The half a decade-spanning tactical shooter journey that Rainbow Six Siege has been on has been extended once again by Ubisoft. The company today laid out its plans for Year 5 as well as Year 6 during the Six Invitational 2020 tournament, and it"s a pretty drastic change of pace from the updates we"ve experienced in previous years.
As seen in the Year 5 roadmap image above, the four seasons will bring six new operators in total, a drop from the usual eight. Moreover, there won"t be any new maps during this year or the next, with Ubisoft opting to rework one existing map during each season instead. Oregon, House, Skyscraper, and Chalet will be getting hit by the rework hammer this year. To counterbalance this, there will be some major gameplay reworks coming in the latter half of the year.
Moving onto the new features and changes Year 5 will bring in, perhaps the most well-known operator of Rainbow Six Siege, Tachanka, is finally getting his highly-anticipated rework. The Russian defensive operator will no longer be a stationary target with his mounted weapon, as following the rework, the powerful LMG will become his primary weapon while also having an incendiary grenade launcher as his new gadget.
A match replay system is coming to the game as well, letting players save their past games to view them later in any perspective. A new ping system akin to what Apex Legends introduced is also arriving this year, letting players mark items and more for easier communication without utilizing voice. Other features include a player reputation system to curb toxicity, map bans for ranked, an arcade playlist with goofy game modes, a reworked debris system, and new secondary gadgets.
Ubisoft will be bringing Rainbow Six Siege to the next generation Xbox and PlayStation consoles as they launch later this year. Meanwhile, looking towards Year 6, Ubisoft was more reserved about the contents, but still provided a loose roadmap that showed it will have one new operator during each season as well as even more gameplay reworks.
The very first season of the Year 5 bunch, Operation Void Edge, is hitting the Rainbow Six Siege test servers on February 17 so the developer can test and balance the new features, Oregon map rework, and operators before releasing it to everyone. See the two operator"s quirks as well as the reworked Oregon map in the gameplay trailer embedded above.