Ubisoft Montreal have officially revealed their newest season of content for their immensely popular online shooter, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege.
In case you missed the cinematic teaser (shown above) Sam Fisher – of Splinter Cell fame – will be joining the Rainbow team for Year 5 Season 3 Operation: Shadow Legacy.
Codenamed “Zero”, this is an even gruffer Sam Fisher than we’ve seen before. He will make his debut with the launch of Rainbow Six Siege Y5S3 along with plenty of new and updated features. Before we dive into some highlights, here’s a quick breakdown.
Rainbow Six Siege Year 5 Season 3 summary
- New Operator: Zero (Sam Fisher)
- Map ban feature
- Match replays
- New weapons: SC-3000K and 5.7 USG
- Contextual ping system
- More scope attachment options
- Improvement accessibility
- Reinforcement pool
- New equipment: Hard Breach Charge
- Thatcher rework
- Stats tracker
- SquadFinder
Sam Fisher Joins Rainbow Six
Year 5 Season 3 sees Ubisoft shift to their new model of rolling out content. Instead of two Operators each season, the team are rolling it back to one. This is so the team can focus on improving the core gameplay instead of working solely on expanding that Rainbow Six roster.
It’s hard to complain when Sam Fisher comes knocking. The Splinter Cell protagonist wields his trusty SC-3000K assault rifle and 5.7 USG pistol (plus built-in suppressor, obvs), with the option to take an MP7 as his primary. His gadget is the Argus, a projectile camera that can embed into both breakable and non-breakable surfaces. This allows the stealth king to view both sides of a surface (similar to his keyhole-spying in Splinter Cell) and even hit gadgets with the Argus’s one-shot laser.
Chalet Map Rework
For well over a year now Ubisoft have stopped adding new maps to the Rainbow Six Siege rotation. Instead, the developers have gone back through the lineup of exists maps, reworking them to make each one more dynamic and viable for competitive play.
Following on House, Chalet has had some extensive work done. For a start, Operators can now rappel all the way up onto the roof, with the Trophy bomb site swapped for a new one in Dining. There have been renovations elsewhere, especially wit Bedroom and Office. The stairs leading up to the first floor are now connected to Trophy with Solarium being a new room replacing the balcony area next to Master. There are plenty of changes elsewhere for players to discover including a window looking down onto Garage.
New Attachments & Equipment
Players can equip a Hard Breach Charge in Y5S3. This works similarly to your regular charge but can punch through reinforced surfaces – mind you the hole left is medium sized and these will detonate automatically so need to be deployed with care.
Ubisoft have also adjusted how scopes work in Rainbow Six Siege. There are now 4 levels of magnification (1.5x, 2.0x, 2.5x, and 3.0x) with scopes redistributed across the entire Siege armoury.
Other New Features
Y5S3 packs in a load of other features and improvements:
- More accessibility options are being made available to colourblind players and those with visual impairments.
- Map bans will see players veto either one or two of the three random map selections. If only one map is eliminated, one of the remaining two will be automatically chosen.
- Your most recent 12 matches can be watched via Match Replay. This comes with a full spectator mode though is still being tested in alpha.
- Contextual pings allow you to highlight more points of interest using specific markers instead of the standard yellow ping.
- Instead of having 2 reinforcements each, defenders now share from a collective pool of 10 reinforcements.
- Thatcher’s EMP Grenade gadget will no longer destroy gadgets, just disable them.
- Ubisoft are launching a more in-depth stat tracker which breaks down your seasonal data. They will also launch SquadFinder, a tool used to connect with other players and create a fireteam.
So what is the release date for Rainbow Six Siege Year 5 Season 3? As always, Ubisoft are staying tight-lipped. All Y5S3 content and features will hit the test server first before becoming publicly available.
However, looking back at Year 4 and Year 3, both saw their third season roll out on September 11th, so keep that in mind.
