Over the past week, Ubisoft has shared a steady stream of new details regarding its latest Rainbow Six Siege Operation Blood Orchid DLC. Ubisoft initially announced the new Year 2 Season 3 update will arrive Aug. 29, but a new official Ubisoft blog post on Tuesday confirmed Blood Orchid will be delayed.
According to Ubisoft, Operation Blood Orchid will not be deployed to the Technical Test Servers (TTS) until Aug. 29, which means official launch of the new DLC is not expected to arrive until Sept. 5. While TTS beta access is available to Siege players on PC, select console gamers with the Uplay PC app can also try the changes made for Y2S3 on next week as well.
While the delay to Sept. 5 is no doubt disappointing, Ubisoft noted that Operation Blood Orchid is the biggest update yet for Rainbow Six Siege.
"There are over 1000 fixes, including hundreds of fixes to maps and lighting, optimization of Operator data, a full pass on improving resolution and appearanceof the game, and many fixes for operators, including Hibana," Ubisoft announced on its blog.
As a recap, we know the new S.D.U. Hong Kong Defense Operator is Lesion. Armed with a T-5 SMG and SIX12 SD as well as the Q-929 as a secondary weapon, Lesion's special ability is known as t he Gu, which is a cloaked toxic mine that injects a chemical compound that disorients and hurts enemies over time.
Ubisoft characterizes Lesion as strong willed and just "one of the three Operators who was able to withstand an extreme version of the S.A.S.’ Resistance to Interrogation Program" Sadly, if Lesion is fighting on the same side as Caveira, we'll never see him put to the test.
Ying represents the attacker side of the S.D.U. duo. Specializing in close-combat, Ying's weapon of choice are the SIX12 and T-95 LSW as primary weapons, and the Q-929 sidearm. Ying's special gadget is known as the Candela, which is a cluster of flash charges that can be ancored to surfaced or rolled as a grenade. Thanks to a special set of goggles, Ying is not affected by her own flash charges.
Finally, one of Poland's GROM operators will join Lesion and Ying in the Year 2 Season 3 update as well. Ela features a special device known as the GRZMOT mine, which is a concussion proximity mine that can be anchored to surfaces and impair hearing and also cause a dizzying effect. The application sounds similar to Echo's Yokai drone, except Echo must manually activate the concussion charge whereas Ela's mine will trigger remotely.
