Rainbow Six Siege's character artists seem to be getting ready for Halloween early, as a new leak appears to show off a new round of horror-themed operator skins likely coming with this year's holiday event.
The leak, which comes via obutu3_, shows Halloween skins for Doc, Kaplan, Bandit, Ela, Vigil, Smoke, and Frost. There are also new skins for Caviera and Gridlock, although these aren't obviously Halloween-related.
Each of the new epic skins looks pretty great, although for my money, Frost's is the most upsetting. Her face is split into a monstrous, sharp-toothed grin, and the horns poking out of her scalp are just icing on the cake. Smoke's skin turns him into an alien sewer monster of some kind, and Ela's is called "skin suit"—and the reason why becomes obvious when you give it a second look. Ed Gein called; he says he wants his jogging outfit back.
Last year, Siege ran a special haunted house-style event for Halloween, and offered up themed skins for 10 operators, while making the previous year's spooky skins available as well. Hopefully that'll be the case again this year, and we'll have the chance to collect any we missed.
Update: Today, Ubisoft removed two reporting options from the Ember Rise test server. The buttons to report players for a "negative attitude" and abusive voice chat are now gone. Ubisoft has yet to comment on their brief presence.
Original story: Rainbow Six Siege has a big toxicity problem. Matches are regularly littered with harassment and verbal abuse, made worse by players not having good in-game tools to punish offenders.
Thankfully, Ubisoft is at least trying to clean up Siege's culture. Players signing on to the Technical Test Server today for the new Ember Rise season were surprised to find a new suite of options for reporting players that go beyond its simple "report toxic behavior" button.
Now, you can report players for cheating, hacking, abusive text chat, and voice abuse. That's music to my ears, but there's one more option that's less straightforward: report negative attitude.
What...does that mean? There's no in-game definition behind Ubi's use of "negative attitude." If a teammate has given up hope for victory and is sharing their dread with the team, is that now a reportable offense? If so, what's the appropriate punishment?
Or perhaps it's meant for sore winners, like the downright hilarious folk who type "ez" in the chat after killing you. I'd consider that more unsportsmanlike than negative, so maybe Ubi is going for something different altogether.
We've reached out to Ubisoft for clarification and will update the story if we hear anything back.
Child of Light - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Katharine Castle)
Google held another one of their Stadia Connect conferences today, and this one was meant to be all about what games you’ll be playing in the “scary” cloud come November. Sure enough, there were new Stadia games aplenty announced this evening, with the biggest addition being Cyberpunk 2077.
To help keep track of them all, here’s a list of every Google Stadia game confirmed so far, as well as which games are coming at launch, which ones will be arriving a little bit later, and which games you’ll only be able to play by subscribing to one of the special Stadia publisher subscriptions.
Something new is on the horizon, and Operation Ember Rise will shed light on it. Two operators, Amaru and Goyo, were recruited from Peru and Mexico, bringing with them innovation and change to Rainbow Six, along with a thrilling rework to Kanal.
Besides that, numerous changes and new features are on their way. As you scroll through the Patch Notes below, you’ll find more information on our plans for a Battle Pass, the new Champions rank and Unranked playlist, our new Operators menu, changes to the Shop interface and Player VS AI, and which Operators are getting a price decrease.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege X - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)
After almost four years of being a game-shaped digital object, Rainbow Six Siege will soon qualify for ‘actual certified video game’ status when its next update adds a new character with a grappling hook. This gadget, a featured mandated by the video game certification board, will let Amaru whoosh up buildings and through windows. Proper video game stuff. She’ll be joined in Operation Ember Rise by Goyo, whose magic trick is to strap honking great petrol bombs to his deployable shields so they go up in a burst of flames. Come watch some grappling in this here new video.
In a move that seemed almost inevitable in 2019, Rainbow Six Siege is finally jumping on the battle pass train. The battle pass will give players a new progression track to unlock cosmetics, renown boosters, and new operator lore.
Siege's battle pass is rolling out in two phases, starting with a free, 7-day pass in Ember Rise named "Call Me Harry." It sounds like a testing ground for Ubisoft as it prepares for its "full-fledged" battle pass premiering in Season 4 later this year.
"Our intentions behind it is to reward players more than ever playing our game, and also to provide a progression they can work through whenever they're playing." said presentation director Alexander Karpazis in an announcement video.
