If you go on X (formerly Twitter) and search for the word wheelchair, the top results won’t be about next week’s Paralympic Games but about Rainbow Six Siege's next operator.
Exactly six days before Ubisoft’s official Operation Twin Shells reveal, two videos about the game’s upcoming operator were leaked. According to the videos, the popular tactical shooter is adding a disabled character who moves in a wheelchair. Certainly, moving around the battlefield on such a device would be a difficult task, especially if the operator had to rappel.
However, despite being confined to a wheelchair, Rainbow Six Siege’s new operator won’t be physically inside the maps. Instead, the character will control two humanoid robots from a safe distance. As seen in the leaked videos, the Greek operator will be able to swap between both robots as they will be controlled independently.
Unfortunately, instead of praising what’s arguably one of the most unique in-game mechanics to ever be introduced to Rainbow Six Siege, the most popular replies to the leaks focused on the wheelchair and a supposed attempt at forced inclusion.
How important is inclusivity in Ubisoft and Rainbow Six Siege?
According to Cambridge’s definition, inclusivity refers to the fact of including all types of people, things, or ideas and treating them all fairly and equally.
Nowadays, inclusivity has become the norm not just in video games but in pop culture – and there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is when giant corporations use it exclusively to benefit them; caring only about the economic boost that including certain groups of people can have on their product's sales. That’s when the term forced inclusivity is correctly used, when the industry uses representation not to represent but to earn.
The wheelchair issue isn’t the first time Ubisoft has faced backlash for introducing inclusivity in one of their games. Recently, the developer faced thousands of negative comments from a big part of the gaming community for forced inclusivity in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which will include a black samurai called Yasuke, who “is commonly held by Japanese historians to be the first recorded samurai of foreign birth.”
Despite the historical evidence, Ubisoft choosing Yasuke as the game’s main character created a snowball that’s still getting bigger as we get closer to its release date. In July, Ubisoft released a statement about the team’s decision to use Yasuke, which included the following paragraph:
“We have put significant effort into ensuring an immersive and respectful representation of Feudal Japan. However, our intention has never been to present any of our Assassin's Creed games, including Assassin's Creed Shadows, as factual representations of history, or historical characters. Instead, we aim to spark curiosity and encourage players to explore and learn more about the historical settings we get inspired by.”
The final sentence is what the goal of inclusivity in a historical video game should produce for players: curiosity and knowledge. Yasuke’s path in Feudal Japan isn’t common and the fact that the history is true fires the desire – for positive or negative reasons – to look for more information about the samurai and the Asian region.
Let’s go back to Rainbow Six Siege now. Inclusivity has been an important stone when building the background for the different operators. In October 2018, as a result of the game’s partnership with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, fans found out that Caveira is lesbian.
More cases of inclusivity came after that and here are some of the most notable examples:
- In March 2021, Flores was released to Rainbow Six Siege. He was the first gay operator to be released to the game.
- In September 2021, Osa was released to Rainbow Six Siege. She was the first transgender operator to be released to the game.
- In June 2022, Sens was released to Rainbow Six Siege. They were the first non-binary operator to be released to the game.
- In November 2022, with the launch of Nighthaven Labs, in an audio recording that players can find on the map, it was revealed that Pulse described himself as bisexual after breaking up with Hibana.
Therefore, adding a wheelchair operator to give visibility to disabled people is great. It doesn’t even feel forced at all – the operator doesn’t go to the map, instead, controls two humanoid robots that perform the tasks. At the same time, Ubisoft is introducing a unique mechanic that could open many doors to brand-new game modes in the future. For instance, Oryx’s Remah Dash or Azami’s Kunai have been added in different ways to time-limited playlists.
From in-game charms to uniform details, Ubisoft’s inclusiveness is brilliant in Rainbow Six Siege. Some players barely notice it, but it has always been there.
Can a wheelchair and humanoid robots affect Rainbow Six Siege’s realism?
Regardless of inclusiveness, Rainbow Six Siege fans often get annoyed when Ubisoft introduces a feature that goes against realism. An example of this happened in April 2022, when Ubisoft decided to backtrack a change targeted to Smoke’s gas vulnerability. Another example occurred in November 2023, when fragmentation grenades got nerfed so they couldn’t be cooked anymore – instead, players can now hold an active fragmentation grenade for an infinite time.
What I am trying to say is that Rainbow Six Siege isn’t realistic. It’s a semi-realistic shooter that allows players to play around the features of each map to get the most out of their respective loadouts.
An example of an unrealistic ability in Rainbow Six Siege is Jackal’s Eyenox, which allows him and his teammates to know the exact location of an enemy for a certain amount of time. Other abilities that are likely to be unrealistic are Alibi and Iana’s holograms, Doc and Thunderbird's healing gadgets, and Azami’s Kiba Barriers, just to name a few.
If you think about it, the most realistic abilities were introduced in the early days of Rainbow Six Siege. Thinking of Year 0 operators, most of their abilities are real, except for Pulse’s, Doc’s, and maybe Jäger’s. As operations have gone by, the realism behind the operator’s abilities hasn't been a central point – but a wheelchair and two humanoid drones shouldn’t trigger the community.
In March of this year, Ubisoft introduced Deimos, a guy whose ability gives him literal wallhacks. In Year 8 only, Rainbow Six Siege introduced Fenrir, whose gadget frees a smoke that affects the enemies' vision, and Ram, who can carry three massive bulletproof drones.
Meanwhile, the army has already started working with robots on the battlefield. While their abilities are still very limited, having an operator that can control two humanoid robots shouldn’t feel more unrealistic than an operator that literally pings an enemy on the map or a defender that throws kunais to create concrete barriers. In other words, the wheelchair and the humanoid robots should have never been a problem.
I had never imagined a wheelchair could make Rainbow Six Siege players rage as much as cheaters do. Sadly, this is what came to my mind after spending five minutes checking the community’s replies to the videos posted yesterday about Rainbow Six Siege’s new operator.
Less than thirty seconds of video produced a tsunami of hateful comments towards Ubisoft. It’s saddening that such a big part of Siege’s community reacted to the news so badly. Comments like “what even is Siege anymore” or “they add r****** on wheelchairs to the game now” are some of the most liked replies to the post, with 5.3 and 3.4 thousand likes at the time of writing this article.
Unfortunately, inclusivity is a double-edged sword. While it’s very needed not just in the video games industry but also in films, music, and more, it’s also about how it’s deployed. Adding a wheelchair operator isn’t anything crazy. It would have been crazy if the operator had a wheelchair that allowed them to climb or rappel instantly. But, let’s face it: Ubisoft has done an excellent job at including a wheelchair operator – and we should feel proud of it.