Rainbow Six Siege is one of those multiplayer games that continue to thrive without making much noise outside their core communities. In fact, last year brought a number of substantial changes to the game through the Rainbow Six Siege X update. Shame about those massive attacks from hackers though.

In any case, a new year brings new opportunities, and this next content drop had probably been brewing for a long while. The rumours were true: Solid Snake as seen in Metal Gear Solid is coming to the game on 3rd March. Yep, Konami has gone beast mode and is even doing a huge collaboration now with a publisher that was a major competitor years ago.

The reveal trailer is self-explanatory: Sam Fisher (Splinter Cell series) and Solid Snake in the same game? Working together? Time-travel back to the mid-2000s with this trailer and you’d blow the gaming industry’s collective mind. The Fortnite-ification of every franchise big enough is real, but if that’s the future of entertainment, we might as well enjoy team-ups that always were destined to happen.

Fisher joined Rainbow Six Siege a few years back, when it was starting to embrace the potential of crossovers with other IPs. Of course, it’s far more shocking when those big collabs happen with different publishers, and even more special when we’re talking about stealth game legends. And if you were thinking Solid Snake is just a skin or a lazy operator design, you’d be wrong:

As thoroughly described by the blog post on Operation Silent Hunt, “Solid Snake excels at tracking down Defender positions and scavenging supplies on the battlefield to adapt to any situation” thanks to the familiar Soliton Radar MKIII gadget and an “On-Site Procurement ability.” The battle pass for this season instantly unlocks Snake and includes cosmetics for other operators, like the Psycho Mantis outfit for Smoke. Later, a mystery new mode will be added alongside more MGS outfits and the long-awaited team-up with Sam Fisher, which is a limited-time mode of sorts.

Beyond the fan excitement surrounding Snake’s arrival to R6 Siege, it’s safe to say this new addition to the roster will shake the meta up in big ways, as the stealth legend is a master of controlling movement in the battlefield and can carry more secondary gadgets. Can he be a lore-friendly and balanced operator? Let’s hope so.