Ubisoft has unveiled its content and gameplay plans for the first season of the eighth year of Rainbow Six Siege, which starts on March 7th and brings with it brand new content and progression as well as some major updates to its UI and systems to make the game more enjoyable for everyone.
There’s a ton of cool stuff coming in Year 8 Season 1, which is titled Commanding Force, and you can learn all about it on the official website – but we wanted to break down some of the bigger updates for you right here.
A New Operator
The big new addition to this season comes in the form of a new Operator, the Brazilian Attacker named Brava. Described by Ubisoft as “extremely adaptable,” Brava is a three speed, one health Operator with access to the Kludge Drone. Essentially a mini-tank, the Kludge is capable of hacking electronics – especially enemy gadgets – to either destroy them or switch their allegiance to the Attackers.
Ubisoft says that for newer players, the Kludge Drone makes for a great way to learn each map and understand how other Operators’ gadgets work, and in more skilled hands it’s very much going to be a menace.
Brava’s primary weapons are a PARA-308 or a CAMRS, and her secondaries are a USP40 or Super Shorty, plus claymores or smoke grenades as gadgets. Her synergies are with IQ, Thatcher, Hibana, Thermite and Ace while Solis, Mozzie, Mute and Vigil make up her Operator counters.
A Better Experience For New Players
If you’re anything like me and completely daunted by the idea of jumping into Siege fresh, or even after an extended break, you’ll be happy to know that Ubisoft is changing things up to make the game a little friendlier to new players.
New Beginner Challenges and Specialty Challenges give players a series of objectives to complete that will introduce them to each Operator’s unique specialties, how best to use them and how they fit into the wider strategy. By completing these, players will earn rewards that included Operators, renown and more.
New Anti-Cheat and Anti-Toxicity Measures
Ubisoft is implementing a couple of new measures to make games more fair and fun for all. The first of these is Mousetrap, a new detection technology that aims to weed out console players that are unfairly using mouse and keyboard inputs and will apply a gradually-increasing lag penalty for every match a person plays with these devices connected. Once a player disconnects their keyboard and mouse and begins completing matches with a controller again, the lag penalty will be gradually reduced.
A new Reputation Penalty is also being introduced to combat abusive voice chat. This penalty will auto-mute players that repeatedly abuse and disrupt voice chat, requiring anyone who still wishes to engage with the offending player to manually unmute them.
Lastly, Ubisoft is cracking down on a much-used gameplay tactic that borders on exploitative, and that’s reload cancelling. Where before, players could cancel the reload animation partway by performing certain actions and have their original magazine returned, now once a magazine has physically left a weapon it’s gone for good even if the rest of the reload animation is cancelled. The idea is to make reloading a more deliberate choice with its own risks, though under the new rules if players do happen to start and cancel a reload with ammo still in the current magazine, they’ll retain a single bullet – enough to potentially make all the difference.
There’s a heap more to learn about what’s coming in Year 8 Season 1 of Rainbow Six Siege, so take a look at the full video reveal of the season below:
