The R6 Thunderbird operator is the latest defender joining the game's roster. Let's get familiar with her main gadget and Operation North Star features.

Rainbow Six Siege Operation North Star officially teased a few days earlier, and today, Ubisoft revealed the full details about the upcoming season of the game, including Thunderbird, Favela rework, and other new features.

Thunderbird and Her Kona Station Gadget

As the new defensive operator, Thunderbird could be called a healer in the team, similar to Doc and Finka. She is a three-speed, one-armor operator and she has three Kona Station gadgets.

Kona Station is a deployable gadget that once established will heal anyone - Attacker or Defender - that enters its covered area. The gadget sends out a +5 heal to the operator in its range and then gets into the recovery mode until the next heal patch is ready.

The gadget can also revive operators who are in the Dead-But-Not-Out state, but the operator should trigger the heal by pressing a button in that situation. Kona Station can be destroyed by bullets and disabled by EMP grenade.

Thunderbird's loadout includes Spear .308 and SPAS-15 as primary weapons, Q-929 and Bearing 9 as secondary weapons, and Impact Grenades and Nitro Cell as secondary gadgets.

Favela Rework, Bullet Hole Fix, Banshi and Evil Eye Changes

As promised, a Favela rework will hit the Casual games in Quick Match as of Operation North Star. The new rework mostly replaces the big number of breachable walls with unbreachable ones.

When it comes to balancing the game, a bunch of changes will be applied to Melusi's Banshi, Maestro's Evil Eye, Smoke's Gas, Mira's Mirror, and the Bulletproof Cameras.

Simply put, the new season introduces a Shattering Glass feature that will be applied on Evil Eye, Black Mirror, and Bulletproof Cameras. Once an attacking operator hits one of the aforementioned gadgets with a melee attack, the glass on the gadgets will be shattered, blocking the defender from looking through them.

On the other hand, Melusi's Banshi can be destroyed by bullets in North Star. A new fix will be applied to Smoke's Gas to avoid it from leaking through walls.

A fix will also be applied to bullet holes. You can no longer look beyond breachable walls through the bullet holes. You will either need to breach it, or destroy it, or perform a melee attack.

Operation North Star Release Date

North Star with all of its new features and changes will be available on Test Servers as of May 25. The official release date for the main servers is yet to be announced.

Rainbow Six Siege is now available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC. The Xbox Game Pass subscribers on both PC and consoles can access the game for free.