Rainbow Six Siege begins remastering operators with Operation New Blood

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege has been available for almost a full decade. A lot has happened in that time, so much so that the Operator field has gotten a little crowded. As noted prior to the start of Year 9, Ubisoft Montreal is approaching this year a little differently. The game's next season, titled Operation New Blood, is noteworthy because it will be the first without a new Operator... sort of. Is there a new face joining the roster? No. However, that doesn't mean players won't find anything new with this update.

Rainbow Six Siege's roster is filled with dozens of unique Operators, each with their own lore, gadgets, and utility uses. Then there's the Recruit, the faceless default character meant to be used for beginners. The Recruit has gone from a valuable tool to a standout selection for mostly the wrong reasons. For Operation New Blood, Ubisoft Montreal is finally revamping the Recruit to make it more viable to modern Siege.

The new-look Recruit will be available on both sides of the Siege coin. Striker can be used as an Attacker, while Sentry can be used as a Defender. Ubisoft approached the Recruit remaster from an interesting perspective, opting for a character that doesn't specialize in any one thing but rather works as a more well-rounded operative. The Recruit will be the only character in the game who can utilize two generic gadgets. Striker can select between a stun grenade, hard breach charge, frag grenade, impact EMP grenade, smoke grenade, claymore, and breach charge. On the defensive side, Sentry can pick between impact grenades, deployable shields, barbed wire, nitro cells, proximity alarms, observation blockers, and utility cameras.

While the remastered Recruit doesn't sound too exciting on the surface, it can be handy on the right team and with anyone who knows how to best utilize those generic gadgets. They also bring an air of unpredictability to the game. A player who sees Striker or Sentry on the opposing team won't know which gadgets they're packing and won't be able to plan accordingly.

There are some other big changes coming to Siege with Operation New Blood. As part of Ubisoft Montreal's continuing efforts to combat toxicity, Siege's Reputation system is ready to come out of beta. Balance tweaks are coming to Solis and Fenrir. The latter, specifically, will lose bulletproof qualities for his gadget. New quality-of-life features are coming, the big one being map filtering. Lastly, the Rainbow Six Siege Marketplace is ready to roll out and will be available to players who are Level 25 or higher.

Rainbow Six Siege is about to kick off its next season. Look for Operation New Blood to hit the PC Test Server in the next week. It'll come to all platforms shortly thereafter.

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?