Leaked Rainbow Six Parasite gameplay appears online

New details on Rainbow Six Parasite, the long-awaited Siege spinoff centered around co-op alien slaying, are starting to emerge after a long silence. Ubisoft is staying tight-lipped on the game until it's good and ready, but that hasn't stopped leakers from doing what they do best. Yesterday, a brief gameplay clip from Parasite (a codename Ubi is using until it decides on a final title) appeared on the Siege subreddit.

The clip was posted to Reddit by user ThyroidMelanin, though the video itself comes from a leaker. Watch the video below.

So much to break down out of three fleeting seconds. First of all, that's Vigil (the player) squadding up with Tachanka and Lion, a mixture of attacking and defending characters from Siege. We see that the three are on a mission in a place called "Workshop" with a 15-minute time limit. The player shoots a pungent sack of alien slime that dissipates the black goo surrounding it. That same goo can be seen in the original Parasite announcement trailer, so it seems like touching that stuff could be how humans are infected with the alien parasite. Fun stuff.

Shifting attention to the UI, most of the controls seen on screen come straight from Siege. You can still ping, change fire mode, and use a secondary gadget (which looks like some sort of special grenade here). The main difference is an option for a flashlight and a mystery option on the 6 key. Maybe mission objectives?

There's also a space for the operator's gadget on the right side of the screen. The symbol for Vigil's gadget in the clip matches the one for his ERC-7 jammer in Siege that allows him to disappear from camera feeds. That doesn't sound like an effective technique against zombies, so we can probably assume operator gadgets will be tweaked to fit a PvE environment. We can see a "+20 Stealth" notification at the very beginning of the clip, so maybe Parasite Vigil uses his scanner to sneak by enemies unnoticed.

The same Reddit user also posted the following screenshot showing that same black goo engulfing an entire room. It also looks like the player (Lion, this time) is escorting an NPC to a destination. Siege fans will be familiar with this mechanic from the Hostage mode.

R6 Parasite/Quarantine ingame screenshot from r/Rainbow6

Parasite sure has changed since it began life in 2018 as Outbreak, an experimental co-op event in Rainbow Six Siege that only lasted a few weeks. Players enjoyed the three-mission campaign so much that Ubisoft quietly began development on a dedicated co-op Rainbow Six. Parasite appears to share Outbreak's alien zombies and Left 4 Dead-style campaign co-op, though we still don't know if Siege-centric features like reinforcements or level destruction will return.

It's neat to see finally see Parasite in action after almost two years in the dark. As a co-op FPS aficionado and an even bigger fan of Rainbow Six Siege, it feels like Parasite (or whatever it'll be called when the dust settles) is laser-targeted to fit my interests. Hopefully, it won't be two more years before we can play it ourselves.