Rainbow Six Siege Community Checkpoint: The Growing Siege Universe, Noor Deep Dive, and What’s Next

Siege hosted its latest Community Checkpoint today, live from Ubisoft’s Community Lounge at Gamescom. These livestreams are a chance for our devs to sit down and talk directly with you about what’s happening in Siege, what we’re working on, and what’s coming next.

This time, the team had quite a bit to talk about. We covered the newly announced Rainbow Six Tactics and what it means for the growing Siege universe, dug into Noor’s story and how he came to be, shared some big news about the future of Operators, and gave you a look at some of what we’re working on for Siege.

Siege Universe

Rainbow Six Tactics was recently announced, bringing a new single-player, turn-based tactical experience that takes place alongside Siege’s narrative.

At its core, Tactics is about putting you in command of Rainbow and taking the tactical DNA that’s always been at the heart of Siege into a different kind of experience.

And since Siege and Tactics exist within the same narrative, our teams have been working closely together. Siege developers worked with the Tactics team on lore for the new game, while also building narrative threads that connect back into Siege.

We’ve been careful to make sure the stories across both games add to each other without making you feel like you need to play both to understand what’s going on. If you only play one, there’s still plenty of story and lore to dig into. But if you play both, you might start spotting some connections that help build out the bigger picture of the Rainbow Six universe.

The goal is pretty simple: keep building toward the future while giving more depth to the world and history that got us here. There’s a lot of room for the Rainbow Six universe to grow, and we’re excited to keep exploring it.

Noor Deep Dive

Back in Year 9 Season 1 with Operation Deadly Omen, we made some pretty major changes to how shields work in Siege. Those changes helped reinforce their place in gameplay and made them more reliable when used well.

But stronger shields also meant we needed to make sure players had enough ways to deal with them.

Enter Noor.

Introduced with Operation Split Fire, Noor was designed specifically to give Defenders another answer when they’re up against shield Operators.

And there’s a little more history behind him than you might realize.

Rainbow is in Ahmed Noor’s blood. His father is Jamal Murrad, a former Rainbow and Unit 777 Operator who longtime Rainbow fans might recognize from Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear and Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield.

Ahmed grew up around the world while his father was deployed, including time at Hereford Base and in his native Egypt. He might have tried to avoid following in his father’s footsteps, but there’s no outrunning the past. Eventually, he trained with Unit 777 along with organizations like Delta Force, SAS, and GIGN, building relationships along the way that are still very much a part of his story.

Then there’s his gadget.

Noor’s Horus Lance Launcher fires a projectile that can pierce shields and destructible objects before releasing flames on either side, severely burning anyone unlucky enough to be standing nearby.

Hit a shield with it and you’ll trigger a guard break, giving you or a teammate an opening to take a shot. The enemy can swipe the projectile off their shield to stop the flames, but that creates another opening for your team to take advantage of.

And if you’re staring down a particularly shield-heavy lineup, Noor isn’t your only option. Denari, Clash, Goyo, and Oryx can all help you deal with that pressure in different ways.

At the end of the day, we want you to have enough tools to adapt to what the other team is doing. Pair those tools with good drone intel, communication, and teamwork, and you should have options for tackling whatever comes your way.

Four Operators Per Year

Alright, let’s talk Operators.

Starting in Year 12, Siege is going back to four new Operators per year.

That means more new gameplay opportunities throughout the year and more ways for Siege to keep changing and evolving from season to season.

Of course, making an Operator isn’t as simple as picking a gadget and dropping them into the game. Different Operators can have very different development timelines depending on the gameplay problem we’re trying to solve and the technology needed to make the idea work.

Noor, for example, came from the need to give players a competitive answer to shield Operators.

Skopos was a very different story. That Operator took years to make as the team worked through the technical challenges needed to bring the design to life. Solid Snake had completely different technical needs and ultimately had a smoother development process, even with the extra time spent working closely with Konami to make sure everything felt authentic.

There’s also another big question we ask pretty early when creating an Operator: where are they from?

One of the ideas that has always been at the heart of Siege is that saving the world means working together. We want to keep bringing in Operators from countries we haven’t represented before, while also finding ways to build stronger connections with countries and communities that have been an important part of Siege over the years.

And with more Operators on the horizon, we’re especially interested in what that can mean for squad play, giving coordinated teams more ways to build around each other and play together tactically.

The Future of Siege

So, what about everything else?

As Siege settles into its new cadence, we’re continuing to look at where the game goes from here and, importantly, how we keep the things that make Siege feel like Siege at the center of that.

Some of what’s ahead is already pretty clear. We’ve got new features, new stories, and new Operators coming.

Other things are a little more open-ended, and that’s intentional. We’re going to keep looking at the competitive experience, listening to what you’re telling us, and fine-tuning things like gameplay and team balancing as we go.

We’ve also seen the enthusiasm around the 1v1 and 3v3 Arcade modes, and we’re looking at ways to take those experiences further in future seasons.

And yes, the team is actively working on a Hostage Rework.

There’s plenty more we’re not ready to fully talk about just yet, too. We’ve got some surprises planned for the seasons and years ahead.

Including one that might raise a few eyebrows:

A playable Operator is going to die.

We’ll leave you with that one for now.

There’s a lot more coming to Siege, and as always, we’re looking forward to talking about it with you.