Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat played hands-on with Rainbow Six Siege Season 4’s Operation Wind Bastion.
Ubisoft ‘s Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is starting out its Year 3 Season 4 content with a new update dubbed Operation Wind Bastion.
This kind of update is why the five-year-old game still has a big following a couple of years after launch, and a grand total of 40 million players. I played the update at a recent Ubisoft preview event, and you can see part of my gameplay in the video embedded in the story.
It introduces a new Fortress map set in the Kingdom of Morocco, and it has a new attacker named Nomad and a new defender named Kaid. Nomad has a crowd control “air jab” device that can knock down a wall, while Kaid has “electro claw” devices that can electrify wires and metal barricades.
The fortress is a military training facility located in the Atlas Mountains, and it serves as the headquarters and a living space for Kaid, who lives in a mud brick Kasbah with architecture that is unique to the southern region of Morocco. The place has some portraits of Kaid, who is commander of the Kasbah and trained operators such as Nomad, hanging in the halls. It’s a beautiful place inspired by real places, but it’s a fictional location.
The place is like a heavily defended palace, with a lot of open space, two stories, points of cover and lines of sight for both close-range and long-range engagements. It’s a fairly large map. You can climb ropes to the top of the roof from any location.
Kaid has more armor, but less mobility. He has a Aug A3 submachine gun and a TCSG12, a single-pellet shotgun. He has a secondary pistol with an ACOG gunsight on it.
His electro claw is a throwable gadget can electrify metal barriers in the environment. That includes metal barricades, barbed wire, as well as hatches. It electrifies everything in a radius. IQ, another operator, can easily spot the claws, as can a drone. An EMP grenade can disable them.
Maverick, a previously released operator who can burn holes in walls to find gadgets, won’t be able to find it so easily because the claw doesn’t have to be attached to the wall that it electrifies. So Kaid’s electro claw is a good counter to Maverick.
Meanwhile, Nomad can use the air jab device to delivers an air blast that can knock down any operator in its way. It can even knock down walls, and disarm the shield of Clash, the operator with a huge riot shield. I got knocked down, even though I was hiding behind a wall, as you can see at the end of the gameplay video attached. It’s very effective for knocking defenders out of cover and then shooting them.
Nomad comes from a rich family and was recruited to be a fighter for her toughness. She has an AK-74M assault weapon and a ARX200 assault rifle. She has a secondary pistol and a stun grenade.
I played some rounds with some expert players, including some Rainbow Six Siege YouTubers. It wasn’t pretty, but I got to see how useful Kaid and Nomad were. Kaid’s electro claws made it so you didn’t have to worry about some barricaded areas.
I thought the update was fun, but it was purely a happy accident when I took down one of the expert players in the gameplay session. I like how each new operator can exploit vulnerabilities in previous operators, and vice versa. This tight design allows Ubisoft to make veteran players happy.
Ubisoft unveiled Operation Wind Bastion today at the Pro League Finals taking place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. During this weekend Rainbow Six Siege is available to play for free. The game has more than 40 million paid and free players in the community. Ubisoft recently announced PayPal as a sponsor and payment platform partner for the esports events.
