Solid Snake nearly had a cardboard box in Rainbow Six Siege, but it was scrapped for one good reason

Ubisoft and Konami united this weekend to reveal that, for the first time in the game’s history, a third-party character is coming to Rainbow Six Siege as an Operator - and it’s a biggie. Solid Snake joins Sam Fisher and the other 74 Operators in the team-based shooter, complete with a tactical kit that’s been adapted for the Siege’s tactical online arenas.

Equipped with a Soliton Radar Mk. 3, Snake is capable of detecting enemies through walls using a handheld PDA. A limited number of pings can inform players which direction enemy players are facing, making him an exciting pick for intel-focused players.

Other elements of his Metal Gear identity are realised in gameplay too, like his OSP (On-Sight Procurement) Pouch and iconic Tacit .45 pistol. These speak to Siege’s grounded and realistic tone that the studio is keen to preserve.

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However, that wasn’t always the case.

Although the idea was scrapped pretty early on into development, a prototype of Snake’s iconic cardboard box does exist, creative director Joshua Mills confirms.

“There is a prototype of the box. It has active camo on it,” Mills tells me in an interview.

However, other than the idea of a man skulking about in a cardboard box not gelling with the vibe of Siege, there was a major gameplay reason that the idea was scrapped - players are a lot smarter than Metal Gear Solid’s GRU soldiers.

Although the cardboard box was intended to automatically blend into the surrounding environment, the team found that players would see right through it - literally. Mills explains, “Because our players know every inch of every map, if they see a cardboard box somewhere, it's gone.”

Experimenting with those early gameplay elements did help to inform Ubisoft about how to best adapt Konami’s character for Ubisoft’s tactical universe, though. “It was looking at that and going, ‘if this is Snake in our world, what would that look like?’," Mills says.

"[So we] built [his kit] that way and made his primary gadget and abilities make sense with all our other Operators.”

The collaboration between Ubisoft and Konami has been a long time coming with conversations beginning over two years ago. Mills tells me how the collaboration started: “I sat down with Alex (Siege’s former creative director), and I was like, ‘All right, man - Snake in Siege’. And he was like, ‘What are you talking about?’.

“Everything was greenlit, and we got to work with Konami. They were an incredible partner in this process, because they gave us any resource we needed to do this right.

“Our team is full of nerds who are obsessed with the [Metal Gear] franchise. So the painstaking detail that goes into that Operator and the event and the assignment, it's just because of the love of it. That's what it came down to.

“It's been an honour to be a part of it.”

Although Mills tells me that the cardboard box prototype exists, Konami denies that it was ever in contention for making it into the final Operator kit, indicating that this was an idea that likely never made the pitch.

Solid Snake will be available to play as an Operator in Rainbow Six Siege on March 3, 2026.