Rainbow Six Siege’s New Year 7 Operator Teased With Japanese Kunai

Ubisoft Montreal has started teasing what’s to come in Rainbow Six Siege’s next season, which will kick off Year 7 for the tactical first-person shooter. Among the features being teased is the game’s newest playable operator, who’s scheduled to be revealed February 19 on Twitch.

In a tweet (embedded below), Ubisoft Montreal released a short video of the new operator–it’s a close-up of someone in an incredible-looking purple suit. The character is holding a kunai, a Japanese tool commonly depicted in pop culture as a weapon for stabbing or throwing.

“A blade can sever and stick and scar,” the tweet reads. “A knife can cut or crease or create. Don’t the simplest tools have the most imaginative uses?”

Siege’s latest operator–added in Year 6, Season 4–is Thorn, a defender. If Ubisoft Montreal sticks to the pattern of alternating between attackers and defenders (which it’s followed since Year 5, Season 3), this new operator for Year 7, Season 1 will be an attacker.

When speaking to Ubisoft Montreal, Respawn, and Riot Games about how their teams design new characters for Siege, Apex Legends, and Valorant respectively, the three studios told GameSpot that balancing hero shooters is a science that requires live test subjects.

Rainbow Six Siege associate game director Aurelie Debant said that for Siege, specifically, that when designing new operators, the team pays “a lot of attention to player frustrations: frustration when playing as the operator, and frustration when playing against the operator.”