The newly announced Metal Gear Solid x Rainbow Six Siege crossover event takes place between MGS1 and MGS2 in the series timeline.
In an interview with GameSpark (via MGSMGN on Twitter/X), Konami’s Yuji Korekado reveled that the recently announced Metal Gear Solid and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege collaboration grew out of a prior partnership between Konami and Ubisoft. “Our company (Konami) and Ubisoft previously worked together on a collaboration for Assassin’s Creed,” he said. Because Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, included in the recently announced Master Collection Vol. 2, still contain those original collaborative elements, Konami visited Ubisoft to express their appreciation and discuss future possibilities.
During the visit, Ubisoft expressed interest in working together again. The timing aligned with the 10th anniversary of Rainbow Six Siege, and the publisher reportedly wanted to make the occasion a major celebration. “They explained that they wanted Snake to appear as the first-ever ‘additional operator’ from another company’s IP, and we felt that was a very exciting idea, so we accepted,” Korekado said.
When it came to deciding which version of Snake to use, Konami approached the collaboration with care. “In any collaboration, the most important thing is not to break the other game’s world,” Korekado explained. “We wanted to respect Ubisoft’s ideas as much as possible.” After considering the series’ two main branches, Naked Snake and Solid Snake, the team determined that Solid Snake was the better fit, particularly given Siege’s modern military setting.
Korekado also talked about Ubisoft’s suggestion regarding Solid Snake’s interactions with Sam Fisher, who appears in Siege as the operator “Zero.” The pairing of two stealth icons was seen as a natural and exciting match.
To ensure narrative consistency, Konami created an internal “temporary setting” to justify Snake’s presence alongside Team Rainbow. The story is set between the events of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, during the period when Snake and Otacon had founded Philanthropy, an anti–Metal Gear organization, and were traveling the world. While Korekado clarified, “We won’t call it official canon,” he added that Konami supervised the scenario as a plausible “‘What if’ scenario.”
