After players took notice of the character’s apparent background in her in-game bio, Ubisoft has confirmed that the newest operator set to debut in Rainbow Six Siege’s next season, Osa, is indeed a male-to-female transgender individual.
Osa’s transgender identity was first discovered by fans on August 17th, when the character and the rest of the content included in Rainbow Six Siege’s upcoming Year 6, Season 3: Crystal Guard update went live on the game’s PC test servers.
As read in Osa’s bio, the only such in-game instance where her transgender identity is mentioned, at one point in her life, the Nighthaven recruit “found herself isolated [at the University of Zagreb] due to her unorthodox approach and others’ attitudes towards her transition.”
Unsure of Osa’s identity due to it being mentioned in only one line of dialogue, rather than any sort of self-congratulatory marketing material, GameSpot reached out to Ubisoft for clarification, to which writer Simon Ducharme confirmed, “The decision to create a transgender character was made early on, as part of our initiative to have an inclusive roster of Operators.”
“The consultants, all of whom are trans people, wanted to make sure that Osa was presented as authentically and organically as possible,” added Ducharme. “She was written by a queer person and she is voiced by a trans woman – and while her identity is certainly influenced by her gender, who she is in the Siege universe is centered on her talents, her influence on Nighthaven, and her close friendship to Kali.”
Though Ducharme claims that Osa’s transgender identity was something established early on in her development, one can’t help but feel that this reveal may have been done in order to deflect attention away from the two controversies, the accusation that leadership failed to adequately respond to the company’s 2020 sexual misconduct scandal and the recently launched investigation into Ubisoft Singapore for the same reasons, that are currently embroiling the company.
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