Unlike existing battle passes that require players to complete specific challenges to proceed, it seems like Siege's pass will only judge progression by how much you play. Every match, you build up "Battle Points" that get you closer to the next tier.
Cosmetics are fine, I guess, but I'm excited by the potential to tell new in-lore stories with Siege's operators. "The Battle Pass is a great opportunity for us to develop our universe," said Siege narrative director Emmanuel Bajolle in the video. Siege lore can be pretty cheesy, but operators are cool and I like reading about their out-of-game interactions in bios.
Karpazis promised that they'd have much more to share at the next season reveal, and "much much" more to say at the Six Invitational 2020. Today, Ubi also blew the lid on Operation Ember Rise, which brings two new operators and a beautiful rework of Kanal.
After weeks of leaks and rumors surrounding Rainbow Six Siege’s Operation Ember Rise, Ubisoft has fully unveiled two new operators and a dramatic rework of its strangest map. New attacker Amaru and defender Goyo aren’t upending Siege’s meta, but they bring along two gadgets that play against established expectations in fun ways: a window-bursting grapple hook and a deceptively deadly deployable shield.
Amaru
Compared to the often complicated gadgets and rules of new Siege operators, Amaru is simple and intuitive. She’s a two-speed, two-armor attacker equipped with the Garra Hook, a limited-use grapple hook launcher that propels her up to windows or ledges in seconds. Seriously, it’s pretty fast—take a look.
Usually, breaching a window is a process. You run up to a wall, slowly rappel up a rope, and knock out the window manually before vaulting in. Amaru’s hook boils that process down to one click. You designate a destination and just go there, with a few caveats. While the Garra hook gives off serious Apex Legends Pathfinder vibes, you can’t shoot it off anywhere. It has four uses per round and only works on windows, certain ledges, and hatches. It’s purely a mobility gadget, which is a real rarity for Siege.
Amaru seems like a niche pick, but I can already feel unique opportunities as a lone wolf infiltrator. Her speedy infiltration messes with every player’s basic instincts about enemy behavior. While Kapkan is placing traps across the map, confident the attackers are still outside approaching the building, Amaru is already in the next room. She breaks the rules of how fast an attacker can usually get somewhere, and it's bound to catch veterans off guard.
That said, the Garra Hook isn’t a stealthy gadget. If you’re close by, you can clearly hear the launcher reel Amaru in like a trout on a fishing pole. If she tries to simply burst into the objective immediately, the defenders can easily look in her direction and take her down before her feet touch the ground. Amaru is helpless until the entire grapple is complete, so it’s worth it to drone ahead and zip with caution.
One notable counter is, of course, Castle. The Garra Hook won’t penetrate through Castle’s barricades. In fact, it won’t accept a grapple up to the window at all. Amaru can rappel up to the window and place a breaching charge, but that sorta defeats her purpose. Unless assisted by Ash, Zofia, or a frag grenade, Amaru is pretty much locked out by Castle.
The most interesting use of the hook is hatches—Amaru is the first operator who can scale up hatches, not just down. Defenders now have a legitimate reason to reinforce a hatch at their feet, which could shift the established wisdom of how to use the team’s 10 precious reinforcements under the right circumstances. Do we cover this vulnerable wall, or make sure Rico Rodriguez can’t zip up from under our noses? One hatch climber likely won’t make that much of an impact, but it’s a fascinating new precedent for the Siege meta.
Like with Nøkk and Warden last season, Ubisoft has gone the route of reusing lesser-known weapons for Amaru and Goyo instead of creating new ones (there are now 100 weapons in the game, so I get it). For primary weapons, Amaru takes her pick between the G8A1 LMG (previously exclusive to IQ) and the Hibana/Echo’s Supernova shotgun (which can now equip a suppressor). It’s a non-standard setup noticeably lacking an assault rifle. The G8A1 is a functional primary, but I’ll always prefer the balanced recoil and fire rate of an AR.
Her secondaries are also non-standard—she can take Jackal's ITA12-S shotgun or the British SMG-11. Both secondaries are interesting modifications on her playstyle. The SMG-11 is powerful enough to operate as a de facto primary weapon, meaning she can take the less reliable Supernova and use its silencer for quieter hatch and window breaching. Or, you can take her LMG and still pop hatches with the ITA12-S backup shotgun.
