Shadow Legacy, the current season in Rainbow Six Siege, is getting ripe. Thankfully, we’ve had a lovely news drop and reveal of next season’s operator.
Aruni is the brand-spanking-new operator from Thailand. She’s a defender and, my word, she looks tough. She’s got a scar on her face, a prosthetic robot arm, and she plays with lasers. If that’s not enough of a selling point for you, then check your pulse.
The specialty gadget Aruni is bringing to Siege next season is a specialized laser grid to protect doorways, windows, and rotate holes. The laser grid is known as the Surya Gate (surya being Sanskrit for “sun”) and they take about 40 health off of any attackers bold (or stupid) enough to go through them.
The Surya Gate not only singes those bold enough to walk through an angry laser grid, but also destroys utilities and drones. When a projectile or attacker breaches the gate, it switches off to recharge for a short time, so thankfully they did think of some balance.
Speaking of balance: besides her sci-fi gadget, Aruni also boasts the first DMR for a defender in Siege. Hopefully this doesn’t break the game.
Personally, the thing that excited me the most about seeing the footage of Aruni in action was her robotic arm. She can punch sizable holes in walls, almost playing the role of a shotgun when creating tactical rotate holes on sites. Her melee animation will be entirely unique, because she won’t be wielding either a knife or shield, opting instead for bare-robotic knuckles, killing attackers with a single blow.
Watching the video above, you would also have noticed one or two changes beside the robotic punching lady with lasers.
The Skyscraper map is getting its long-awaited rework (praise be Ubisoft). This means those pesky balconies are going away, and hopefully you’ll be able to spawn on this map without being killed instantly as the round starts.
Hibana is getting a slight change to the way her X-KAIROS launcher works, with players now able to toggle between two, four, and six pellets. This means there will be flexibility in how she opens holes, vastly increasing her utility for reinforced hatches.
Some other changes include changes to Jager’s ADS, which will require a recharge time to shoot projectiles after the first shot. Additionally, Echo’s Yokai drone will no longer be invisible (praise be to Ubisoft again, even though it’s a bit late). A big change is that defender run outs will now take less time to alert attackers, with a snazzy new detection bar replacing the old countdown timer.
Ubisoft is quick to point out that all of these changes and quality of life improvements will be free. Aruni will be available to all season pass holders one week early, being purchasable by anyone for Renown or R6 Credits after that.
We don’t have a launch date for Operation Neon Dawn just yet, as per the Ubisoft MO, but all of these changes are live on the Test Server right now on PC.
