By way of a short news piece on their website, Ubisoft revealed yesterday details about their upcoming major update for Rainbow Six Siege, coined Operation Para Bellum. The patch is designed as a light reset for the start of the second season of the game’s third year. A full reveal is scheduled alongside the ESL Rainbow Six Siege Pro League Finals on May 19th-20th in Atlantic City, USA.
The stand out information is the inclusion of two new Italian operators, who fall into the defender category. These two seem to correlate with the details extracted by players through data mining earlier this year, though this has yet to be confirmed. The update also includes a brand new map, which Ubisoft calls ‘our most competitive map to date.’
Players also get a fresh intel gadget, welcome enhancements and fixes to game play, notably a new counter defuser animation, and changes to dropshotting. Additionally, expect buffs to Echo and the Clubhouse map in the form of cosmetic and structural changes. The idea being to revamp the feel of the location ever so slightly and encourage players to develop new tactics.
Ubisoft are also implementing a potentially interesting change to competitive play in the shape of a pick and ban process. A Dev Blog published today explains that teams can choose to ban two operators each – one attacker and one defender – effectively relegating a quadruplet of operators to the locker room for both teams. The developers explain that ‘the goal of this feature is to deepen the strategy of the game by altering the pool of Operators available in a match allowing players to craft their own Meta.’ By example, they suggest teams may prefer to ban an operator they are certain their opponents will outperform them on, thus giving them an in game advantage.
Specifics are scarce at the moment so remember to tune in to the Rainbow Six Twitch channel later this month for more details. If you haven’t already, take a gander at the patch notes for the Rainbow Six Siege update 1.2 released earlier this month, which covers balance changes, as well as operator and game play fixes.