Goyo
It’s been a while since Ubisoft has added a defender as straightforward as Goyo (an objectively hotter clone of John Leguizamo). The two-speed, two-armor defender is equipped with Volcán Shields, deployable shields with a back-mounted explosive charge. The Volcán looks no different from a normal deployable shield from the front, but when destroyed, it explodes and leaves a spread of fire in its wake. His shields can be destroyed with traditional means (Ash, Zofia, Sledge, frag grenades), but defenders can also shoot the red explosive charge to trigger it at will, similar to popping the air canister on Mira’s Black Mirrors.
The initial explosion deals around 30 damage if enemies are close enough, though the Volcán’s true value is the area denial of the fire. Its area of effect is pretty large, especially considering he carries three shields. The fire is similar to Smoke’s gas canisters, but appears to tick damage faster and kill a bit quicker.
The Volcán has the advantage (and possible disadvantage) of being usable by anyone. Once placed, Goyo can leave it up to his team to detonate the shields when the time is right. This is where you can have the most fun synergizing with teammates. Placed in view of Maestro’s Evil Eyes, the Volcán can be detonated by the camera’s laser. Installed on a doorway, the shield combos nicely with Kapkan’s EDD traps. Vaulting over the shield detonates the trap (dealing 60 damage), which detonates the shield (around 30 more damage) followed by fire damage that will likely kill you.
But Goyo’s Volcáns also have the potential to be hijacked by attackers. If an angle is made from above or below, it’s easy to spot the shield’s bright red charge and shoot it when defenders least expect.
There’s a light layer of deception to Goyo’s shields that I find delightful. Like Mario Kart’s traumatizing fake item box, the Volcán only reveals itself as a trap once it’s too late to escape its clutches. The shield is also inherently interactive, which is refreshing for Siege’s mostly hands-off proximity traps. It requires some strategy in placement and deciding when to fire it up. But, its hands-on nature means that it can be useless as often as its deadly. If an attacker sneaks to the objective unnoticed and happens upon a Volcán, they can simply vault over it without consequence.
Goyo’s flexible kit makes me believe he can serve as an anchor or roamer. He can either take the Vector.45 ACP (formerly exclusive to Mira) and the TCSG12 slug shotgun (borrowed from Kaid). The Vector is a very powerful SMG, and it could feel even more so in the hands of a faster operator than Mira. He also has the choice between impact grenades or a nitro cell. Along with his three Volcáns, he’s basically a one-man utility truck of defense gadgets.
Kanal map rework
In Ember Rise, Kanal has gotten a huge visual facelift. I’ve been burned by map reworks before, so I was a little nervous to see how Ubisoft was changing one of my favorite casual maps. The brick and stone style of the east air traffic control tower has completely shifted to a modern, sharp steel style with a distinct red paint job. It’s brighter, bolder, sleeker, and seemingly better designed for Siege in 2019.
Old Kanal has some of the busiest interiors with a lot of items to bump into. Several of these rooms (like the west office objective) have all been cleaned up without changing their identity too much. With Hereford Base, it felt like Ubi took a sledgehammer to the whole thing and basically made a new (worse) map. New Kanal isn’t that. It has the lighter touch of Clubhouse’s rework, but with more attention paid to upgrading its aesthetics.
The basic layout of objective sites are mostly the same, but there are some key changes that tackle Kanal’s weaknesses. Most important of all: there’s a new sky bridge on the third floor that gives players another option for crossing between the east and west buildings. This prevents any one path from becoming too much of a choke point while making the third floor objective more interesting. Many of the map’s most exploitative windows have been permanently sealed to cut off enterprising Doc mains from spawn peeking.
Oh, and there's also a gigantic submarine floating just outside the map. That's neat. We won’t know just how good the Kanal rework is until we’ve bent and broken it over a few months, but it gives an amazing first impression.
Other stuff worth knowing
Rainbow Six Siege is getting an Unranked playlist, which has all the rules of Ranked without the stress of losing MMR.
Ubi is adding a new, top-tier rank called Champions that goes even beyond Diamond. Champion status starts at 5000 MMR.
Ranked now has a squad MMR restriction, so some players won’t be able to queue together if their skill is too varied. The goal is to prevent Bronze players from inviting their Diamond friends to carry them in Ranked.
