Here's what's coming in Rainbow Six Siege Year 6 Season 2, North Star

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New update introduces indigenous Operator, Thunderbird

Thunderbird looks directly at the camera in front of helicopter blades
(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Ubisoft has revealed that the second season of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege Year 6 will be called North Star.

The new season will feature new indigenous Operator, Thunderbird, who comes from the Nakoda nation, and an "entirely reworked" Favela map.

Thunderbird can deploy a Kóna Healing Station, which heals any player – ally or enemy – close to this device, even if they are downed, whilst the new Favela map features "reimagined rooms, better map overview and improved navigation" to "improve readability, making sure players always know where they are and where they are going when playing on Favela". 

"Thunderbird is a low armor, high-speed operator, equipped with a SPEAR .308 or SPAS-15 as a primary weapon, and BEARING 9 or Q-929 as a secondary weapon," Ubisoft explained.

Other updates coming with North Star include Scoreboard 2.0, new corpse icons, bullet hole fixes, and operator balancing, specifically "tweaks" to Melusi, Mira, and Maestro. 

Though a formal release date has not been specified, testing on the Test Server will go live on May 25, permitting players to experiment with upcoming features before they roll out into the main game. This includes a "revamped armor system and activities after death".

Thanks to a free-to-play event and a brand-new season of content, Rainbow Six Siege recently broke its own concurrent user record on Steam. 

ICYMI, Ubisoft recently confirmed it will focus on high-end free-to-play games going forward, moving away from its three-four premium AAA games per-year strategy.

Ubisoft held its full-year earnings call earlier this month. During the call, Ubisoft’s chief financial officer Frederick Duguet said that “in line with the evolution of our high-quality line-up that is increasingly diverse, we are moving on from our prior comment regarding releasing three-four premium AAAs per year".

"Additionally, we are building high-end free-to-play games to be trending towards AAA ambitions over the long-term,” explained Duguet.

There are plenty of big titles on our upcoming PS5 games and upcoming Xbox Series X games lists that you can get stuck into.

Vikki Blake
Vikki Blake
Weekend Reporter, GamesRadar+

Vikki Blake is GamesRadar+'s Weekend Reporter. Vikki works tirelessly to ensure that you have something to read on the days of the week beginning with 'S', and can also be found contributing to outlets including the BBC, Eurogamer, and GameIndustry.biz. Vikki also runs a weekly games column at NME, and can be frequently found talking about Destiny 2 and Silent Hill on Twitter.