Rainbow Six Siege continues to be one of the most quietly phenomenal shooters of the year. Now over eight months since release, Ubisoft have divulged information on the newest season of their tactical shooter. This update brings the noise from the favelas of Brazil in “Operation Skull Rain” with two new operators, one new map and a sleuth of changes and improvements to the overall game.
Content
The new operators hail from the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais or BOPE (Police Special Operations Battalion) of Brazil, specializing in urban warfare.
Our first new operator is an attacker named Capitão. His special ability is a tactical crossbow, which shoots oxygen burning bolts to choke enemies of air, forcing them out of their position. His alternative projectile is a smaller-scale smoke grenades to mask team movement. His weaponry consists of an M249 heavy-machine gun or a PARA-308 along with a PRB92 for a sidearm. He can also be equipped with either frag or stun grenades to compliment his already projectile-centric ability.
Our second new operator is a defender called Caveira. Her play-style very much caters to lurking around the map with her “Silent step” ability, masking the sound of her footsteps. This allows her to sneak up on unsuspecting enemies to immobilize and interrogate them. Interrogating enemy operators gives away their teammates positions, one of the most important pieces of info needed when defending. She comes armed with an M12 sub-machine gun or SPAS-15 shotgun and the aforementioned PRB92 sidearm. Her extra toys include barbed wire or a C4 Nitro Cell.
A new map titled “Favela” has been revealed in the trailer below. The designers claim to have taken a new approach in allowing buildings to be destroyed from anywhere on the exterior, a first in the game’s map rotation. This will make defending players think more carefully on where to hunker down for rounds as the moniker of the new map seems to be “no where is safe”.
Another first for the game is the introduction of the promised “tactical realism” mode. The new mode removes HUD elements like kill confirms and enemy markers and restricts players to their weapon and ability hotkeys along with round timer and compass. It will also force a more rigid magazine system, making players use every round in their mag before tossing it or losing those extra bullets just to reload.
Fixes
Other changes brought to Siege aim to be quality of life improvements to the game itself. The client-side anticheat system BattlEye will be implemented to make sure the game cannot be booted if any cheating software is running on the machine.
They’ve also mentioned fixing issues with clipping through walls and objects in the environment, fixing unfair vulnerabilities many players have fallen victim to in the past.
Overall, this update seems to be as momentous as the Dust Line. It doesn’t quite bring in the same sweeping changes to balance, but aims to keep the game tidy of cheating and exploiting while adding in new content to an already dense game. Operation Skull Rain is expected to launch August 2.
You can also read the full list of changes in the UbiBlog and on the Rainbow Six Siege website.
