Rainbow Six Siege’s newest operation, Shadow Legacy, will introduce a significant amount of meta-changing updates to the game.
The reveal, which debuted on the Rainbow Six Twitch channel during the North America Mini-Major, included the latest operator to be introduced to the game: Sam “Zero” Fisher from the Splinter Cell series. His gadget will be an “Argus” launcher, a two-way camera that can fire a small laser that destroys defender utility.
Also new to the game will be a rework of the map Chalet, a new hard-breaching secondary gadget, and the teased “Ping 2.0” system which will allow players to mark utility so their team will know exactly what is where on the map.
There will also be new scope magnifications coming in the next season, upsetting the old dynamic of choosing between the 1x magnification Red Dot, Holographic, and Reflex sights and the 3.0x magnification of the ACOG. Also new to the season will be reticle colors, which gives players more cosmetic customization and allows colorblind players more options.
Possibly one of the biggest changes is the idea of “reinforcement pools.”
Normally, each operator has two reinforcements they can use to cover hatches or soft walls. With the update, the team of five can pull from a pool of 10 reinforcements, which will help operators that have to wear many hats during the preparation phase.
The secondary hard breaching gadget will undoubtedly affect the meta of the game as well. Since Rainbow Six was born, hard breachers were a must on any attacking lineup. Having the new secondary gadget could lead to more flexibility among attacking lineups. In addition, Ubisoft says it will experiment on the test server with auto-reinforced ceiling hatches, but is willing to quickly revert the change if players prefer those roof hatches to stay soft.
Changes are also coming to one of Rainbow Six’s strongest attackers: Thatcher. His EMP grenades will no longer destroy some defender electronic gadgets and disable others, they will all simply disable electronic gadgets.
Also coming in the new season will be an early version of a replay system, and map bans in the Ranked/Unranked playlists. Ubisoft also added a “squad finder” and more advanced statistics to their official website and applications.
