Rainbow Six Siege designer confirms the fabled ‘hole blocker’ gadget is real
Rainbow Six Siege may soon see an operator that patches up walls instead of tearing them down. In an interview with PC Gamer at a preview event for Operation Neon Dawn, game designer Emilien Lomet said the “hole blocker” gadget datamined from Siege’s code way back in 2018 is real.
“The idea of having a defender who can patch holes has been around on the team for so long and we’ve made so many prototypes. For the longest time, it never clicked. Sometimes because of tech, oftentimes because of pure design. The way it was implemented wasn’t exactly as good as we wanted it to be. But it is definitely an idea that is super relevant to us and I’m going to stop talking now because otherwise I’ll break my NDA (non-disclosure agreement),” he said with a chuckle.
After hearing that, I was reminded of a post I made on the Siege subreddit in 2017 pitching new operators of my own creation (I got very bored at my old job). One of them, "Del,” uses a ranged cannon to seal holes with a fast-hardening compound heavily inspired by the GLOO Cannon in 2017’s Prey. In my head, the operator can seal holes in walls in the same way the GLOO Cannon seals fire hazards in the gif below.
Source: CamelWorks on YouTube
With this idea in mind for Siege, I asked Lomet if he’d ever played Prey, alluding to the GLOO Cannon but not mentioning it by name. “I’ve played Prey, actually. Okay, it’s crazy you’re saying that. I need to stop talking. I’m gonna shut up now!” he said. “I know exactly what you’re talking about.” We left it at that, but Lomet’s surprised response suggested I’d gotten close to at least one of the potential directions that this gadget might take.
If true, that’d be an incredibly unique defensive gadget. On sites where wall and hatch defense is crucial to victory (Consulate Garage and Clubhouse Armory, for example), an operator that can reseal hard-breached holes could give defender’s a second chance to cut off dangerous sightlines. A GLOO-style gadget would also be the perfect rival to Maverick mains. Imagine being able to reseal his sneaky murder holes or thwart his attempt to burn through the bottom of a wall into Bandit’s batteries.
Ubi always has several operators in development at once, so there’s no guarantee that the alleged hole blocker will be one of Year 6’s four new operators. That said, the way Lomet talks about the gadget’s history of prototypes sounds like the team has landed on something they’re happy with. For all we know, we could be talking about the first planned operator of 2021.