Rainbow Six Siege's new Italian operators have leaked onto Reddit
Alibi and Maestro aren't slated to arrive until season two, but you can take a look at them right now.
Ubisoft said in December that eight new operators will be added over the course of Rainbow Six Siege Year Three, from Russia, France, Italy, the UK, the US, and Morocco. Courtesy of the data-diving detectives of Reddit, we can now get a look (or at least a sideways glance) at two of them: Alibi and Maestro, members of Italy's special forces.
The names aren't necessarily final, as the character icons are labeled as placeholders, but they fit with what we already know about them. Which, I readily admit, isn't much: There are two of them, and they wear the insignia of GIS—Gruppo di Intervento Speciale—the airborne counter-terrorism unit of Italy's Carabinieri military police force.
The image of Alibi is flanked by two ghostly silhouettes, which also corresponds to an extent with data about new gadgets uncovered by redditors last week. Datamined references to holograms, decoys, and fading in and out suggests that she'll have the ability to distract and trip up enemy players with holographic images. Seems like Alibi might have attackers shooting at ghosts.
Maestro is trickier to pin down. Ubisoft might have been shooting for something Pavarotti-like with the character (especially given his name) but he looks more like a banana republic strongman to me. He's also packing serious body armor and a bandolier of shotgun shells, so whatever he specializes in, you can bet that it's not especially subtle.
The most recent operators added in Operation Chimera—Lion and Finka—were both attackers. With the Italians next in line, I'd put money on them both being defenders, to restore the roster balance.
A leak is a long way from confirmation but we should be getting the official word on these two fairly soon. The Italian operators are scheduled to debut in the second season of Year 3; a start date for that hasn't been set but the first season began with the release of Operation Chimera earlier this month.
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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.