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Rainbow Six Siege is part of an exclusive club of multiplayer games that have been so successful for so long that, well, it’s now officially old. There have been rumblings for over a year now that Ubisoft was planning a huge, possibly sequel-sized update to its 10-year-old tactical FPS, but after the very public debacle of Overwatch 2’s launch, I’m not surprised the next era of Siege won’t have a ‘2’ on it.
It’s called Rainbow Six Siege X, and it’s essentially a refresh to core aspects of Siege: Revamped audio, modernized maps, enhanced environmental destruction, weapon inspect, a better ping feature, and oh yeah, a new permanent 6v6 game mode called Dual Front.
Siege X has been in the works for around three years, being developed concurrently with Siege’s nonstop seasonal updates, and according to game director Alexander Karpazis, the idea is to set Siege up for its next 10 years of growth without disrupting the experience for players who’ve been there all along.
“Siege X, for us, is a moment where we want to make big, meaningful changes to the game,” Karpazis told PC Gamer at the Siege X reveal in Atlanta. “We want to show that, yes, we’re here for another 10 years, and we want to respect the people who brought us here so far.
“You don’t get to 10 years as a live service game without the community that built you up.”
Siege may have a different SKU when it makes the Siege X transition on June 10, but all existing operators, skins, and loadouts will carry over.
When you add up Dual Front, audio improvements, graphical upgrades, and the bevy of quality-of-life features, you could argue Siege X has a better claim to the number ‘2’ than Overwatch 2 or Counter-Strike 2, but Karpazis says a sequel was never the plan.
“Siege 2 was never on the table. A lot of live service games are starting to go through this process because a lot of them are hitting that 10-year mark,” Karpazis said. “We just had to do what was right for Siege and what was right for players as well. When we go back in time three years ago, that was the main focus for us,” he said.
“We didn’t want to get distracted by any other strategies that were out there. We wanted to answer our own question.”
Dual modes
The single largest addition of Siege X is Dual Front, a 6v6 game mode that breaks traditional Siege rules. Karpazis says the team has been playtesting the mode for over a year.
“It’s incredibly hard to make a brand new PvP game mode,” he said. “With a new mode like Dual Front, you can try new things that we just couldn’t do with Ranked before.”
For an experienced Siege player, the changes are alarming. The mode takes place on one huge map consisting of six mirrored districts, teams can consist of a mix of attackers and defenders, and players respawn after 30 seconds.
“These are all things that, honestly, were pretty scary for the team,” Karpazis added.
Ubisoft will add to Dual Front each season with map updates and new objective types, but Karpazis wanted to make something very clear:
“Siege X is still really about the core Siege mode … We really wanted to put a lot of time and effort into the core of Siege, too.”
We’re super happy if players are like, I’m playing my Ranked. This is the best experience I can get.
Alex Karpazis, game director
“Core Siege”, as the main menu will now describe it, is getting five “modernized” map updates with higher resolution textures, bump mapping, more detailed and atmospheric lighting, and destructible ingredients: interactive map features that can be shot to trigger useful effects. The first three are a fire extinguisher that creates a smoke cloud, a gas pipe that denies an area with fire, and metal detectors that can be disabled. Only five maps are modernized for now, but future seasons will add three more at a time.
Despite the big effort being put into Dual Front, Karpazis doesn’t want longtime players to feel like a new mode is being pushed on them.
“We’re super happy if players are like, I’m playing my Ranked. This is the best experience I can get,” he said.
Karpazis spoke with the confidence of a developer who knows that, even after all this time, he still has a unique game on his hands. One of Siege’s greatest strengths is that if players want to play an FPS with its level of destruction, gadget variety, and polish, there is no “other” Siege.
In a time when new multiplayer games regularly try and fail to capture a sustainable audience—a time when Ubisoft as a whole is doing so poorly that there are talks of a buyout—Siege going stronger than ever.
“The game has continued to grow, we’re still setting new records in this last year,” Karpazis said. “For us, that’s just a great signal that this is a game people love and want to play more.”
Rainbow Six Siege X launches on June 10, and for the first time, it’ll be free-to-play.
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Kurt Indovina
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