Recently, despite my very poor Rainbow Six Siege skill, Ubisoft invited me to play Operation Ember Rise. This latest content, Year 4 – Season 3, once again introduced new operators to Siege as well as reworking Kanal. However, this batch of operators, particularly the attacker, has the potential to truly shake-up Siege and its established meta.
Having had Australia at the forefront of Siege’s Burnt Horizon expansion, it seemed unlikely that any new operators would have the same impact on me. Being from Australia, I have a predilection for anything hailing from Down Under.
However, Operation Ember Rise’s new operators seem, to me at least, to be game-changers. Where Nøkk and Warden are quite situational, Amaru could drastically alter the way teams play Rainbow Six Siege.
Operation Ember Rise
My play sessions of Operation Ember Rise were 4v4 affairs, though they were pretty one-sided. As I mentioned, I’m a pretty terrible Siege player and the opposing team was comprised of three journalists with serious skills and Ubisoft’s Esports Manager.
Obviously, my team was murdered.
But it wasn’t a total loss. I managed to get plenty of hands-on time with both Amaru and Goyo — the new attacker and defender respectively — and found that they both have plenty of utility and potential.
In the video above, you’ll get a quick taste of what Amaru and Goyo can do, but Amaru comes equipped with a Garra hook that allows her a level of verticality heretofore unseen in Siege.
Amaru is able to very quickly cross distances and gaps that other operators can’t and it also allows her to breach non-reinforced windows and doors. Best of all, Amaru is able to travel up through open skylights and hatches.
Speaking with Brandon ‘Raven’ Langiano, the coach and manager for Oddity Esports, he believed that Amaru’s Garra hook could have a significant impact on the current roaming defence strategy.
Take Bank, for example. Sometimes they’ll like to play heavy rooms. They’ll open a lot of the hatches through the top of floors. And usually, it meant that the attackers had to just clear top-down.
But, now there’s an instance where you’d be able to pin those attackers at the top. Amaru could come up through the hatch and flank them.
It doesn’t just mean that if you see a hatch, it’s just a drop point. You have to think about it differently now.
So you can’t just Willy-nilly open a hatch thinking, “Oh, we could rotate through this later.” So can the attackers now.
The current meta in Siege, as Langiano calls it, is the ‘Aggression Meta’ and the introduction of Amaru has the potential to disrupt it. He says that Defenders will need to think more about their actions and won’t be able to go on aggressive runs because Amaru can use the open hatches against them.
Of the two new operators, although I loved grappling around the map as Amaru, I much preferred playing as Goyo. Simply because I had a much better chance of getting kills with his Volcán Shield.
From the front, the Volcán Shield, looks identical to any other Deployable Shield, except that Goyo has attached an incendiary bomb to it. The bomb deploys if the shield is destroyed or if it is shot. As you can see in the video above, the damage done by this bomb can make short work of any attackers trying to break in.
Goyo has the ability to drop three Volcán Shields which can be great at denying access but they are very easily able to be used against the defenders by clever attackers.
This happened to me on more than one occasion. As I said, I’m not great but I do enjoy Siege a lot. And the two new operators are certainly a great addition to the game.
Additionally, Operation Ember Rise will see a rework of the Kanal map. The rework adds a second bridge linking the two buildings, additional staircases, the removal of windows and the addition of colour coding to assist with team coordination.
Overall, Kanal has become a lot more vertical in Operation Ember Rise, which is welcome since Amaru adds a great deal of verticality herself. The Bomb Sites in Kanal have also been changed “from the Kitchen to the Security Room, and the site in the Radio Room is now found in the expanded Lounge Room.”
Players who have grown accustomed to Kanal will find that this rework makes it a lot more strategic and far more competitive. Which is welcome news as Operation Ember Rise will see Kanal added to the Ranked playlist while Hereford, Theme Park and Fortress will be removed from Ranked and Unranked playlists.
Operation Ember Rise looks to shake things up in the world of Rainbow Six Siege in a big way. Both new operators are a lot of fun and have the potential to become really useful in the Pro and Amateur scenes alike.
Adding the reworked Kanal into the Ranked playlist at the same time as introducing the new operators also creates an opportunity for experimentation and for teams to develop new strategies.
Ubisoft is certainly looking to keep Rainbow Six Siege going strong and with Operation Ember Rise it looks as though it will succeed.
Leo Stevenson attended an Operation Ember Rise preview event as a guest of Ubisoft. Travel costs were paid for by Ubisoft.
