.jpg?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp)
Rainbow Six Siege’s next operator takes a page out of Valorant’s playbook
We’ve gotten to the point where Rainbow Six Siege is pretty much done. There are many operators, arguably too many, who can break through walls, drive cameras, or set traps. But with plans to add four new operators a year, Ubisoft is looking outward to create interesting new characters. Siege’s newest attacker, Sens, feels like the product of a particularly popular shooter: Valorant.
Sens is a Siege rarity: 1 speed, 3 armor attacker, no shield. The only other operations in this class are Gridlock and Fuze, two supporting operations that are interesting but irrelevant. Sens, on the other hand, includes a gadget that could become a favorite among Siege’s most serious ranking players.it’s known softwhich is basically a rolling donut with a wall of light blocking the view in its wake.
Think of the ROU as a long squashed smoke bomb fruit underfoot. It sounds silly and sci-fi and I love it. Take a look at:
sensor load
- small tools: ROU light wheel (3)
- Main gun: POF-9 Assault Rifle (New), 417 DMR
- Sub gun: SDP 9mm, Gonne 6
- Secondary gadgets: Hardbreach, Claymores
ROUs aren’t just “like smoke bombs,” though. It’s essentially the ultimate smoke bomb. The Sense has three wheels, each capable of cutting an entire room in half in about 12 seconds. I’m impressed with the Sens’s nimbus and a great upgrade to your bog-standard smoke cloud, especially when planting a bomb – it’s hard to guess where the planter is and shoot through smoke when you can’t see half the room . Fans of Valorant will recognize Sens’ Wall as a clever adaptation of Phoenix Firewall Capability.
In action, using the ROU is a lot like throwing Ying’s Candela flash grenade. Light wheels roll on the ground, go around small obstacles and bounce off walls like a cue ball. It also rolls pretty far, so if you’re really good, you can tilt it to a specific angle to “paint” the ideal wall of light. Not bad if you ask me, although trying to strike up a conversation with Ying has gotten me killed so many times in the past that I’ve adopted an informal “throw it and forget it” policy.
One situation where normal smoke grenades (or Capitão’s smoke grenades) would win is in locations where defenders can monitor the action from the floor above. Aerial view, the soft light wall is as thin as paper.
Sens also had several notable counter-attacks on the defensive end. Like a smoke bomb, the ROU is destroyed by Jäger’s ADS and interrupted by Wamai’s disc. Mute’s jammers can also disable light walls, but only the portion of the wall within the jammer’s radius. Cameras that can see through smoke, like Maestro’s Evil Eyes and bulletproof cameras, can also see through Sens’ walls.
Perhaps the best counter for the Sens is Warden, one of Siege’s least popular defenders. Warden has always been the bottom option because of his highly contextual glasses that can see through smoke and absolutely nothing else. Now that Sens is out, Warden may have finally found a worthwhile job.
I think Sens’ special skills will make it a common choice for coordinating teams in rankings, but “Better Smoke Grenade” isn’t a particularly exciting ability either. If you prefer to use gadgets that leave markers on the map or operators that let you use your camera for sneaky information playback, the Sens is a smart choice.
drop range
The next season of Siege is also easily one of the most popular features of the past seven years: the shooting range. Ubi is following in Valorant’s footsteps in this regard. Both ranges are very familiar in appearance and layout: complete with target dummies, position damage readouts and distance controls for firing them. After years of testing recoil modes shooting at blank walls and staring at holes, this is a luxurious setup.
The two shooting ranges are very similar and can be distracting if you’ve played both, but I think Riot should take that as a compliment. Valorant’s shooting range is so good, Siege must have it. CS:GO and Overwatch should be prompted.
I especially like the little details that make it an obvious siege shooting range. Turn right from the standard bullseye target dummy and you’ll find a robot that can switch between standing, crouching, and prone. The shooting dummy displays damage numbers and simulates the enemy’s health bar, giving you zero ambiguity how many shots it takes to kill an X operator with a Y gun from a Z distance. It’s pretty much everything a serious player wants from a range. The modular layout of the shooting range makes me wish it could be expanded in the future. High on my wish list is a scope with a moving target to dodge, dodge and peek quickly like a true Ash workhorse.
It can be a little disorienting when hero shooters borrow a lot from each other, but I’ve always had fun with developers adapting good ideas for their games. Siege has been a hotbed of inspiration for other shooters over the years. Bloodhound’s footprint tracker in Apex Legends is a dead ringer for Jackal, Caustic’s gas grenade is like Smoke, and Cypher’s camera brings a little siege to Valorant. It’s only in the last few years that Ubi has started to borrow good ideas from other games — Siege’s match replay tool, improved ranking system, and Battle Pass are all recent examples. The cliché “good artists plagiarize, great artists steal” holds up.
I appreciate Ubi being inspired where Siege could benefit, even if I don’t play that much these days. Further evidence that the damned persistent bug, Siege is here to stay. Sens and the shooting range arrived on June 7 with Operation Vector Glare.