Ubisoft’s plans for Rainbow Six Siege Year 5 have been fully revealed. However, the Rainbow Six Siege Void Edge release date won’t just include the usual additions of new operators and a map rework, as developer Ubisoft has now detailed some imminent changes to the way the game’s explosions work.
“With Y5S1 we will be making some subtle but important improvements to explosions that will make explosion damage more realistic and transparent,” the company says. “We will be introducing a shrapnel concept into explosions in Rainbow Six Siege. This means destructible objects will no longer limit the range of explosion damage, thereby addressing the problem of destruction vs damage range.”
The current system has some limitations, Ubisoft says, when it comes to determining how much damage should be dealt to a player when they’re behind destructible cover – a barricade, for example. From the start of Y5S1, Siege will switch to a new system which takes cover into account, along with other variables such as proximity to the device used. Under the new system, you can be damaged from the shrapnel of, say, a frag grenade explosion bursting through a barricade, and the damage calculation will be more realistic.
Ubisoft’s developer blog goes in to all the detail if you’re interested in the nitty-gritty.
Ubisoft also plans to give more operators the ability to hard breach and to destroy electronic devices using EMPs – albeit in a limited capacity. Think a mini-Thermite or mini-Thatcher. It’s not clear precisely when those will surface, but they’ll likely come at some point in year five – as will the long-awaited Tachanka rework.
Season one of year five, meanwhile, will introduce the new operators Iana and Oryx. Players are already demanding to know the answer to one big question: where is Oryx’s butt? Where indeed.