Rainbow Six Siege’s latest season, North Star, starts on June 14th, bringing in a new healing operator as well as a whole host of new changes.
In an extensive reveal panel for the Year 6 Season 2 North Star update, Ubisoft details what you can expect from the upcoming operators and gameplay improvements that are being made for the season.
The new operator, Thunderbird, is a three-speed one armour defender who’s got a choice between a .308 rifle, and a semi-automatic Spas-15 shotgun. Guns are all well and good, but what sets Rainbow Six’s operators apart, as usual, are their unique abilities, and Thunderbird is no different.
Thunderbird’s gadget is the Kona Station, a healing station which shoots “a tasty health nugget,” their words not mine, “at the first Operator who enters its radius.” On top of this, it can also revive down-but-not-out operators, so it’s got a huge amount of potential.
Like a good doctor, this nifty device doesn’t distinguish between friend or foe, so the opposing team can benefit from a poorly placed station should the defenders be pushed back away from where it was set up.
A gadget that can potentially help friend as much as foe is an interesting addition to the Rainbow Six Siege Operator lineup, however, only time will tell if they can replace Doc out of his namesake as the team’s resident healer.
Also returning in this update is the long-missed map Favela, which once epitomised Rainbow Six Siege’s destructive capabilities. While very impressive, this did make the map rather hard to play, with the rework it’s received making it less destructible and hopefully a lot more enjoyable in turn.
Notably not included in this update is the gameplay after operator death which will only be available in the Technical Test Servers. This rework would allow operators to still pilot their drone, and use some gadgets even after being fatally riddled with bullets, finally giving the dead something to do beyond wiggle around in the cameras.