It might be laborious to consider, however this yr marks the start of the eighth yr of assist for Ubisoft’s live-service tac-FPS monster, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. Siege isn’t slowing down any time quickly, it appears, as with Operation Commanding Drive, 12 months 8 Season 1 seems to start out with a bang from Brazil, introducing a brand new operator, modifications to reloading, and rather more.
Let’s kick issues off by speaking about Brava, the brand new Operator, who will be part of the huge playable roster of attackers. Hailing from Brazil, she’s an professional technician with the hacking expertise to match and a full of life character in comparison with a few of her friends. She’ll be becoming a member of Hibana’s squad of Operators, titled Viperstrike, with enemy electronics falling prey to Brava’s Kludge Drone.
The Kludge Drone is a novel tackle the signature drone attackers have at their disposal, as this model is Ubisoft’s concept of an anti-drone rifle shrunken down. Upon deployment, the Kludge Drone controls like your commonplace drone, however the catch is it will probably hack enemy tools with specialised bullets, which then flip towards their earlier proprietor. Some examples of hackable units are Kapkan’s traps, the place hacking them will flip them towards him and trigger large harm, or hacking Melusi’s Banshee system. As “damaged” as which will appear, it will probably’t hack every little thing, and what it will probably’t hack, it’ll destroy as an alternative.
Brava’s fairly enjoyable to make use of, although I can see her perpetuating that behavior of spending an excessive amount of time in a Drone when taking part in as an attacker. Nonetheless, very similar to lots of the Operators at your disposal, there are many synergies Ubisoft focused when creating her, similar to working with IQ to find hackable electronics or working with Thatcher to disable then hack tools. Conversely, Operators like Solis can discover the Brava consumer along with her tech, Mozzie can seize the Kludge Drone, and Vigil can nonetheless vanish out of its imaginative and prescient, so there might be counters at your disposal.
Brava comes at an attention-grabbing level in Siege’s lifecycle, as one of many greatest areas for enchancment Siege wanted to give attention to was accessibility for newcomers. Eight years later, there are over 65 completely different playable characters, making this a really overwhelming expertise for gamers, whether or not they’re model new or returning. With that in thoughts, Ubisoft got down to make her an accessible entry level as her package lets gamers uncover extra concerning the know-how that modifications rounds and a brand new system referred to as Onboarding.
New gamers will get entry to specialised newbie challenges that can present them the ropes in Siege by grouping Operator-specific challenges into Operator Specialties. These will present gamers the way to use a selected set of characters, similar to the way to use a personality’s package to collect intel or what to breach as a breacher.
The rewards for finishing these challenges are notable, as you’ll earn renown boosters to assist purchase new characters and even straight-up unlock a personality. Veteran gamers may take part in these challenges, and the Onboarding system seems like an excellent technique to show gamers who’re simply coming into Siege all these years later. I would even do these myself, as Siege is an enormous entity.
Many balancing modifications are coming to Siege, with two massive ones concentrating on the reload system and Zero. Firstly, “reload canceling,” the act of interrupting a reload to proceed a struggle, will now not be a factor, as Ubisoft intends to make reloading a significant interplay quite than an motion that may be stopped. The thought is to advertise teamwork and communication. This comes off the heels of the huge revamp to the recoil system made in Operation Brutal Storm and is an attention-grabbing design path after eight years that’ll take a while to get used to.
Secondly, Zero’s ARGUS Launcher will now should manually pierce partitions, with the intention being to mitigate how typically it’s destroyed when shot at a wall. Teammates may swap the aspect of Zero’s digicam, however they’ll’t pierce it, which is a neat change specializing in the teamwork of Siege.
Midseason will add a Ubisoft-designed program referred to as Mousetrap, which goals to fight gamers who use mouse and keyboard inputs on a console. If caught being a kind of gamers, enter latency will ramp up over a number of matches, with the answer being to take away your mouse and keyboard enter on the console. There can even be a give attention to anti-toxicity in voice chat, making use of penalties for a number of matches for being a poisonous pressure in-game. Simply be good, guys.
Lastly, the playlist sections are getting an overhaul, which excites me probably the most, as you possibly can filter between the completely different tiers of aggressive, fast play, and customized video games. Together with that, PC gamers will get a direct choice to launch the Take a look at Server whereas in-game as an alternative of getting to shut out their program to open it. You’ll nonetheless must have the Take a look at Server put in, however that’s large nonetheless, as Ubisoft intends to get extra PC gamers to work together in Siege’s testing.
Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege has turn out to be an entity bigger than life, because the French developer has rigorously crafted a distinct segment available in the market for Siege. As talked about, eight years of assist is a number of content material, making it laborious for brand new or returning gamers to search out an entry level. Nonetheless, this looks like the right time to hop on board, as Operation Commanding Drive seems to take cost and usher in a brand new period for Siege.
Operation Commanding Drive takes cost of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege on March 7, 2023, for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Sequence X|S, and PC. The Take a look at Server will go reside beginning Feb. 21.
