Rainbow Six, arguably one of the most successful of Tom Clancy’s many properties, has had many iterations over the years. However, there’s no doubting that Rainbow Six Siege is the most popular and successful of those iterations, heavily focusing on character-centric team-dependent multiplayer in a series that had previously possessed far more single-player content.
Lots of people really like Siege, in no small part due to the many unique Operators it has to offer. But a lot of people also wanted to see some of those characters in actual stories, in gameplay that wasn’t purely competitive multiplayer. Ubisoft apparently got the memo, perhaps due to that successful co-op Outbreak event a few years back, and now Rainbow Six Extraction is on its way.
During the Ubisoft Forward briefing at E3 2021, we got a new cinematic trailer for the game, but more importantly, we got a release date: September 16 of this year. As for the trailer, it showed us some familiar faces from Siege and gave us a rough premise of the story, which involves an alien invasion of sorts.
Needless to say, it’s a little odd to see a Rainbow game with aliens in it, as the series, like much of Tom Clancy’s work, has always been somewhat grounded in a relative sense of normalcy. Sure, things get wild, but it’s usually humans shooting at humans, to stop bioterrorism, bomb threats, James Bond-style schemes, or something like that.
But there’s certainly nothing wrong with a more science fiction typesetting, especially blended with some aspects of reality, like real (or close to real) weapons and gadgets. The trailer showed us a few familiar Operators from Siege, although it’s unclear how many Operators from the previous game will actually be in Extraction. There are dozens in Siege, many of which have abilities that don’t seem particularly useful for fighting alien hordes. Whether they will be nixed from Extraction or just reworked for the new scenario, we have no idea.
Details other than this basic premise are sparse: we know that players will have to rescue captured Operators in game to use them for themselves, and we also know that Extraction will support cross-play across both the current and previous generation of consoles. While players will see some familiar tools and weapons from Siege, Ubisoft assures us that there will be plenty of new gadgets to play within Extraction as well.
The game will also have some aspects that Souls players are familiar with, such as progress being lost if a mission is unsuccessful. The game will be playable solo, but will also support co-op with up to two other players, for a maximum of three.
Whether or not the game will have as impressive a lifespan as Siege can only be guessed at, but considering the very dedicated community, Rainbow Six Extraction at least has a strong base to start with, since it is building off of prior success. We’ll see how that goes on September 16.
