Rainbow Six Extraction inches closer to release, and players are preparing to dispense tactical violence on an invasive alien species. If you’ve been thinking about diving into team Rainbow’s latest adventure, you might have a few questions. Don’t worry, we’ve got answers. Here’s everything we know so for about Rainbow Six Extraction.
What’s the release date?
Rainbow Six Extraction will release in Australia on January 20, 2022.
What can I play it on?
Rainbow Six Extraction will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC via Steam, Epic Store and the Ubisoft Store. It will also launch day-and-date on Xbox Game Pass for console, cloud, and PC.
Didn’t this game have a different name at some point?
It did! You aren’t imagining things. When it was first announced at E3 2019, the game was titled Rainbow Six Quarantine. Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated prolonged, repeated instances of real-world quarantine, Ubisoft elected to drop Quarantine from the title. When it appeared at E3 2020, the game was re-introduced as Rainbow Six Extraction.
Is it different from Rainbow Six Siege?
Yes and no. Rainbow Six Extraction is based on a limited-time game mode from Rainbow Six Siege called Outbreak. Outbreak first appeared in 2018 and proved popular with the community. It strayed from Siege‘s grounded, realistic design in favour of something more high concept. Instead of going all SWAT on groups of heavily bunkered terrorists, R6 operators would face down an invading alien menace.
Extraction follows a similar set of design principles. You’ll still be using tactics, and your choice of operator and weapon loadout will still be important, but it’s more about playing the objective than a splashy killstreak.
What should I know about the gameplay?
Rainbow Six Extraction is a 3-play PvE multiplayer shooter. Players take on the role of a Rainbow Six operator and must work together to infiltrate and destroy an invasive alien force. That’s quite a turn for a series built on hard realism to take. It’s easy to draw an immediate comparison to games like Left 4 Dead and Warhammer: Vermintide, though it seems Extraction wants to do distance itself from those games.
Each mission, called an Incursion, can be broken down into three connected sub-maps. Upon entering each sub-map, players will be given an objective to complete. These objectives will be selected at random from a pool of 12 possible options. Objective locations and enemy placement will be procedurally generated so that you’re never sure what lurks around the next corner.
Once players secure their objective, they have to make a choice: Call for extraction, or proceed to the next sub-map? Each successive sub-map ratchets the overall difficulty, creating a risk-vs-reward proposition.
Any operatives taken down during the Incursion are classified as Missing In Action and cannot be selected again until a special Extraction mission to save them is completed. Operatives that sustained serious injuries in a previous mission will carry them over to the next, and heal slowly over time.
Does Rainbow Six Extraction feature characters from Siege?
Yes! Several operatives have made the jump from Siege to Rainbow Six Extraction. Collectively, they have formed an organisation called REACT (the Rainbow Exogenous Analysis and Containment Team). There are 18 operators in Extraction, however, Ubisoft has only revealed 12 of them so far. These operators are:
- Gridlock – Traps and anti-personnel
- Alibi – Holographic decoys
- Nomad – Repulsion grenades
- Smoke – Toxic gas grenades
- Ela – Sticky proximity mines
- Sledge – Tactical breaching hammer, create new paths through each level
- Lion – EE-ONE-D Drone detects all movement at medium range
- Vigil – Stealth and cloaking
- Hibana – Sticky grenade launcher
- Doc – Heals and revives up close or at range
- Finka – Stims, heals, and revives
- Pulse – Cardiac sensor detects VIPs, MIAs, and enemy nests through walls
At the time of writing, the remaining six are still a mystery.
Are they gonna squeeze me for DLC?
It’s Ubisoft. Of course, they’re gonna squeeze you for DLC. Ubi hasn’t had anything concrete to say about post-launch plans for Rainbow Six Extraction just yet, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t happening. If the model followed by Siege is any indication, Extraction will receive new modes, maps, and operatives for years to come.
Fair enough. Got a trailer?
Why not two? Let’s start with the official gameplay overview trailer. That should give a clearer idea of game feel.
the Then, let’s move to the much more recent lore trailer, which explains a bit of how team Rainbow wound up in this predicament.
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