The Rainbow Six Siege Year 5 season continues, as its second major update is slated to land soon. Ubisoft today unveiled the innards of Operation Steel Wave, with two new operators and a House map rework arriving as the biggest features of the update, though there are quite a few smaller additions and changes too.
Ace is the new attacker players will be facing, who heads in from Norway. He comes with S.E.L.M.A hard-breaching gadgets that are throwable on reinforced surfaces, where it slowly opens up the location strip by strip while sliding downwards. Reinforced hatches will require two uses to open. On the other side, Melusi arrives from South Africa as the defending operator. Her throwable Banshee gadget is activated when an attacker is detected in its line of sight, making it emit noise to alert defenders and slowing down attacker's movements until it is destroyed.
House was the first map Ubisoft showed during the Siege announcement trailer, and now, the classic environment is being changed up as part of the latest rework. The map will remain in the casual playlist even after its rework, but the newly created obstacles and spaces will mean opportunities for new strategies and challenges according to the studio. See the gameplay video below for a look at both new operators and the House rework.
Elsewhere, a new proximity alarm gadget is being introduced, and it does exactly what it sounds like after being thrown. Amaru is being buffed as well, with her gadget being changed to destroy barricades later on in the animation, giving her a better chance to surprise defenders. Hatches will also break automatically following the update. On the cosmetics side, Echo is getting a new elite skin, and weapon attachment skins are also on the way, with the first wave being free to all players.
Rainbow Six Siege: Operation Steel Wave will be available through the test server starting tomorrow, May 19. Judging by previous releases, the Operation will hit the full game in less than a month.
