During the Rainbow Six Siege North America Six Major tournament hosted by Ubisoft today, the developer gave fans a look at what's incoming to the tactical shooter in its next major content update. Dubbed Operation Shadow Legacy, the update will see Splinter Cell series protagonist Sam Fisher enter the game as its newest operative, while also gaining match replays, a map rework, new gadgets, gameplay updates, and much more.
Starting off with Sam Fisher, who goes by the name Zero in Siege, he will be joining the attacking team equipped with a camera gadget. Once fired into a wall, either soft or reinforced, this lets players watch both the inside and outside out of the attached room, and it also comes equipped with a single-shot laser to either remove a gadget or deal a tiny amount of damage to an enemy.
The map being reworked this time around is Chalet, which now has roof access, a new staircase in the Trophy Room, plus switched up bombsites for better tactical gameplay. See the gameplay video below for a look at both the new operator and the rework.
Ubisoft also announced a whole host of new mechanics, features, and gadgets that are coming to the game with this season. The biggest of these is probably the highly requested replay viewer, which lets players watch their 12 most recent matches from any perspective. This will be very useful for detecting hackers, for instance. The feature will be coming out in alpha, and Ubisoft is looking for player feedback on what sort of additions it needs.
An overhauled ping system similar to battle royale games like Apex Legends is being introduced too, where players can now ping gadgets to notify teammates of the exact danger and its position. Moreover, instead of each player having 2 reinforcements for walls and hatches, a pool of 10 will be available for the entire team. A map ban system is being introduced as well, letting teams pick what map is being chosen for their unranked or ranked match before diving in.
Other changes and additions include automatically reinforced roof hatches at the start of rounds (though this may be reverted if player feedback is negative), Thatcher EMP grades now only disabling all gadgets, a slow-acting Hardbreach Charge as a new secondary gadget for operators, two new optics for guns, reticle colors, and sensitivity adjustments per zoom level. Out of the game, Ubisoft is also introducing an online Siege statistics tracker, plus a teammate finder.
Rainbow Six Siege Operation Shadow Legacy does not have a definite release date yet, but it is landing on the test server tomorrow, August 17, letting players try out the new operator, map rework, and all of the other features before it is pushed to everyone on the live track.
