Year 8 Season 4 – Operation Deep Freeze of Rainbow Six Siege is coming in just two days and according to tradition, we must unveil the newest season at an R6 major event. On the last day of the Blast R6 Major Atlanta, we got to take a look at everything we have to look forward to for the final season of the year and oh boy is there a lot to look at. So without further ado, let’s take a look at Operation Deep Freeze.
Release Date
Let’s start off with when the Operation itself will come out. Operation Deep Freeze will arrive in Rainbow Six Siege on November 28, 2023. That’s two days from now. Of course, with the arrival of Operation Deep Freeze comes the end of Operation Heavy Mettle. If there’s anything else you need to accomplish in Heavy Mettle, you better finish it before Deep Freeze rolls around.
New Map: Lair
We received a nice little teaser trailer for the new map a few days ago but during the Reveal Panel, we got to see the full tour of the newest map: Lair. The map has placed a lot of focus on vertical play and off-angles. It contains four bomb sites and actually has importance in the lore of Rainbow Six: Siege. Lair is the main headquarters of the current antagonist of team Rainbow, Deimos. The map is undeniably beautiful but its competitive viability remains to be seen. Lair will be available to play on the test server starting November 13th.
Reputation System Full Release
The reputation system that has been slowly rolled out into a beta over the past couple of seasons is fully being released in Year 8 Season 4. The fully released system promises a larger impact of reputation on the actual game experience itself. The reveal panel specifically mentions an impact on progress towards drops, end-of-match rewards, and access to certain playlists.
Frag Grenade Nerf
A more controversial change coming to Rainbow Six: Siege in Operation Deep Freeze is the nerf to all frag grenades across the board. The nerf will make it so that grenades can no longer be timed or ‘cooked’. This change is definitely going to lower the overall lethality and skill ceiling of frag grenades but on the plus side, five new operators will gain access to grenades. These include Sens, Osa, Lion, Blackbeard, and IQ.
Rainbow Six Siege Marketplace Beta
The Siege Marketplace Beta was definitely a huge surprise at the reveal panel and not much is really known about what the marketplace even is. From what was said at the panel, we can gather that it is a place that lets players buy and sell skins between each other. The most pertinent comparison is likely the Counter-Strike 2 skin market but it is currently unknown if the marketplace will operate on real money, R6 credits, or in-game renown. Players can register for the Siege Marketplace Beta at this link: https://rainbow6.com/marketplace/qr-register.
New Training Modes
Rainbow Six: Siege has long expressed their desire to improve the onboarding and tutorial systems within the game and their latest attempt at doing so carries both good and bad news with it. Two new training modes were revealed: Versus AI and Map Run. Versus AI is pretty much just a normal game of Rainbow Six, except that the defenders you will be going up against are completely AI bots. Plans are in place to have real players on defense and AI on attack but no timetable has been put in place for it. Map Run, is a new learning tool made to help new players better learn the many maps within the game. Upon release, there will be seven available maps, including Lair, and two modes: Landmark Drill and Target Drill. Landmark Drill looks to be a straightforward exploration of the maps, meanwhile, target drill places target dummies in common spots across the map that players can shoot with a setting that lets the dummies shoot back.
Now for the bad news, with these new modes in place, we must unfortunately say goodbye to Training Grounds or for the veteran players, Terrorist Hunt.
Console Improvements
Of course, console players must also get some love this next season. Year 8 Season 4 is bringing the option for console players to remap their controls for Rainbow Six, this includes an improved system for leaning on console and leaning without aiming down sights.
Improved Battle Pass UI
Siege players will tell you how unintuitive the current edition of the battlepass map is so an update that can simplify it is definitely a welcome one.
New Operator: Tubarão
Tubarão is the newest operator coming to Rainbow Six in Operation Deep Freeze. A Portugese operator with a gadget that can temporarily freeze both electric and mechanical gadgets, and yes that includes Thermite, Ace, Nomad, Ram, and pretty much 80% of the attacking side. Just from the reveal, he definitely looks like he could be one of the strongest and most versatile defenders in the game but only time will tell if Tubarão is as good as many players fear him to be. For a deeper dive into Tubarão’s arsenal, ability interactions and his potential place in the meta of Rainbow Six: Siege, you can view our dedicated article for Tubarao in Deep Freeze.
Ryu Elite for Grim and Chun-Li Elite for Ying
Last but surely not least was another happy surprise reveal. Two more elite skins are coming to Rainbow Six and this time, it is a collaboration with one of the most iconic fighting game franchises: Street Fighter. Grim will be donning Ryu’s legendary Gi meanwhile Ying will be putting her hair up in Chun-Li’s iconic Ox Horns.
Operation Deep Freeze looks to be adding a lot to be excited about to Rainbow Six: Siege. Which update are you most excited about? All of these updates will be live and available to play on test servers starting November 13.
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