Rainbow Six Siege's new gadget will let more operators blast through reinforced walls
Incoming map rework, ping changes and new ways to explode things
It's exciting enough when Rainbow Six Siege gets a new operator, let alone one that's a well-loved sneaky boy from Splinter Cell. Ubisoft revealed last week that Sam Fisher would be making an appearance in the tactical team-based shoot 'em up, and last night they showed the gadgets and abilities he'll be bringing with him to the game's next update, Operation Shadow Legacy.
He's not the only exciting thing on the way, though, because there are a bunch of reworks and changes coming to improve how you play Siege across the board.
First, Ubisoft have released a sick tricks 'n' tips trailer to show players how to use old Sammy boy, as well as give some more details on those upcoming changes.
So, Sam Fisher is not called Sam Fisher anymore. In R6, his name is "Zero" to fit in with all the cool operators and their snappy aliases. He's an attacker with a special gadget called the Argus Launcher, which can drill up to four small two-way cameras into any walls you like. He can use these to spy on enemies, and even give them a little zap with a laser charge. You get one shot of said laser in each camera, and they can take out enemy gadgets, or deal a tiny bit of damage to your foes.
As well as the new playable lad, there's some more game-changing stuff on the way. For starters, the reinforcements that defenders use will be drawn from a shared pool with your team. So rather than just having two reinforcements per player, the entire team will have 10 that anyone can use. This one sits weird with me because it opens up the option for one player to burn your reinforcements willy-nilly. But I suppose at the same time, it means you never have one teammate hoarding their reinforcements for no reason.
Next up, there's a new gadget that can breach through those reinforced walls. Doesn't need much explaining, that one. You put on wall, wall go boom. It's a pretty cool one, though, because it means you won't always need operators like Hibana or Thermite to go crashing through the defenders reinforcements now.
Then there's a big update to the ping system, which now has symbols to show who has been doing the pinging, as well as what they're pinging at. If a buddy pings some barbed wire, for example, a little picture of that will show up on the ping marker.
The game's weapon optics are getting improvements, too. There are new scopes and magnification levels on offer, with some, like the ACOG, being renamed to reflect the size of the scope. Optics will now be more operator dependent, as well, meaning that certain operators will only have access to specific optics for their guns to better fit with their playstyles.
On top of all that, Thatcher is getting an update to the way his EMP grenade works, map bans are going to be a thing, the Chalet map is getting some bits reworked, there's a new match replay feature, and now there's even an official LFG website if you want to look for some pals to play Siege with.
There really is a whole heap of new stuff coming in this update. A lot of it is detailed in the video above, but keep an eye out for more info over on the R6 website.
Operation Shadow Legacy is dropping on the Rainbow Six Siege test server today, so PC players can have a mess about with all this new stuff before it hits the live server. There's no firm word yet yet on when the update will properly launch.
If you've yet to have a go of Rainbow Six Siege, the game's having a free weekend later this month. It'll run from August 27th until September 4th, and will give you access to all the maps and modes, as well as 20 operators to choose from.