The new season for Rainbow Six Siege, operation Deep Freeze, was just showcased at the R6 Major in Atlanta. Here is all you need to know about what was showcased. 

Let’s start with the main reason for the excitement, our new operator Tubarao. He’s a two-armor two speed defender from Portugal that has a new chilling gadget, the Zoto canister. The best way to summarize what this operator is, is to picture Kaid, Pulse, and barbed wire were all meshed into one. His Zoto canister is a throwable ice grenade that detonates on impact, spreading an icy sheet in a large area engulfing everything in its path. It can disable any mechanical gadget such as Fuze charges, Flores Drones, Nomad Air Jabs, all Hard Breachers, and many more. The canisters also slow anybody down in the vicinity of the ice sheet, even showing enemy footsteps in real time from above and below hence the Pulse comparison. He’s equipped with the fan-favorite MPX or the AR-15 which would make it the second DMR on defense. Secondary gadgets include Nitro Cell and Proximity alarms. 

With the operator out of the way let’s focus on some other announcements that made players voice their disapproval in the live crowd. It was confirmed that frag grenades will no longer be able to be cooked, this elicited a very loud angered response from the crowd seeing as their slowly removing the realism from an otherwise grounded game. On the bright side there will be around 3 to 4 more Operators allowed to equip frag grenades such as BlackBeard, Sens, and IQ. Another major upset was that the fan favorite game modes terrorist hunt and situations are being removed in favor of new modes for beginners to the game. This is leaving a sour taste in players’ mouths as many believe that the developers are catering to new players who are bound to drop the game rather than the core player base that has continuously thrived. The game modes will be replaced by a map learning tool that will teach correct call outs and potential player confrontations. This is all tied to the new versus AI game mode, which was created for new players to be able to play against AI in real Rainbow Six Siege games, using gathered player data to influence the AI players. It was also announced that the team is delaying the shield rework that was meant to happen this season until Year 9 season 1, which was also confirmed to be happening. 

More on the positive side there were many great announcements. Such as our first real look at the new map, Lair, which is said to be one of the biggest maps to date. It was confirmed to be Deimos lair, the mysterious figure who has dropped in various Rainbow Six Siege lore cinematics beforehand. There is also some new exciting news regarding player binds on controllers as the developers are soon integrating the ability to change binds on controllers to make the game more accessible and also the mention of hip leaning finally coming to console. They ended off the season overview with the showcase of this season’s two elite skins. A Streetfighter collab with Grim as Ryu and Ying as Chun li. 

Get ready to boot up and hit the streets with two bundles featuring characters from Street Fighter™ 6: Ying as Chun-Li and Grim as Ryu! #R6SxSF6 #StreetFighter pic.twitter.com/d3XFehsvQZ

— Rainbow Six Siege (@Rainbow6Game) November 12, 2023

The new season looks to really be shaking up the culture of Rainbow Six Siege with some great changes and some not-so-great choices. Either way, players can play the test server for the new season starting tomorrow with the full launch coming on November 28th.