Rainbow Six Siege X devs double down on the FPS game following "its own path"

Rainbow Six Siege has always marched to the beat of its own breacher. You can see the influences, from the bomb-based intensity of Counter-Strike to the operator synergy of Overwatch and the environmental chaos of Battlefield, but by no means is Ubisoft's shooter a collage. It's a convergence that blends these ideas into something more focused, unpredictable, and personal. As the game's biggest update yet, Siege X puts its best foot forward to build on this unique identity, scratching a particular FPS itch that's still out of reach for its competitive peers.

Despite the name change, Siege X isn't considered a sequel. That's by design, according to creative director Alexander Karpazis, who tells me "it was important to respect the sizable investment our players have made in Siege over the years."

While both Overwatch 2 and CS2 ensured skins carried over from the originals, the focus on Siege handing the baton extends well beyond cosmetics, including player stats and even your personal operator customisations. Having mourned the loss of player data before Operation Health in 2017, a seamless transition builds trust and a tacit understanding that Ubisoft won't waste your time, even as it rewires its internals.

This deliberate approach bleeds into content production with Siege X adopting a philosophy of restraint. Rather than flood the game with new Operators and mechanics as we saw in the first few years of Siege, Ubisoft now takes a slower cadence, retreading old ground with remasters like Blackbeard and Clash.

"It comes down to the quality. We want to focus on shipping content that is meaningful, rather than adding tons for the sake of checking things off. For the health and longevity of the game, we want to ensure we maintain that by managing our production accordingly. Game development is an ongoing marathon, especially when we're talking about a live game like Siege," says game director Joshua Mills.

After 4,500 hours, part of me wishes to see new maps more frequently, but I can't fault the logic of looking back before storming forward. Mills wants "maps to be able to all exist in the Ranked pool" in order to cycle them in and out of rotation, keeping the meta fresh. By my count, there are at least seven core battlegrounds that still need tweaks for competitive integrity, including Favela, which already received a substantial update to its layout back in 2021.

With finite capacity, some ideas get left on the chopping block. Pointing towards the new destructible ingredients, Mills reveals that the team "came across multiple different prototypes, but narrowed it down due to production reasons. Any time we cut something, it's either because we don't have the capacity at that time to deliver it at the quality that we feel is deserving of our community, or it's not fully fleshed out."

Of course, curation alone doesn't guarantee quality. Ubisoft also leans heavily on its community, both casual and professional, to help shape direction. The directors keenly tout Testing Grounds, Siege X's upcoming sandbox for experimental features, as a testament to that.

What's different this time around is visibility and incentive. When Testing Grounds debuts at the end of Year 10, it won't just be a disconnected test server. It'll live in the main game client, complete with XP, battle pass progress, and challenges to complete, which Karpazis claims is "an intentional effort to get more players involved in the changes of the game, and still being rewarded for it."

It's a far cry from the old model, where test servers existed on the fringe, requiring the time and storage space to download an entirely separate game. Now, the loop is closing: from concept to community, and back again. You get the sense the team wants players not just to accept change, but to author it.

While you'll need to wait a little longer for Testing Grounds, the developers still have their ear to the ground in the here and now. Discussing the rise in game skins and how difficult it's become to identify opponents at a glance, Karpazis says he's "always listening to players when it comes to readability. With that in mind, we're thinking about options for players to have more choice in how they customize their characters, and how they see other operators on the field. This is something we're looking into for the mid-term."

High-concept outfits are fun, but as characters inspired by Rick and Morty, Halo, and Nier take up arms, information gathering takes a hit. It's tough enough to remember 75 operators and counting in their default uniform, let alone crossover characters and who they belong to. Since skins are a primary source of revenue and precisely the reason why Valkyrie's new Viking-inspired Paragon Elite costs 5,000 R6 Credits, the solution is not as simple as giving us a switch that forces base outfits. Still, I have faith Ubisoft can figure it out.

If there's one feature that exemplifies Siege X's disruptive intent, it's sound. Ubisoft has rebuilt its propagation system from the ground up, allowing low frequencies to travel directly through walls while high frequencies move through openings like doors and windows. It's a more realistic system, and a more disorienting one at first.

"Like any major change to a core system of our game, there will be an adjustment period," says Karpazis. "Once you get comfortable with the new system, the advantages that it brings to the gameplay of Siege will become apparent."

Having reviewed Siege X, I can confidently say the new soundscape is heavier, almost cinematic. Gunfire isn't just noise anymore; it's accurate spatial information. The first few matches felt muddy, even claustrophobic. But patterns slowly emerge. Bass from a suppressed SMG tells me someone's sprinting two rooms away. The clunk of footsteps reveals not just a direction, but an elevation of what floor they're on. As Karpazis says, there's "an initial period of confusion and discomfort followed by an 'ah ha' moment."

Few developers are willing to pull the rug like that and weather the barrage of feedback from people who've not yet reached the same revelation, but this isn't just any game. Ubisoft's flagship has made it ten years because, as Karpazis puts it, "Siege has always followed its own path.". And after talking with the team, it's clear they're not straying anytime soon.