Ubisoft announce Rainbow Six Siege X with a full reveal coming in March

Ubisoft has announced Rainbow Six Siege X, a big overhaul for the long-running online tactical shooter, which will be revealed in full at the Rainbow Six Siege X Showcase on 13th March at 5pm GMT.

“A new era is on the horizon for Rainbow Six Siege – one that sets the stage for the years to come of tactical and unique gameplay,” the team writes in the announcement. 

“The R6 team has been working tirelessly to bring to life the biggest transformation in the game’s history and its purpose is to reinforce Rainbow Six Siege’s position at the top of tactical first-person shooters by introducing new ways to play, deepened tactical gameplay, refined game feel and major upgrades all around.”

The teaser trailer could be seen to hint at a back to basics review of the game, focusing on the little scouting drone and explosive charges, but also giving little hints at new or improved gameplay. In particular, the helicopter hovering over a building implies a helicopter spawn and rappel, and of the special forces teams running along walls that they are tethered to – from my memory, this would be a quite significant speed up of the grappled movement. The chained explosions also suggest more interactivity through the environment.

And I say “from my memory” because it’s coming up on the 10 year anniversary of Rainbow Six Siege. The game launched in December 2015, reshaping the series from its roots as a single player or PvE co-op shooter first, to being multiplayer first. It featured destructible environments at its core, enabling players to reshape the levels, open up new firing angles and defensive or attacking positions.

While many still hanker for the a single player mode in the vein of R6 Vegas, R6 Siege proved to be a massive success for Ubisoft, gathering over 70 million players through its first five years, and becoming a staple of the genre thanks to the ‘games as a service’ approach of having regular seasonal updates that added new characters and maps to play. While remaining popular, the game has come in for criticism at times for how outlandish some of the new agents have become, and a zombie-ish spin-off proved to be…. less successful.

10 years is a long, long time in video games, and keeping players engaged and active is no small feat. We look forward to seeing what Rainbow Six Siege X brings when it is revealed next month.

Source: Ubisoft