With the upcoming Year 8 Season 1 Rainbow Six Siege expansion Operation Commanding Force, things are continuing to improve within the seven-year-old game.
The new operator, Brava, is no exception.
Hailing from Brazil, Brava is a three-speed, one-armour operator that is looking to be one of the best attackers added to the game. She follows a hugely successful introduction of Solis in Year 7 Season 4, who has had the third-highest presence at the Six Invitational 2023 so far.
Brava features the same PARA-308 assault rifle as her attacking compatriot, Capitao, but she also has the option of Buck’s DMR, the CAMRS. With her three-speed movement, the PARA-308 will certainly be a fantastic option, but the CAMRS option makes her especially fearsome due to the current strength of DMRs in Rainbow Six Siege.
While her secondary pistol, the USP40 is nothing to write home about, her kit is further improved by the option to bring the Super Shorty. With this, Brava will be a fantastic option as a secondary soft-breacher for rooftop hatches, sightline creation, or even rotation options -- something that will be useful at every level of play.
The option to bring Smoke grenades further cements her role in any attacking lineup, being able to cause chaos and ensure safe rotations, though Claymores are also available if the enemy team is particularly aggressive.
However, the cherry on top of the extremely tantalising Brava cake is her unique gadget, the Kludge drone. With the Kludge drone, Brava is thus the third operator to have unique drone gadgets, after the original Twitch and the Operation Crimson Heist operator, Flores.
The Kludge drone can hack any and all defender gadgets and turn them into attacker gadgets that will work against defenders. Imagine defenders suddenly triggering formerly friendly Aruni gates, Kapkan traps, or Melsui banshees, or getting zapped by Maestro’s Evil Eyes and getting stunned by Echo’s Yokai drones.
Flores already introduced a fair amount of fear within defender ranks with his explosive Ratero drone, but Brava is set to take things a step further and will likely provide an incredibly chaotic yet fun experience to new and old Rainbow Six players.
The Brava interactions will force defenders to become far more aware of their own gadgets and whether they are still friendly. This will introduce a level of tactical planning and on-the-fly counter-play that has never been seen in Rainbow Six Siege before, not even with Dokkaebi's ability to hack cameras or Mozzie's ability to capture drones.
Players will rightly be concerned about Brava becoming too good, but Ubisoft creative director Alexander Karpazis allayed those concerns by pointing out that her Kludge drone is very “fragile” and “makes a lot of noise”. The Kludge drone must also stay fixated upon the defender gadget for a few seconds while the hack is in progress, making it even more vulnerable when in use.
Karpazis also addressed fears that Brava could be oppressively strong in professional players’ hands, sharing that they had been “really quick” at identifying a Brava hack during their playtests.
However, as always, he assured players that Ubisoft will be monitoring the usage of Brava and will make changes if necessary.
The introduction of Brava will certainly mark a significant shift in the meta, especially for Twitch players who might find it more useful to use the new operator to hack defender gadgets instead of destroying them outright. However, Twitch will still be extremely useful to take Mira windows down and could still find a niche within attacker lineups.
Try Brava within the Rainbow Six Siege Test Server when it launches on Feb. 21 or when Y8S1 Operation Commanding Force launches on Mar. 7.