When I was in high school, I stayed up until all sorts of indecent times of the night when I played PC games. I was up straight for five days to reach the end of Gate II of Baldur, “The Throne of Baldur,” but what captivated me most about PC games was how original they were.
It was the Red Faction that smashed my imagination with great force. Deformation of the terrain. The Red faction was installed in a mine on Mars, allowing them to fire explosive weapons at the walls, create and destroy holes, and avoid checkpoints through rocks. It was all about charting your own courses and finding your own path to achieving your goals. It was incredible.
Unfortunately, the idea was not much in it, but when the siege of the Rainbow Six came out, the ability to freely climb, rappel down buildings up and down, and shoot or destroy walls and ceilings sent a fun beak through the brains of my red sect loving.
The Siege began as a much more focused (and less exploratory) event than the old volution shooter games, but it is about to change with (and quite a bit) the arrival of the upcoming Siege X update. Aside from gameplay, graphical, hearing and UI enhancements, we’ll show you what’s adapted to the fantastical new multiplayer mode, Dual Front.
With dual fronts, a given seasonal operator pool determines who you can play, and team sizes rise to six on each side. Instead of directly laying eggs inside (or outside) one target area, there are three large areas each with their own purpose, and the focus must be on both defending and attacking different locations simultaneously.
The scope is expanding, but much of the great core gameplay remains the same. Once the match begins, each team will appear at the team’s headquarters, and one of the two locations in the team’s sector will begin a countdown to the defensive mission. As this applies to your opponent, each team must defend one spot while attacking another. It’s up to you how you handle it and where you go.
Additionally, there is a neutral zone between the mirror zones each team owns, and there is an additional purpose displayed. Once you complete these objectives, such as saving hostages and leading them to extraction points, your team will give you a great boost in a deadlock struggle for hegemony.
The dual fronts expanded the contention space so dramatically that they moved between offense and defense to suit the needs of their teams, creating a freer flowing experience with more variations between matches than in a standard siege match. The result is a fluid, confusion that exploded with me.
The seasonal operator pool is updated monthly. Your team needs to do a little bit of everything, so you can access both attacker and defender operators on the character selection screen. Changing your strategy to counter the enemy is a central (and fun) part of the game, as you will quickly respawn and re-select the operator when you die during a match.
Several times during my preview, my current (attack) team seemed to have been in a great place, so I would run through the map and help other annoyed companions who were fighting for their lives to defend our own basic goals. Sometimes it seemed like everything was. I arrived in time and our team brought victory. Otherwise, I was separated from my team only to be ambushed by reinforcements. Each match was tense. This is because on a map of the same size as the dual front it is difficult to know where the enemy is until it becomes a capital “P” issue.
Speaking of navigating larger areas, you need to mention some of the new gameplay additions. Now you can stroll around the corners of the building or around the sprints while rappelling. New fire extinguishers can produce concussions and visual obfuscation when destroyed, and can fire or damage gas pipes to create a fire ejection before igniting and scattering the ground, temporarily or permanently disabling the metal detector. Overall, playing in space is much more fun. There’s plenty more space to play with the dual front mirror map.
Siege X also shows a change in monetization. After the update, Siege will adopt a free-to-play model, with casual and onboarding playlists, no rank quick play and dual front all free, with access to up to 26 operators and skins for casual vs. competitive ones. The Siege Cup and ranked mode grant access to all 50 operators. So, if you’re jumping in as a casual player, there’s no barrier to entry, but new players who want to be more serious on the competitive side should fork with some cash. If you are already surrounded, don’t worry. You will keep everything you have and have access to all modes (and as an additional bonus, siege players will show off the year they started and show off a little bonus for each year of siege they played).
Other updates to the Siege X package include five modernized maps (clubhouse, chalet, bank, cafe, border), enhanced visuals, audio, first person shadows, new menus, better player onboarding, weapon inspection capabilities, and more. The development team also promises to introduce new operators (or remasters of existing operators) every season.
But all these enhancements are pale compared to the dual front, which is on track to become my favorite mode of siege, and once Siege X is activated, the siege marks its 10th birthday in an incredibly fun way, so it could be the only mode to play.
