Deep dive into Rainbow Six Extraction

E3 2021 is here, and Ubisoft was the big name to open up the taste for games. Their online Ubisoft Forward started with a huge focus on Rainbow Six Extraction, dropping both an announcement cinematic trailer, and a full gameplay trailer for the game, just to give us a small taste of the action.

If there is any confusion about Extraction, you should probably know that this is the new name for the much awaited expansion that was previously known as Quarantine, that only now gets to show its face.

At a first glance, Rainbow Six Extraction, keeps the familiar gameplay elements of the series, but steps into a whole different universe of supernatural, where there are aliens invading our planet and infecting people around. While some players, myself included, might get some easy Metro vibes, the whole esthetic of the new main enemy of the game seems to resemble a lot with the alien entities form Arkane Studios'' Prey. And as a little mind twister, the name used for the weird alien is actually Archeans.

The maps available in the new expansion are filled with some low level alien grunts, that are easy to create by the nest, and also easy to take out in small numbers, which means swarms are to be avoided, an approach that pushes the element of stealth ahead, making it more present than ever.

Another impediment for the players is the Sprawl. This is a weird substance that looks similar to Marvel's character, Venom. This Sprawl is an alien substance that spreads on any surface and connects the whole ecosystem of the enemy. It is obvious the more it spreads, the more dangerous it is. As another trick the aliens have up their sleeve, the Sprawl can slow the movement of players and increase the movement of the grunts and all other enemies, but thankfully it can be destroyed and taken out of the way.

In order for player to really have some advantages of their own, the game drops another cool gadget called React Light. This is a special light mode attached to the gun than seems to work like a very powerful UV light. It is very useful to to detect the silhouettes of the enemies through walls, giving you an advantage in being able to quickly neutralize the grunts without waking up the whole nest.

With the whole list of new gadgets at your disposal, which includes the React Blade, the React Sensor or the React Mine, the propose of Extraction is as the name implies, the extraction. Players need to infiltrate infected bases that are spread into Sub-Zone, separated by Airlocks, which act like spawn points. The mission is simple in theory, use all the detection gadgets to locate scientists that are still alive and extract them and also get some DNA samples from the alien species, but with all the levels of difficulty increasing from one Sub-Zone to another, it's easier said than done.

For a quick look at the gameplay for Rainbow Six Extraction you can watch the trailer here: