As an initial attempt to spin-off and expand upon Rainbow Six Siege's excellent gameplay, the 2023 limited-time mode Outbreak would be a strong start. It took Siege's Operators, placed them in Left 4 Dead -style levels, and let players get together to kill waves of zombie-like enemies. Not only made it happen give dedicated Siege players new content to enjoy, but because an experiment, it proved that the core gameplay could mean more than just PvP multiplayer.
Enter Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction, a brand new cooperative shooter set in the Siege universe. Extraction has good intentions-namely, giving players more Outbreak-and delivers on the commitment of letting players enjoy Siege's excellent gameplay inside a cooperative setting. However in turning Outbreak right into a full release, Ubisoft fell back to its very own improper habits and created a progression system that's designed to entrap players inside a grind without providing them with enough methods to have fun.
Rainbow Six Extraction's setup is simple: An alien parasite has come to Earth and is starting to spread across several locations, creating monsters called Archeans. A global tactical response and research organization called REACT has set up quarantine zones in parasitic hotspots, and its operatives-made from Rainbow members-must head to these areas, complete objectives, and extract.
Outbreak demoed how well Siege's cast of characters and gunplay would translate to a cooperative shooter, and Extraction expands with that premise with several Operators that weren't available in the limited-time mode. Along with returning characters like Finka, Tachanka, Lion, and Doc, Extraction adds Jager, IQ, Gridlock, Nomad, and several more. While most from the characters can get their traditional Siege weapons, a number of them will get use of a few that they don't normally use. Personally, I find SIege's method of gunplay to become one of the best in the industry, even six years later, and the guns feel just as satisfying in Extraction, especially considering hits to enemy weak spots will (usually) one-shot them.
Much from the fun in Extraction comes from determining the best ways to use each Operator in any given situation. Hibana, for example, can still open holes in walls together with her X-KAIROS launcher, but she will also employ her explosives to damage and kill stronger enemy types. More interestingly, in which the capability to create windows in fortified walls using the X-KAIROS is considered an offensive maneuver in Siege, in Extraction that very same move has more defensive utility against an incoming horde of Archeans.
Extraction starts you with nine of the game's 18 total Operators, also it doesn't take too much time to unlock another half of the roster. When compared with Siege's current roster of 62, the dpi may appear limited, especially considering Outbreak included 10. That was in 2023, too; Siege has added 24 Operators since that time, and also the only three introduced since Outbreak ran in March 2023 that come in Extraction are Alibi, Nomad, and Gridlock. Still, Irrrve never felt like 18 was “too few” Operators; after putting around 30 hours in to the game, I only fully leveled among the characters, when i wanted to have fun with all of them a good amount.
Given just how much Extraction depends on this progression system to own game a sense of urgency and risk, having anymore Operators might dilute its main risk-reward mechanic. Every time you bring an Operator right into a mission (called an “incursion”), you risk losing that Operator by dying and not getting revived. If a character is fully knocked out, a teammate can continue to bring them to an extraction point and save them for you. But if everyone dies or perhaps a teammate goes into the next subzone from the incursion without extracting you, your character goes MIA. When that happens, you still have yet another chance to complete an MIA mission and rescue that character, but failing that will mean losing all a character's progress, including weapons you've unlocked for them. You'll have to begin anew on your own.
Even after playing Extraction for 30 hours, I still don't know if the system actually adds almost anything to the game. Sure, knowing you can lose all of the progress you have made in your favorite character creates tension when entering an incursion, but you can also just rescue the MIA character around the easiest difficulty setting and get it well no problem. Worse has an Operator be injured during an incursion; anytime your health goes below 100, that Operator will remain injured. If they are below 50 health, you'll have to wait for their health to return before you can rely on them again. But, strangely, if your character goes MIA and also you rescue them, they're virtually to full health immediately. In ways, Extraction punishes you for barely escaping together with your life more than for going MIA.
Finishing mission objectives and killing Archeans will enable you to get XP for the character, and leveling up your character will also gain levels your account's overall progression, though only until you reach level 10 with this Operator. Then, any XP you earn is pretty much useless. That is because Ubisoft wants you to definitely engage with the only real other way to earn XP and progression: completing location challenges, also known as “studies.”
Unfortunately, you cannot just complete studies naturally while you play; you simply get three studies at a time, and you must finish that set of three before you start the following. Sometimes, these studies involve killing specific enemies, but whether or not those enemies will in fact spawn in to the mission depends on what difficulty level you've selected. Even after that, there's still a chance the enemy you have to engage to accomplish the three studies may not spawn. At these times, it feels like the sport is purposefully withholding what you need to progress in order to artificially boost your playtime.
The issues with Extraction's progression system may not seem so bad, plus they really wouldn't be inside a game that offered more substantial goals or perhaps a focused feeling of purpose. But considering you'll be playing the same kind of content over and over again, getting stuck since the game randomly decided it didn't want to provide you with what you needed to complete a challenge could be frustrating when you are spinning your wheels just to fill a progression bar.
Mathematically, Extraction should have enough elements to make each incursion feel varied and exciting. You will find four main locations, each with three zones that themselves include three subzones apiece. That's 36 overall subzones to understand more about, and every subzone can host one of Extraction's 12 different mission types (13 if you count MIA rescues). Do the math, and you're taking a look at over 400 different combinations of subzone and mission type, and that is before you even consider the seven different possible mutations and the three different Protean bosses that may spawn on Gateway missions.
On paper, incursions should keep you invested for a while. But that's not the reality. Used, many of the subzones feel the same, even when they have wildly different settings. There are some standouts, like the UFO museum in San Francisco, but they all end up bleeding together and offering virtually the very same gameplay experience, no matter what kind of mission you're trying to complete or which enemies you're fighting.
After a little while, a feeling of “been there, done that” is unavoidable in Extraction, particularly when the main goal appears to be leveling up characters enough to matchmake into endgame content such as the nine-mission Maelstrom Protocol or even the more consolidated Assignments. From the two, Assignments are exciting, because they really do feel like they offer unique objectives and new ways to experience the game, plus they allow you to use whatever character you want-unlike Maelstrom Protocol, which limits you to definitely selecting from a rotating choice of eight of the game's Operators. Still, I don't know if Assignments are fun enough to keep my interest for very long or motivate me to level up my characters.
What sticks out the most about Extraction's whole progression system is how much Ubisoft has missed the point by what motivates players. Losing a personality in Hunt: Showdown adds tension to every match because I won't ever see that character again, but it's also no problem to begin a new character, also it never stops me from experiencing content. But when I lost my only level 10 Operator in Extraction, there's literally pointless to even consider using a Maelstrom Protocol. Likewise, players like Left 4 Dead since there would be a feeling of real narrative progression, which is going right from the start of a dynamic, linear level and making it up to the finish. Hell, that's half of what made Outbreak so fun, too.
But Extraction seems insistent on giving players homework and leaning on the sunk cost fallacy to ensure that they're returning, rather than giving them a compelling story to see or gameplay that feels fresh every time. In small doses, the game can be a blast, particularly when your back is from the wall and you still manage to make it out alive. But play for too much time and you run the risk of burning out quickly. It's nearly as if contemporary design aimed solely at player retention, no matter the means, is really a parasite that worms its way into what would well be good games.
