Rainbow Six Siege Year 7, Season 1, titled “Demon Veil”, will begin on March 15th. The new year represents a new narrative shift for Ubisoft Montreal’s team-based shooter. The last time it switched gears was at the beginning of Year 4, when Siege moved away from a counter-terrorist narrative and turned into a competitive sports fantasy.

“Year 7 is definitely a change, but I think it’s a lot more organic than the last time we refocused as a brand,” Rainbow Six Siege Realization Director Alex Lima told GameSpot. “The move to a sports-like narrative was understandable, as it gave us a much-needed levity during this time. The problem is that it happened on the night of Year 4, and players didn’t fully understand it.”

According to Lima, Year 7 will see a renewed focus on the fact that Siege’s operators are specialized soldiers, not athletes. Building on the roles and personalities of Siege’s vast roster of operators, the new story focuses on Rainbow’s rivalry with Nighthaven, a private military company involved in criminal activity around the world, as the group begins to respond to international threats once again. “We’re leaving the sports competition story behind, but we’re not forgetting it,” Lima said. “Our story, ‘The Program,’ was crucial in preparing our operators for what comes next. Now we’re picking up the ‘Back on the Road’ story and getting our operators up and running again, so those three years of training and simulation will be invaluable.” Time has built. Ubisoft Montreal has been hinting at this important storyline for years in trailers, blog posts and in-game text logs, gradually transforming Siege into a more narrative-driven service game, much like how Destiny 2 evolved into The Witch Queen and Broken Ghost, the setting for Apex Legends.

“This was by no means written overnight,” Lima says. “When we released [Year 4, Season 4] Shifting Tides, we wanted to make the beginning of Nighthaven more substantial and conflicted, but the team felt it was too early to delve into rival organizations, so we planted the seeds over the years.” The introduction of Nighthaven represents the first external organization capable of disrupting Rainbow since the game’s launch. In the game, a team of soldiers faced off against an international terrorist organization called the White Masks. But the group was faceless and not very interesting. They were more of a hostile force that just existed, rather than an enemy to fight.

Nighthaven addresses this shortcoming from the beginning. The group is led and made up of many of the operators that have been added to Siege since the start of Year 4. Additionally, five of the operators who were part of Rainbow for a while – Ella, Smoke, Finka, Pulse, and IQ – left the team at the end of Year 6 to join Nighthaven. This means that it’s not just purely evil groups that Rainbow is fighting; it’s a group made up of Rainbow’s former friends and allies.

The story is also very emotional as it depicts a family being torn apart because of ideology. As seen in the theatrical trailer for Sisters In Arms, Ella’s decision to join Nighthaven creates a rift between her and her sister’s fellow operator, Zofia. Pulse is Hibana’s husband, and she decided to stay with Rainbow. There’s a lot to remember in this rivalry.

You may notice that none of these names play a significant role in the world of Siege, but this is intentional. Going forward, Siege will place more emphasis on Operators, who have traditionally been more reserved when it comes to key story elements. So players can look forward to further stories like “Sisters In Arms.” Going forward, it won’t necessarily just revolve around Ash.

“We have standout characters who have become stars,” Lima said. “Ash, Milla and Thermite have a lot of screen time as mission givers or sources of exposition. We’ve seen them in a lot of Siege assets, including the Rainbow Six peripheral titles. I always like to take characters that people don’t know much about and put them in the lead role and let them take the microphone and direct the story.”

Lima added, “That’s why Ella’s story was so appealing.” And tell Zofia. When you need to make a big change to the story, your instinct is to use a more spotlighted character. But you’ll notice that Sisters in Arms doesn’t feature any of the major operators. It’s a very intimate story about a relatively unknown character that’s meant to represent something big that affects the whole of Rainbow. It ends with a smokeshow that you’ve never “seen” in major CGI before. That’s what I love about telling Siege’s story. There are so many protagonists to choose from, and each one has a dedicated fanbase to root for. And it changes the gameplay. Going forward, the game’s story and gameplay will no longer be treated as completely separate entities; instead, one can affect the other. Lima told me how this will play out, hinting that in the future, Siege may feature reactive in-match voice lines that evolve over time to better reflect changing relationships between certain operators.

“There’s no better way to bring those relationship dynamics to life than through in-game narration,” Lima said. “The team has been interested in doing this for years. It’s a goal for Year 8 and there’s been a lot of interest from our audio and business teams. You’ll hear more about this as we discuss our future roadmap with the community.”

Until then, fans can expect the dynamic between Rainbow and Nighthaven to continue to develop in traditional trailers. However, unlike the mostly disjointed trailers of recent years, Year 7 marks the start of Ubisoft Montreal’s trend of approaching Siege as an episodic narrative akin to a TV series.

“For the first time in Year 7, we’re treating each entry in the animated short like an episode in a series, culminating in a yearly CGI,” Lima said. “The narrative page on the game’s website will also serve to further explain this episodic narrative. It’s very difficult to elaborate on a year’s story because we need to utilize the new operators in the assets, where they come from, what they can do, what they’re like. What we can do is paint with a broad brush, use the new operators as supporting characters, and plan high-level events where the old operators can participate. So, we’re almost completely done with planning for Year 7, including the next big CGI, and it’s going to be amazing.”

Rainbow Six Siege Year 7, Season 1 is called Demon’s Veil. A new Defender, Azami, joins the team. The Japanese Operator can use the Kiva Barrier Device, a kunai-shaped device that allows her to create a makeshift barrier. As seen in the “Azami’s Tale” trailer, she joins Rainbow on the condition that she helps Hibana track down and avenge Quantum Concepts and Robotics. It is a research and development unit of Night Haven, founded and led by Osa, an Operator added to Siege in Year 6, Season 3: Crystal Guard.