise in pre-production. Lean was a very integral part of the gunplay of the previous first-person games, not only because it allowed visibility around corners, but also because it gives the player total control over their positioning. Knowing when and how to use the lean mechanic was an important core skill that players needed to master in order to truly excel in combat both in scenarios versus A.I. and competitive game modes."After we extrapolated all of this from our study of the Rainbow Six gunplay, we knew that we had to integrate our own mechanic into Siege and make it as comfortable for the player as possible. The free lean system we are introducing in Siege gives you total control over your line of sight at any given time whether you are in a stand, prone or rappelling position. With this system, players won’t be stuck in an automatic, contextual lean. The first version of this free lean mechanic was just so damn fun and useful that we have been refining it and it has become a vital aspect of Siege’s gunplay. Since then, everyone that has tried the game has been able to make dynamic use of cover and line-of-sight and it has been received very well from our internal play-sessions. "Another thing we've wondered since our initial E3 look at the game: is the destruction designed around the weapons? Or the other way around?"We're building a tactical shooter and destruction in our game is a tactical means to an end, not an end in itself," Witts explained. "With weapons being the primary method of interaction in a shooter, it's natural that they would enable destructive tactics even if that's not their ultimate purpose. So weapons and destruction have kind of a reciprocal relationship because weapons serve destruction, while destruction serves tactical gameplay for the weapons. It's also important to note that there are several other tools that serve destructive purposes like breach charges and C4 to name a few."Speaking of secondary weapons, everyone's got a pistol, but with rounds being so quick and destruction being so prevalent, we asked Witts if there's ever any real reason to use them."We’ve found that the majority of people stick to their primary weapon for the most part in the game but some players actually enjoy using their pistol in some firefight scenarios such as when you might have a shotgun and your enemy is at a particularly far distance," he said. "[But] there are other scenarios where players have to defend themselves with their pistol, like when they are escorting the hostage to safety as an Attacker. We want players to be put into high-risk, tense situations when they are escorting the hostage and switching to a sidearm forces players to aim with precision while finding the optimal path to the rescue area. Basically, when designing the weapons, we want every weapon family to be accessible in their optimal scenarios and this doesn’t exclude our pistols."During our conversation, Witts also confirmed that all game modes will be 5v5 ("After extensive testing we found that 5v5 works best in terms of giving players a tight teamplay experience where communication and cooperation is vital to success on both attack and defense"), that the game's location-based damage modeling includes crotch shots (cue winces from all men reading this), and that the team is experimenting with modes that don't feature a round timer but won't promise anything unless it holds up after extensive playtesting.We eagerly await our next chance to play Rainbow Six Siege Also, don't miss the rest of our IGN First Hot Games of 2015

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews and Xbox Guru-in-Chief. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan , catch him on Podcast Unlocked , and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.