Theme Park, Fortress, and Hereford Base are out of Ranked, and Kanal is obviously in. This leaves the pool at 12 maps. Season 4’s map rework is Theme Park, so it will likely be added back later in the year.
Rainbow Six Siege is jumping on the battle pass bandwagon. The program is rolling out in two phases, starting with a free battle pass sometime this season. Read more on that here.
The quarterfinal phase of the Rainbow Six Siege Major in Raleigh has kicked off today, the beginning of three more days of action between eight remaining teams.
Earlier in the week, 16 teams gathered in North Carolina to fight for the final spots in the tournament. Those left standing now battle for the biggest share of a $500,000 prize pool in Rainbow Six's first-ever US-based Major. Here's the schedule for the final stages of the Siege tournament:
Friday, August 16
10 AM EDT—Forze vs Vodafone Giants (Quarterfinal 1)1 PM EDT—Spacestation vs Team Secret (Quarterfinal 2)4 PM EDT—Team Empire vs FaZe Clan (Quarterfinal 3)7 PM EDT—G2 Esports vs Team SoloMid (Quarterfinal 4)10 PM EDT—Daily wrap-up
One Latin American team remains in the bracket (FaZe), with five of the eight squads coming from Europe and two NA-based squads filling out the competition. The tournament winner will receive $200,000. Coming into play, Capitão, Mira, and Echo are among the operators banned most consistently by pro players.
All stages of the tournament will be broadcast on twitch.tv/rainbow6 through the weekend. On Sunday at 1:30 PM EDT, Ubisoft will present the next wave of operators coming to the game in the next season of Rainbow Six Siege. I'm at the event here in Raleigh all weekend and have a full breakdown of the new stuff on Sunday.
For more tournament scoring, brackets, and more information, head over to Ubisoft's esports page.
“Save you once, shame on me. Save you twice? Well. You’re family now, and we don’t keep count.”
"They said I’d never make anything of myself. They said that if I couldn’t be taught, I’d never learn anything worth knowing. Well, I’m here to tell you that’s all rubbish. You’ve had to sit through years of them filling your heads with what they want you to think, all for a fancy bit of paper. Worth it, was it? I’ll tell you what. You get out there, you never hold back, and someday some professor who doesn’t remember tossing you out of his class will ask you to come and inspire the next generation. Lucky for all of you, I’ve got a bit of skin in the game as far as young whippersnappers go, so you’d better shape up to be something pretty bloody marvelous.
I’LL BE WAITING."
- PORTER, J., RECIPIENT OF AN HONORARY DOCTORATE IN PHYSICAL AND THEORETICAL CHEMISTRY
“Anyone who says you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure has never made friends with a chemist.”
"Harry - I understood that our new Operator’s grappling hook made her fast, but I never expected it would have that much of an effect on the pacing of our training matches. In less experienced hands (mine), the Garra Hook is a slightly-more-convenient way of scaling a wall or breaking through a barricaded window. But for her, it’s an extension of her body. The way she swings her legs, the way she tucks her arms into her sides, everything is geared toward making her as agile as possible. I made the mistake of challenging her, one-on-one. Then for a rematch. Each time, she took me down from an angle I wasn’t expecting, with a speed I couldn’t adapt to. I have to adapt to it.
My only consolation is that she works best when her opponents are distracted. If she goes charging in, she’s going to get a bullet to the face. And she’ll deserve it. But for now, with her unpredictability, she’s set to turn our whole routine upside down. I can’t wait.
Our other new Operator is a special one. He’s quiet, but thoughtful. I’m not surprised his invention is the same. In both cases, if you underestimate or misjudge he’ll be on you like lightning.
I appreciate fielding another defense that more than one person can use. We have our cameras, and we need to check them, but the Volcán gives us something else to keep an eye on. Plus, it’s impressive. Smoke’s “toxic babes” keep people at bay, and do it well, but an unexpected explosion causes a split-second of disorientation that leaves you vulnerable to attack. When I’m right there behind my mirror, protected from the blast, that split-second is all I need.
You asked if they’re ready. They are. As for how they’re going to change the way we approach each other, we’ll just have to wait and see."
-- Specialist Elena “Mira” María Álvarez, Rainbow R&D Director
Visit our Rainbow Six Twitch Channel on August 18th for the full reveal of Operation Ember Rise during the Six Major Raleigh.
