This interview has been edited for clarity.
Team Rainbow made waves with the sleek announcement trailer in 2015, introducing the gritty and unpredictable nature of close-quarter combat that ended on a cliffhanger. The tactical first-person shooter has evolved greatly through its updates over the years, with new operators stepping up to the plate every season and changes made to certain kits, ensuring a more level playing field while being practical from an in-universe perspective. All of that culminates into Rainbow Six Siege X, the single biggest update the franchise has ever seen, and one that transforms the game to free-to-play from 10 June, barring a few caveats.
Fans of the franchise don’t have to worry about the long wait, as the beta is available now to 19 March on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Ubisoft Connect. This behemoth of an update boasts major graphical and audio upgrades, quality-of-life improvements, revamped gaming modes, and key features to blast Rainbow Six Siege into the spotlight once again, with game director Joshua Mills dedicating its newest evolution to one of the game’s pillars of support – the players.
“It comes from a respect to our current community, to make sure that we continue to invest in them because they’ve invested in us. We’ve been here for the last 10 years, and we wouldn’t be here without them. To be able to set that road map and set the runway for the next decade is the critical point here. So overhaul that, reset our foundation, and then move forward,” he shares.
Improving the sturdiness of the hammer is the Modernized 5v5 mode, the lifeline of the decade-old franchise, while the deep precise cuts of the scalpel that the new permanent 6v6 Dual Front mode brings will be the blade that shifts the tide of Siege forever. Rainbow Six Siege X gives its roots a fresh coat of paint with new lighting, shadows and 4K textures on the Clubhouse, Chalet, Border, Bank, and Kafe maps at launch, with developer and publisher Ubisoft committing to update three current maps at a time with each subsequent season.
Veteran players will be in for a treat, as besides the visual upgrade, the flow of a match now changes completely with the newly introduced destructible ingredients – interactive environment pieces that deal damage upon impact. Shooting a fire extinguisher, for instance, creates a plume of smoke to cover a player’s advance, whereas aiming at a gas pipe ejects a jet stream that takes out an unsuspecting operator first before exploding and killing another.
By highlighting them during the drone phase, these elements become a part of the game plan as players will be able to tag them in person, making each round more unpredictable than the last. The opportunities and subsequent threats that destructible ingredients bring to the field are a breath of fresh air for the already chaotic 5v5 mode.
The new 6v6 Dual Front mode, meanwhile, sees players picking from a curated lineup of 35 operators that includes both Attackers and Defenders, as they capture enemy sectors while defending their own, and completing objectives to give their team an upper hand. The map is now divided into three parts: yours, your opponents’ and a neutral sector where you can roam about and cause havoc on their side of the street, or keep things under control on yours.
With a mix of sabotaging or saving data centres, extracting hostages and other seasonal assignments in the neutral sector, handling the ever-changing Dual Fronts requires a good read of the situation and skills to pay the bills like any regular Siege match. However, if you were to be dishonourably discharged by a bullet, you would not only respawn after 30 seconds but also switch out to another operator (which can be done if alive in specific safe zones as well), offering solutions to counter any lineup issues your team may be facing. Additionally, health can be regenerated in small amounts within a team’s own zone, and an “out-of-bounds” message will pop up if you overstay your welcome in an enemy zone, killing you eventually.
Like any match in Siege, situational awareness and good team communication are key to victory. Knowing when to hang back and defend the objective is equally as important as going in for the offensive, because enemy players aren’t the only ones to beat – every match is a fight against the clock and the size of the map. A hands-on preview held in Atlanta, USA, gave a first taste of the tension involved in a hostage extract assignment, where our team had to rush to the centre of the map and hastily put up defences to fend off the other squad until the extraction helicopter arrived.
In a way, Dual Fronts kills two birds with one stone, proving ideal for anyone who wants to either start or get back into the world of Siege, and offers a quick, non-ranked alternative for adrenaline seekers. Interestingly enough, the mode also has a role to play in fleshing out the narrative, as Mills highlights:
“It’s always nice to blow off some steam, have some fun and jump into a mode that’s a little less intense with lower stakes. Granted, we all get very competitive in the new mode regardless, but [it’s also about] having some fun there and feeding other parts of our community while being able to express the narrative and push our actual canon story forward through play.”
The formula tweak is exactly what Rainbow Six Siege needed to make the game even more accessible to players of varying skill levels while keeping it fresh for experienced players. The roster for the 35 operators will be swapped around twice per season, with neutral zone assignments changing every season. Adding the extra player to a traditional team of five is certainly a huge change that guarantees added chaos, and while that may be an issue for many other competitive titles out there, Mills explains that doing so extends a player’s uptime in the game and lets them “live the experience of Siege”.
Quality-of-life improvements are what keep old players happy and onboarding new players much more smoothly, especially in the anti-toxicity aspect of gameplay. In Rainbow Six Siege X, bad behaviour would reward you with the “Dishonorable” badge that translates to having every mode other than Quick Match locked out until you’ve learned and earned your way back into the good graces of the reputation gods. This keeps the community in check and provides comfort in the knowledge that you’ll hopefully never have to deal with terrible teammates for ranked games because they’re out of sight and mind. For visibility’s sake, reputable ranks can also be showcased, giving an idea of the green and red flags of the player base.
Boasting crisp graphical polish, destructible ingredients, and quality-of-life updates, the modernised 5v5 mode doesn’t differ much from the same core gameplay loop as before, but brings a fresh breath of air for the community and realises the version of Rainbow Six Siege that many have been wanting to play. It’s recommended that players learn the locations of the destructible ingredients coming into the update, but one thing’s for certain – the updated visuals will be a sight to behold for everyone, especially series veterans.
If you’re too shy to enter voice chat or are afraid that you’ll be heard way too much, the communication wheel has made its way into the game to relay instructions and information as quickly as possible. That’s hardly the only mechanic with a change in speed, however – the advanced rappelling system has been revamped, introducing sprinting and omnidirectional movement as players sling themselves around looking for angles or poking at defences. Meanwhile, changes to the Pick and Ban system mean teams can ban operators at the same time once per round, hastening the process without skimming on the experience, with the ban resetting when the roles of both teams are reversed.
Other improvements include weapon inspection, allowing operators to view the skins and charms they have worked hard for, the ability to disable metal detectors and prevent enemies from being alerted to their location, and audio enhancements that would better signal the location of enemies at different parts of the map through reworked propagation and reverberation. Simply put, they will be able to tell footsteps apart in a carpeted corridor or gunfire coming from the rooftop in finer detail, with Mills detailing how the soundscapes are designed relative to the size of a room or floor material.
“If your map awareness is very high, so say you’re on Bank, you can understand that someone’s in the lobby based on the scale of that room, because of the way the sounds reverberate to you. Additionally, there are carpets that will mute the sounds even more, which is another factor players need to take into account. The materials you’re walking on are going to influence the way that sounds,” he surmises.
Still, there are some limitations to the free-to-play version of Rainbow Six Siege X. Ranked Play and the Siege Cup will be locked, and only 26 out of 50 operators are made available. The update won’t affect the progression and cosmetic inventory of existing players, rewarding them with exclusive badges showing the year they started playing, tie-in bonuses with each season of Siege, and more.
10 years is a long time, and for a game like Rainbow Six Siege to remain competitive against the likes of many other first-person shooters – tactical or otherwise – for so long is monumental for the team at Ubisoft and even more so for the fans and their various communities, who have kept the game well and alive. Adopting a free-to-play approach opens up a new world of possibilities and fun for newcomers, while adding a whole new game mode, fresh features, and major revamps to the base game a season at a time is no mean feat. Team Rainbow is stronger than ever and virtual door-kicking has never been better, it seems.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege X, will launch as a free update on 10 June on Ubisoft+, Ubisoft’s subscription service, PS4, PS5, the Xbox One family of consoles, Xbox Series X | S, and Windows PC via Steam and Amazon Luna.
Abandon Reason Know Only War! Zinho is a shooter fanatic still waiting for direct sequels to Black (2006) and Star Wars: Republic Commandos. He also truly believes that the Warhammer 40K universe can take on any franchise and destroy them. To think any different is heresy and punishable by Exterminatus.
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