Ubisoft has unwrapped Rainbow Six Siege X, their big overhaul for the decade-old tactical shooter, aiming to prepare the game for the decade to come. Rainbow Six Siege X will launch on 10th June 2025.
As part of that there’s a whole host of technical improvements and updates to the core game, but perhaps the biggest announcement here is that the game is going free-to-play with free access to the bulk of the Rainbow Six Siege experience – including the new Dual Front mode – while a paid tier (or a prior purchase) locks away certain modes and operators.
There’s a significant visual overhaul, with Ubisoft going back to rework all of the main materials within the game, upping the detail for things as fundamental as brick walls and wooden planks. Alongside that, there’s refreshed lighting and reflections that are best seen in the maps Clubhouse, Chalet, Bank, Russian Cafe, and Border. The change can feel very subtle without side-by-side comparisons, but the emphasis is basically on making lighting more realistic, so rooms will likely be a notch darker and light sources, like the sun streaming through windows in Bank, more important. Three more maps will be modernised in the same way with every season going forward, and a new map will be added each season from Year 11.
Maps will also feature new destructible ingredients that can be used tactically. Fire extinguishers can create a temporary smoke screen or even concuss anyone caught in their blast. Gas pipes will cut off an area with a flame that gradually concentrates before exploding to set an area on fire for a little while, and metal detectors are now interactive, and can be disabled temporarily or permanently.
Audio has been given the 2.0 treatment with better sound propagation and better reverb to make it easier to tell where things are coming from. Sound now passes through walls, instead of just bouncing around the environments, and sounds in a small room will have a different reverb to those in a large room or coming from the exterior.
Oh, and they returned to the motion capture studio to dramatically improve rappelling. You can now rappel round corners, and you can sprint along walls for faster repositioning – though obviously they’ll hear you stomping on the walls from the inside.
Along with all of this there’s to be an overhauled esports section in the menu UI, and Pick and Ban has been rejigged to make it quicker – both teams will choose at the same time, and then get a chance to amend picks and bans when swapping between attack and defence. For prospective newcomers there’s a redone onboarding progression and, most significantly, a shift to free access to the game – ranked, esports and access to the full character roster will require that you pay or have already paid. There’s new tutorials and a Clearance Levels onboarding system that aims to get new players up to speed, first against bots, then other players in Quick Match, before Unranked returns as the standard playlist and feeds into Ranked.
Rainbow Six Siege X isn’t a full sequel, but it’s still an important step for the game. There’s the excitement and intrigue that a new game mode inevitably brings, sensible improvements throughout, and making the game free to play and with a new introduction to the game can bring this to a wider audience once more.
