During a demo event, I was paired up with two strangers who would become my close squadmates for nearly four hours. Having completed a solo tutorial with little trouble, I went into our inaugural mission thinking I’d carry my team to victory as a party of one. One swarm of slimy aliens later, I was out of action, cocooned in a sickly yellow shell. My poor teammates had to abort the mission, toss my immobilized body on their shoulders, and extract me to safety. I was quite literally dead weight.
Oh, and it also replaces military conflict against human soldiers with a Left 4 Dead-style war against gooey aliens. After a few rounds and getting to know one another, that changed. The next time we got that objective, we spent more time talking it out. One squadmate sent a drone into a room to locate a computer and assess how many enemies were present. Once we worked together to clear the room, I stayed back at the ready while my other two squadmates pushed on to find the next two computers. Everything fell into place after that, with each step falling into place as we’d planned.
Risk assessment Rainbow Six Extraction is full of risks that push teams to think smarter. Death isn’t a hollow threat that’s greeted by a quick respawn. If all players die in a mission, they don’t gain any experience points for their efforts. In fact, they actually lose points for failing. A player’s rank can drop if the team wipes, which creates some high-stakes drama.
But the real danger is a character “dying” during a mission. If the whole team wipes, each player’s operator goes MIA and can not be selected for the next round. To get them back, players will have to complete a tense rescue operation during their next run. The operator’s body will be strapped to a sort of alien tree. One player needs to yank them out, while the others need to shoot oncoming enemies and energy orbs that help the tree pull the trapped character back in.
Even so, it’s hard to imagine three strangers with no microphones turned on getting too far. That’s especially true of the game’s blisteringly difficult Maelstrom mode. Maelstrom is a souped-up version of the core game experience where squads can complete up to 10 objectives as mutations make each mission harder. For example, one mission might add a modifier that makes alien goo poisonous, damaging players who stand in it.