Rainbow Six Siege has the most confusing lore

Multiplayer shooters with story elements that don’t really match the fact that people are getting shot or blown up isn’t a new thing. Unreal Tournament kicked it off by giving us character biographies and a weird mining company bloodsport to justify all those goofy oddballs lobbing rockets at each other, but it’s always been an excuse to have players in a deathmatch. Over the years, as graphical fidelity brought us closer to realism, it’s been harder to reconcile the lighthearted lore with deadly combat.

This trailer for Rainbow Six Siege’s Six Invitational tournament raises all sorts of questions. Did those spectators pay to watch the outside of a building? Are the contestants actually shooting each other in their faces with powder bullets? They use normal bullets in the other matches, right? Are they really punching and rifle-butting each other? Are all the other maps part of this story, or are these operators like the wolf and sheep dog from the cartoons; just doing a job with no hard feelings between them? Oh, and one of the combatants can dress like Lara Croft? The kickoff trailer from January is just as confusing.