Rainbow Six Siege x First Hands-On Preview: New Double Pre-Mode Revitalizes 10-year-old FPS
Blog Andrew Joseph 13 Mar , 2025 0
When I was in high school, I would stay up late until all kinds of ungodly hours of playing PC games at night. I even stayed for five days in a row just to reach the end of Baldur's second “Bald's Throne,” but what fascinated me the most was the creativity of PC games.
What I imagined was the Red Faction, which caught my attention because it had some signs of doom (set of high-tech, first-person shooter on Mars, you say?), but it added the necessary wrinkles; terrain deformation. The red faction is set in the mines on Mars, where I can fire explosive weapons into the walls, create holes or destroy them, and even tunnel through rocks to bypass the checkpoint. It's all about drawing your own lessons and finding your own path to achieve your goals. It's incredible.
Unfortunately, the idea didn’t work much in the years that followed, but when Rainbow Six siege came out, the buildings that were able to climb and droop up and down, cross or destroy walls and ceilings, sending a pleasant little tickling from my love of the Red Faction’s brain.
Although siege is much more focused (exploratory) than the old Will Shooter, it will change (more) with the upcoming Siege X update. In addition to gameplay, graphics, auditory and UI enhancements, it also introduces what is shaped, an excellent new permanent multiplayer mode: dual-line.
On the dual-line side, the scheduled seasonal operator pool will determine who you can play with, and the team size can accommodate up to six per side. Rather than laying eggs directly within (or outside) one target area, choose three large areas, each with its target, so your group of six needs to be separated to focus on defense and attacking different positions at the same time.
Despite the expanded range, most of the excellent core gameplay remains the same. When the game begins, each team will be generated at their squad headquarters, and one of the two locations in the team field will begin the countdown to defend the mission. It's right for your opponent, so each team needs to defend a position when attacking another team. How you handle and decide where to go is up to you.
More importantly, there is a neutral area between the mirrored areas held by each team, and additional targets will appear. Completing these goals, such as saving hostages and elevating them to the extraction point, will allow your team to greatly improve the struggle in the fight back and forth for supremacy, so victory is still possible even if you fail to defend the first location or attack an enemy base.
Because Dual Front expands the controversial space so clearly, I move between offense and defense to suit the needs of the team, creating a more free flowing experience between games than between standard siege games. The result is my mess with the explosion of liquids.
The seasonal operator pool will be updated monthly, and since your squad needs to do something, you can access attackers and guard operators on the Role Selection screen. When you die in a match, you will quickly respawn and reselect the operator, so changing your strategy to fight enemies is the center of the game (and very fun).
During my preview, it seemed like my current (offensive) team was in a good position, so I hurried over the map to help other troubling comrades fight for my life to defend our own fundamental goals. Sometimes everything seems like: I arrived in time and our team brought back victory. Other times, I was separated from the team and just allowed them to be ambushed by reinforcements. Every game is tense because in a map as big as the double front, it is difficult to know where the enemies are until they become a capital “P” problem.
Speaking of more and more areas, I should mention some new game additions. Now you can sprint around the corners of a building, even when competing, so it's easier to poke in and find ways to get into the internal structure. New fire extinguishers, when destroyed, can cause concussion explosions and visual confusion, can shoot or damage gas pipes to cause fire eruptions before explosions and scattering fires around the ground, while metal detectors can be temporarily or permanently disabled. Overall, it's more fun to play in this space, and there's more space to play on the mirrored map of Dual Front.
Siege X also marked a shift in monetization. After the update, Siege will feature a free game model, which is thin for casual and competitive things: Casual and onboarding playlists, no backup QuickPlay and Dual Front are all free, and will grant access to up to 26 operators and skins. Siege Cup and ranking mode will be paid for free and grant access to all 50 operators. So if you jump around as a casual player, there are no barriers to entry, but new players who want to become more serious about the competition will need to pay some cash. If you're already besieged, don't worry; you'll keep everything you have and retain access to all modes (as an additional bonus, siege athletes will get a badge showing off the year they started and a siege bonus for each year they play).
Some other updates in the Siege X package include five modern maps (clubs, cabins, banks, kafe and borders), enhanced visuals, audio, first-person shadows, new menus, better player onboarding, ability to check weapons, and more. The development team is also committed to introducing a new carrier (or recreating existing carriers) each season, and more.
However, all of these enhancements pale compared to the Double Front, which is the route that can be my favorite siege mode, which is likely my only game mode once Siege X starts up as Siege marks its upcoming ten birthdays in an incredibly fun way.
