Impressions from the Rainbow Six Tactics Presentation at Gamescom 2026!

Look who's coming back

The game presentation invitation was provided to us by Ubisoft, thank you very much!

It seems that after a few quiet years, the tactical game genre is coming back to life. Star Wars Zero Company launched a few days ago, and during the recent ONL event we got announcements for two additional games in the genre: the first is Worms Galactic Tactics, which looks simply amazing and I'm very excited for, and the second is Rainbow Six Tactics. So 11 years after the release of Siege, which has achieved legendary status over the years, we're getting a new Rainbow Six game that will hopefully be good too (unlike the late Extraction, rest in peace). During Gamescom I got the opportunity to see about half an hour of live gameplay from the game as well as hear many additional details about it.

The first thing mentioned during the presentation was that the studio developing Tactics previously worked on Mario + Rabbids, so the tactical genre isn't foreign to them. The second thing mentioned is that the game will be single-player only with no monetization, shop, or Game as a Service features whatsoever. It appears Ubisoft has listened to the feedback and player outrage over its recent games that were loaded with monetization, and the next game will be completely stripped of all that. Tactics is a game set in the Rainbow Six universe, meaning it will be connected to the events of Siege, taking place between the events of the game's tenth and eleventh years, and it will include about 15 out of Siege's 78 characters (Operators). The 15 characters chosen are a combination of those most favored by the team, by the community, as well as characters that made the most sense to add to the game and would provide added value. Additionally, we see Paul Bishop from the Rainbow Six Vegas games returning from retirement to lead the missions as someone who's been in the field, knows what it means, and what's required.

In Tactics we'll need to command a team of operators going out to carry out various missions like hostage rescue, bomb defusal, and intelligence gathering, as in the mission shown to me. Each mission will take us to a different location in the world, and so will the game's maps, which will be unique and take us to an airport, a container ship, an offshore oil rig, and more urban and dense locations. As befits Rainbow Six, each mission will start with a preliminary intelligence gathering phase by scanning the target using the familiar Drones. This intelligence is critical so we can plan our breach plan accurately and efficiently. The breach plan is essentially the ability to plan how we'll approach the target with our characters simultaneously. We can plan where we'll enter from, where each character will go, what they'll do and where they'll look, and then execute the plan with everything happening automatically and simultaneously. When it works well it looks simply beautiful and cinematic like a great Hollywood action movie, and this is without a doubt one of the most impressive and my favorite features in Tactics.

As I mentioned, the game will include about 15 different characters, with each having their own special ability. Ash has her breaching weapon, Montagne will come with his massive shield, and Nøkk will be able to become invisible for a short time to sneak into places without being seen. As mission commanders, we'll need to think ahead about which characters and abilities we're taking with us on the mission and how and when to use them optimally. For example, Glaz will be able to snipe two enemies standing in a direct line to him, so we'll need to think about exactly where to position him to maximize effectiveness. On the other hand, it may be that the mission is less suited for a sniper and therefore we can decide that Glaz isn't relevant and swap him for another character. Another thing to remember is that some cover can be destroyed (depending on what it's made of), so you need to remember to move between them to keep all characters alive. Following this, the development team said there will be a Permadeath mode where characters that die in battle will no longer be available at all throughout the entire game, as opposed to normal modes where characters only get injured and return after a certain amount of time.

Personally, I was very excited by Tactics and I think it has great potential for success. It comes with a strong foundation and identity, its various mechanics look deep with good execution and challenge levels, the breach plan feature looks simply amazing, and Ubisoft made sure to say multiple times that there will be no additional purchases. Let's hope it's not too good to be true.