Rainbow Six Siege wraps up Year 8 with Operation Deep Freeze

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege is prepared to bring Season 8 to an end. Most games are embracing the winter season and Siege is no different. It's just going about it a different way. Operation Deep Freeze is headlined by (and also perfectly describes) the year's last new Operator, a Defender named Tubarão. Shacknews recently got an opportunity to try this character out for the first time.

Tubarão hails from Portugal, but unlike the Portuguese climate, he's all about sub-zero temperatures. That's evidenced by his main gadget, a throwable object called the Zoto Canister. When engaging in combat, he can wield either an MPX or AR-15.50 assault rifle along with a P226 MK 25 sidearm.

The Zoto Canister uses freezing temperatures to disable most gadgets in its vicinity, whether they belong to enemies or allies. If the defending team can sense something like Ace's S.E.L.M.A. breacher or Flores' RCE-Ratero Charge coming, Tubarão's Zoto Canister can disable them through sheer cold. If that's not enough, the Zoto Canister can affect any Attacker caught in its radius by slowing them to a crawl. If nothing else, Tubarão can set his teammates up to help take down any enemies caught in his gadget's range.

Tubarão is being released alongside an intriguing new map that looks like something right out of a James Bond movie. The new Lair map is home to the Deimos organization, but for such a secure facility, it has an awful lot of entrances. Players can break in through various points across Lair's three floors. The interior is likewise destructible and made for Operators like Sledge, Ace, and Thermite to break through its various walls.

If players want to practice Lair or any of the game's other maps, but without the pressures of Ranked Play or even the possibility of people yelling at them, Ubisoft Montreal is introducing a new feature called Versus AI. Yes, bot play is finally coming to Rainbow Six Siege. Players can jump into games populated by bots, ones that the dev team is designing to mimic real player behavior. Those who just need to study maps themselves can jump into Map Training, which allows players to analyze maps closely and improve their approaches to them in Ranked Play and beyond.

Siege continues to plan for its long-term future and the latest feature to look out for is the Rainbow Six Siege Marketplace. Yes, this is opening the door for players to buy or sell various in-game items using R6 Credits. Those interested in checking it out can register on the Rainbow Six Siege website starting today.

Rainbow Six Siege will conclude Year 8 with Operation Deep Freeze when it hits PC, PlayStation, and Xbox on Tuesday, November 28.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?