What have they done to my beautiful boy

pcgamer.com:

I can't believe it finally happened.

On a dusty day in May 2016, just a few months into Rainbow Six Siege's redemption campaign following its disastrous launch, a Navy Seal named Blackbeard joined the team. He was only the second attacker added after launch, and with his defending counterpart Valkyrie raised Siege's total roster size to 24. Blackbeard's unique gadget, a rifle-mounted ballistic shield that negated headshots from the front, was immediately controversial. Headshots are king in Rainbow Six Siege—it's one of the only games where they're a guaranteed one-shot-kill—so you can imagine how an operator who gets to ignore that risk with few downsides became everyone's favorite to complain about.

Despite Blackbeard being the target of so many calls for nerfs, bans, or straight-up deletion, he has remained on the roster relatively unchanged eight years and 50(!) operators later. The Blackbeard of 2024 can still block headshots for free and win fights he doesn't deserve to win—but that all ends soon. Ubisoft unveiled its long-awaited Blackbeard rework this past weekend:

By «rework,» what Ubisoft apparently meant is that Blackbeard is a completely different operator now. Sure, he uses the same rifles he used to, but his rifle shield has been replaced with a full-size riot shield. That officially makes Blackbeard a shield operator just like Blitz, Clash, and Montagne. Of course, his shield is special: the top of it can retract, allowing Blackbeard to use his primary guns while still protected from the torso down, and the shield can also soft breach through walls (a first for Siege). It's a pretty neat trick, and after playing a few rounds with Ubisoft last week, I'm convinced new Blackbeard is fun.

Fun isn't the problem—what rubs me the wrong way is that this Blackbeard might as well not even be Blackbeard anymore. This feels very different from when Ubi reworked Tachanka by making his machinegun a primary and giving him a grenade launcher. In that case, I think