No you didn’t take any meth this morning by mistake, that title is the honest to God truth. Recently it was revealed that the latest upcoming skin pack in Rainbow Six Siege is actually a crossover with Nier: Replicant. One of the Siege operators, Maverick, can now be decked out in Nier gear from shining golden guns to the classic bright white hair. Ubisoft unveiled a trailer showcasing the new skin off so I’ll post it for the interested. More potential character skins were lightly teased in the video so it’s probably reasonable to expect more coming down the pipeline.

Now as someone who always thought Siege looked interesting and Nier was cool (god I still need to finish my playthrough), this collab shapes up to be one of the things I hate most about brand deals. A situation where it feels like there’s no logic behind the collaboration besides draining players’ wallets. I’m no marketing hater when done well, hell I love collabs where it makes sense for the two brands to come together and make something unique. For example, if Chainsaw Man had a collaboration with an actual chainsaw company to make one that looked like Denji’s, that shit would be awesome. It’s creating a product that makes sense for both parties while ending up with a result that neither could make on their own. However, when you just shove a Nier skin onto Siege, a game that, well, USED to have a realistic artstyle and sense of combat to it, I can’t help but feel like nobody bothered to do anything but see an opportunity for cash and call it a day. A Siege collab with Call of Duty would make sense as they both are aiming to be more realistic in design comparatively, and it would be easy to feature a Siege character as a guest for zombies or something or a CoD campaign hero like Ghost in Siege. But here we are with some anime bullshit being mixed with soldier bullshit. 

Regardless I don’t play either game that much so I need to hop off my soapbox. Have you guys played either game? Does this feel like a blatant cash grab or am I being too shrewd on it? Are you hoping for more collabs down the road? Grab your gun, sling on your combat gear, and dye your hair a wild anime color in the comments below!