Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft’s long-running competitive tactical shooter, is celebrating its tenth year in a very big way. It just relaunched itself as Rainbow Six Siege X, updating the game with a wave of improvements for veterans while creating a perfect jumping-on point for new players who want to get in on the game’s unique brand of action.
Rainbow Six Siege X is a huge update that will finally make the game free to play while adding some great bonuses for owners of the original 2015 game. Overall, the update is a top-to-bottom technical revamp of the game addressing everything from physics and level destruction to audio and network overhauls. The most immediately noticeable change will be what the developer called “modernized maps.” This will double the texture resolution and update lighting across the board. Just five maps are getting the treatment, with three additional maps getting the update in future seasons.
Rappelling physics and how levels are transformed with gunfire and equipment are also being overhauled and made more detailed and realistic. This should add new dimension and dynamism to match. Audio is being updated, allowing players to more accurately tell what’s happening during a match. New weapon check animations, tutorials, and weapon inspection animations are also being added. The game’s UI is being overhauled to accommodate a decade’s worth of content updates and added features.
Perhaps most important to the game’s long-term health, Rainbow Six Siege X is both going free to play and revamping the game’s anti-cheat software and player reputation system. The free-to-play version of the game will let anyone play non-ranked matches and unlock up to 26 of the game’s 73 operators. With an influx of new players, developers beefing up the way it handles cheating and toxicity will go a long way in ensuring the community remains strong.
What’s most interesting is that all of these features will work across old and new consoles alike. The only part of the update that won’t work across all cross-platforms is the new six versus six multiplayer mode called Dual Front. This mode is exclusive to players on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles, likely because older hardware can’t handle the additional two players.
Rainbow Six Siege is a fantastic close-quarters shooter. But it is showing its age after 10 years on the market. Everything from the game’s visuals to its net code could feel a little dated for those jumping in well after release. It’s a testament to just how fun the core game has remained throughout the years.
Released in December 2015, Rainbow Six Siege is a special mix of team-based tactical play and the kind of twitch shooting you’d expect in something like Couner-Strike. In an era where most of Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy games are few and far between (or missing in action entirely), Rainbow Six has been a constant in terms of both content and quality. It’s one of Ubisoft’s biggest successes over the last couple of generations, and the X update is a no-brainer way to keep the momentum going for another decade without leaving anyone behind.
