Rainbow Six Siege's Australian map is a ramshackle service station on a lonely highway

Ubisoft confirmed late last week that Rainbow Six Siege year 4 season 1, Operation Burnt Shrimp on the Barbie, will take the team to the Australian outback. Now we've got our first look at the new map, "an homage to all the dusty service stations and motels that populate the forgotten highways of the continent, places filled with hardworking locals and specialty menu items you’ll find nowhere else."

Rainbow Six is on scene at this particular slice of nowhere because of a nuclear convoy that fell under attack while it was passing by. The locals headed for the hills, and your team headed in to clean up the mess.   

Assistant level design director Jacques Wong said the map is divided into three distinct sections, the Garage, the Motel, and the Restaurant, and uses colors, lighting and geometry to ensure that everything is easily recognizable and flows as intended. The designers also put an emphasis on "returning to a style of gameplay that players have enjoyed in the past, while keeping the meta in mind." 

"We wanted to emphasize the impact of player decision-making, so for example, there’s a limited number of doors between each sections," Wong said. "Roamers can still create new paths by destroying walls, and there’s always the option of changing floors as a flanking strategy. It’s a medium-sized map, so players won’t need to go far to find alternative routes." 

Outback and the rest of Operation Burnt Horizon (which is what the season is actually called, by the way) will be fully revealed on Twitch on February 17, during the Six Invitational in Montreal.   

Andy Chalk

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.

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