Rainbow Six Siege is a continuously growing multiplayer game that is, by now, established as a staple in Ubisoft's line-up. It has unique gameplay, regular new content, and soon Rainbow Six Siege will add console cross-play.
New Operators are often some of the most interesting additions to Rainbow Six Siege, stirring both excitement and dread among players as the meta potentially shifts. The newly announced Operator Thunderbird stirred up typical speculation and hype, but Ubisoft is giving her a bit more love. While new Operators typically get trailers highlighting their unique abilities and equipment, Thunderbird got a whole extra cinematic.
While Thunderbird herself was revealed in a gameplay trailer last month, during E3 2021 Ubisoft showed off a brand new animation. Thunderbird rescues another Operator in the wilderness. After administering first aid, she finds the two of them a helicopter, but it's in bad shape. She fixes it up while discussing the meanings of the symbol on her jacket: love, wisdom, and bravery.
The animation does not explicitly show off Thunderbird's gadget, the healing Kona Station, which acts as an area turret that fires healing pellets instead of bullets. However, it does show off her medical skills as she sets a broken bone and keeps the other Operator safe and warm. Perhaps most impressively, she fights off a bear using only a flare gun to keep herself and her injured charge safe. While it's unlikely this will wind up being a usable weapon, it may yet feature in a Rainbow Six Siege elite set as a reference somewhere down the line.
Despite being a competent pilot and engineer if her ability to repair the helicopter is any indication, Thunderbird will not be bringing a chopper to Rainbow Six Siege. Whether or not she will still have the same abilities if she comes to Rainbow Six: Extraction is anyone's guess, but players who love Siege may check out Extraction just to see how the Operators handle in a new genre.
Thunderbird is not the first Operator to get such a dedicated trailer, but it's exciting to see a character in a multiplayer game treated to such a defining bit of lore. Rainbow Six Siege should take a page out of Apex Legends' book and give more development to its characters, and this E3 cinematic is a good example why.
Rainbow Six Siege is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.