Ubisoft recently talked about the free post-launch roadmap of updates for Rainbow Six Extraction. The game was originally announced this past June at E3 2021, with a simple premise; use the operators of Rainbow Six to rescue other operatives and civilians while teaming up with your friends in a new PVE environment. Today, we’ve got new information regarding pricing, versions, and new weekly game modes.
The first newly-added content, and one of the biggest for Rainbow Six Extraction, is the new Maelstrom Protocol missions. These missions take the form of weekly challenges designed with tiered rewards. Maelstrom Protocol has players exploring a series of nine subzones with increasing difficulty, tougher enemies, quickly depleting resources, and allotted time getting shorter at each stage.
When reaching a checkpoint, players have to make a call between pressing onward, but losing everything, or extracting early and banking earned points. Rankings are separated into five tiers, with Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. Each tier rewards players with special head cosmetics and REACT Credits, one of the game’s currencies.
Crisis Events are brand-new events made for limited stretches of time, different from Maelstrom Protocols. In a Crisis Event, a new character is added to the game and comes with themed content, but they can also add a new Protean for players to defeat. In the first Crisis Event, Spillover, players must wipe out mass colonies of an evolved version of the Sprawl as hordes of Archæans attempt to stop them. These events will reward exclusive REACT Tech, new cosmetics, and new lore.
Assignments operate on a similar schedule to Maelstrom Protocols, rotating weekly. These activities involve adding mission modifiers to activities, such as no radar and more scarce ammo drops, akin to Destiny 2’s Nightfall Strikes. When the game launches in January, players will be able to access Assignments and Maelstrom Protocols. The first Crisis Event will be available soon after.
Ubisoft also took this time to announce the pricing scheme for Rainbow Six Extraction. The game will release on January 20th, 2022, on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Stadia, Amazon Luna, and PC via Ubisoft Connect and the Epic Games Store.
The Standard Edition is available to pre-order, starting from the new price of $39.99, which includes free post-launch content, Buddy Pass tokens, a deep operator progression system, four adjustable difficulty levels, 13 dynamic mission objectives, over 60 weapons, legacy Rainbow Six Siege tech, 15 exclusive REACT tech, and Maelstrom Protocol, a weekly challenge mode.
Each Rainbow Six Extraction version unlocks two Buddy Pass tokens, which you can give to friends who do NOT own the game. This gives players up to 14 days to try the game for free across all platforms. All progress made will carry over for friends when they do purchase the game, a way of trying it before they buy it.
All pre-orders will also unlock the Orbital Decay Cosmetic Bundle in Extraction. The Deluxe Edition, which includes everything from the Standard Edition alongside three bonus packs, is also available to pre-order at $49.99.
Players of both Rainbow Six Siege and Rainbow Six Extraction will get the United Front bundle, a collection of four gear sets split between both games, and instant access to all 18 playable Operators from Extraction to use in Siege.
