Take a first look at Rainbow Six Siege's beautiful Villa map, arriving in Operation Para Bellum

Ahead of the full reveal of Rainbow Six Siege's Operation Para Bellum, the Italian-themed update that will herald the start of a new season in the shooter, Ubisoft has shown off its new map, Villa, in full for the first time.

It looks stunning, if you ask me. Previously we only saw faraway shots of the villa as two new operators crept through a field of wheat, but now we get a full run-through to the backdrop of a sunset in the Italian hills. The map is full of marble statues, ornate fountains (look out for the Assassin's Creed logo) and cosy wine cellars. It's a shame it's all going to be riddled with bullets in a month's time.

The house is three stories tall, and although the video shows what looks like an underground portion—with a garage and those massive wine barrels—I think that's actually just the ground floor that you can see from the outside. The floor above is fairly open, with a huge kitchen in the middle, while the top floor is a lot tighter, and includes a hidden passageway behind a bookcase. The layout should call for completely different strategies depending on where the objective is placed.

In designer's notes ahead of the update, Ubisoft also said that the fastest operators will be slightly slower after the update, while the slowest characters will be given a small speed boost. "We have seen that speed was stronger than armor in almost all situations," it said. "To refine that balance, we will bring both ends of the spectrum closer to the middle. The intention of this change to the speeds is to make high armor Operators more viable."

Ubisoft is revealing all the details of Operation Para Bellum on May 19th and 20th during the Pro League Finals in Atlantic City, which will be livestreamed on Twitch. Judging by previous time scales, it should be live in early June.

What do you think of the new map?

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.