For the first time in a Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six game, players will engage in sieges, a new style of assault where enemies have the means to transform their environments into modern strongholds while Rainbow Six teams lead the assault to breach the enemy’s position. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege gives players unprecedented control over their ability to fortify their position - by reinforcing walls and floors, using barbed wire, deployable shields and mines, and more - or breach the enemies’ using observation drones, sheet charges, rappelling, and more. The fast pace, lethality and uniqueness of each siege sets a new bar for intense firefights, strategic gameplay and competitive gaming.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege also features a technological breakthrough that redefines the way players interact with a game environment. Leveraging Ubisoft Montreal’s proprietary Realblast engine, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege incorporates procedural destruction that is realistic and unscripted, meaning the environment reacts authentically, distinctively and dynamically, based on variables like the caliber of bullets or the amount of explosives used. This advance allows players to leverage destruction in meaningful ways. Walls can be shattered, opening new lines of fire. Ceilings and floors can be breached to create new access points. This ability to modify the level design in real time enables players to create new gameplay opportunities directly within the game level.

Ubisoft revealed the first season of Rainbow Six Siege’s Year 8, Operation Commanding Force. This season introduces Brava, a new Brazilian Operator, and important gameplay updates including an immersive reload update, the Mousetrap feature to address players using mouse and keyboard on consoles, and further anti-toxicity measures. 

Commanding Force unleashes Brava, an invaluable new Attacker equipped with the Kludge Drone gadget. This drone disrupts hostile surveillance and provides counter tactics, like repurposing the technology for her squad. An extremely adaptable Operator, Brava can gain an advantage in any environment by accessing electronic resources available to her. Brava is a three speed, one health Operator, and her loadout features a PARA-308 or a CAMRS as a primary weapon and a USP40 or a Super Shorty as a secondary weapon. 

Important gameplay updates such as Mousetrap arrive in Year 8 Season 1 that further player protection improvements. Players who use mouse and keyboard on consoles will activate a penalty that adds lag to their inputs. The goal of this penalty is to encourage fair gameplay by removing the unfair advantage that mouse and keyboard players have on consoles. While active, continued use of mouse and keyboard gradually increases the lag over several matches, making it harder to aim and shoot. Completing matches with a controller will gradually reduce the lag back to normal. 

Further anti-toxicity measures include a new Reputation Penalty for abusive voice chat. While active, this penalty mutes repeat offenders by default to prevent hateful and disruptive content in voice chat. Muted players can still use voice chat but will only be heard by players who unmute them. 

In Year 8, Rainbow Six Siege is focused on solidifying its position as a high-intensity tactical shooter where purposeful action, precision, and creative tactics are the keys to success. In Commanding Force brings a balancing update to Zero, improvements to the Play Section UI, balancing change on weapon attachments, and a new immersive reload system: interrupting the animation will leave the player without a magazine but closed bolt weapons will have a single round for the player to use at any point during the reload.  

Also, new onboarding features arrive this season to assist new players in learning Rainbow Six Siege: Beginner Challenges and Specialty Challenges. Beginner Challenges identify an Operator's playstyle in-game. All Operators have one to two specialties which can be checked during the Planning Phase, in the Operators section, and in Operator Guides. Specialty Challenges aim to help beginner players learn the various Operator specialties and what they contribute to a match. By completing challenges, players can earn a variety of rewards, including an Operator after finishing all challenges for a single specialty. If the Operator is already owned, players will earn their value in renown instead. All players can be complete the challenges and earn all rewards, not just beginners. 

From February 20 until March 20, players can purchase the limited-time Year 8 Pass for $30 to unlock the four seasonal Battle Passes, a 14-day early access to new Operators when they launch, exclusive Exotic weapon skins, a 10% VIP discount on the shop, and more. For $60, the Premium Year Pass offers all the before mentioned perks plus 20 extra Battle tokens that players can use to unlock rewards faster. 

Season 1’s Battle Pass introduces the Bravo Pack Ticket, a rare item that lets you pick an exclusive reward from the latest Bravo Collection. This ticket will be awarded to Premium players who reach level 100 in this season’s Battle Pass as a reward for their dedication.

CONSOLE & PLAYER COMFORT IMPROVEMENTS

Following Year 7’s updates, further dedicated updates will launch this year for console players – alongside Mousetrap and Privacy Mode for console, controller layout flexibility and controller remapping will also arrive this season. Quick Match will also receive an extensive update to make it stand out as much as Ranked and Unranked. This will cut down on the amount of down time that players have in Quick Match and reducing the amount of repetition so players can get into the game quicker and experience Siege’s action at its best.

Players can expect a refresher coming to the Play section menu UI: three categories – Competitive, Quick Play, and Training - that will contain existing and new playlists. There will also be a dynamic pattern for each of those categories below the tile, allowing players to directly access their last played playlists inside that category. For the playlists that have different game modes, a settings button will let players select the game modes directly instead of having to go through the global settings button. Throughout Year 8, further improvements to increase player comfort will continue being added in-game.

ONBOARDING & PRACTICE FEATURES

To better introduce new players to Rainbow Six Siege, Year 8 will prioritize onboarding in a different way each season. Season 1 will add Beginner Challenges, a new progression tool allowing new players to learn how to play and unlock new Operators as they play. Season 2 adds the Aiming Lane to the Shooting Range, letting players customize skills, movement, quantity of targets, and numerous customizations including advanced techniques like headshots only.

Season 3 brings Playable tutorials – brand-new maps for the player to learn different gameplay elements like destruction, verticality, droning and repelling, etc. Finally, Season 4 introduces the Defender AI playlist – a safe place to teach others how to play new Operators and maps. This playlist will use a machine learning algorithm informed by current players.

BALANCING AND PLAYLIST UPDATES

The development team will continue reworking several Operators this year including Zero, Frost and others. Year 8 will add an immersive reload update, a tactical mechanic, an Observation blocker that lets Defenders control what intel is given to Attackers, and a full rework of shield Operators to improve players’ experience while playing them.

Key Features

• Counter terrorist operatives are trained to handle extreme situations, such as hostage rescue, with surgical precision. As “short range” specialists, their training is concentrated on indoor environments. Operating in tight formations, they are experts of close quarter combat, demolition, and coordinated assaults.
• For the first time in Rainbow Six, players will engage in sieges, a brand-new style of assault. Enemies now have the means to transform their environments into strongholds: they can trap, fortify, and create defensive systems to prevent breach by Rainbow teams. To face this challenge, players have a level of freedom unrivaled by any previous Rainbow Six game. Combining tactical maps, observation drones, and a new rappel system, Rainbow teams have more options than ever before to plan, attack, and diffuse these situations.
• Destruction is at the heart of the siege gameplay. Leveraging Ubisoft Montreal’s proprietary Realblast engine, players now have the unprecedented ability to destroy environments. Walls can be shattered, opening new lines of fire, and ceiling and floors can be breached, creating new access points. Everything in the environment reacts realistically, dynamically, and uniquely based on the size and caliber of bullets you are using or the amount of explosives you have set. In Rainbow Six Siege, destruction is meaningful and mastering it is often the key to victory.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is currently available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC.