Rainbow Six Siege Update Celebrates The Notolympics
New map, new characters
The Summer Olympics are almost upon us, which means games are trying to sneakily hold Olympics events without drawing the wrath of the United States Olympic Committee. That lot are even unhappy about companies using the #Rio2016 hashtag if they aren't official sponsors, you know. That's the Olympic spirit!
Blizzard have sent Overwatch to Brazil, carefully skirting around infrigement in their unbranded sportswear, and Ubisoft have packed Rainbow Six Siege [official site] off to Brazil too. Now live is the shooter's 'Operation Skull Rain' update, bringing a map set in a favela, two Brazilian characters, anti-cheat tech, a 'Tactical Realism' mode, and more.
It's nothing to do with the Rio 2016 Olympics, of course. Just a coincide they're visiting Brazil right now. This new map, Favela? Sure, it's in Rio - but you can tell this favela's not around the Olympics because they're breaching as well as clearing. Favela looks quite nice, with colours and everything.
As for the two new operatives, they're Caveira and Capitão. She's a defender with a shotgun and the ability to sneak up on folks and interrogate them to learn enemy positions, while he's an attacker with a honking great machine gun and a crossbow firing smoke and asphyxiation grenades (they burn the oxygen, okay - it's science). Like all other new operatives, only season pass holders get to play as them for the first week. Say, the Olympics will have started by the time everyone else can play them.
Here, you can see all that coincidentally-Brazilian stuff in this trailer:
One of the more exciting other additions with this update is 'Tactical Realism', a new Custom Game mode. Ubisoft say:
"Inspired by your enthusiasm towards getting a 'Hardcore' mode, we created the Tactical Realism mode to foster a better immersion by relying less on the in-game feedback. We endeavored to offer a realistic experience via several modifications, namely, limiting the HUD to only display the Round Timer, Compass, Gadget & Weapon Panels; preventing you from marking your enemy; removing the kill confirmations; providing a realistic Magazine Management for ammo; and much more. This is a first step toward immersion, and we wish to gather your feedback in order to improve this iteration."
That's more like what you'd expect from a Tom Clancy's Video Game in days of yore.
Unreasonably exciting to me is a change stopping characters clipping through walls. The number of times I've died in FPSs because a bodypart clipped through a thin wall and gave my position away...
Anyway! Head on over to the update page to learn about everything new.