Yes, that's right, Iana's new skin from Rainbow Six Siege is not from Nier Automata 2B. The new Elite Collection was finally announced on November 21st and seamlessly combines tactical FPS gameplay with Square Enix's cult classic anime saga.
In the official cover art trailer, we see the Dutch forward standing amidst a swirl of floating runes wearing a black robe and Nierz-inspired eye mask. Short silver hair falls over his forehead as he destroys several targets, including the unfortunate Emile Motif.
As "a beautiful song" plays in the background, we see an image of a full cover that reads "Iana Elite Set: Iana Unit Designation."
While I personally had to pick my jaw up off the ground after the announcement, some fans criticized the skin for being too "polished" for the anime character Nibble, 2B. "I respect you guys, but I'm so sad about this collaboration. It's not 2B, let's face it. It's all fake."
However, gaming titan and nerd icon Yoko Taro addressed fans' concerns by writing that YoRHa is not actually 2B. Instead, it's G2, a new class of Yorha. "I had a clothing collaboration with Rainbow Six. I think you can play G2 instead of 2B," he wrote. This begs the question: why is 2G similar to 2B?
"Yorha's Gunner type only exists in the prototype model, and the prototype model will be called A2 in the same order, "type name and number", so if there is a two-digit Gunner type, the model number will be G2 ", he replied, and since Nair's son is behind this, I'll take his word for it. This means that Iyana's skin is now canon in the Nier universe, which is really cool.
I'm relying on Twitter's internal translation feature here (sorry guys, no Japanese here), so the actual wording of the tweet may be slightly different.
While I can understand that some players might be a little disappointed with the skin design, I love that the 2B inspired cosmetics are completely unique and not completely repetitive. There's something really cool about playing as a YoRHa prototype that we've never seen before, especially since Ina looks amazing.
It's not just the skin that comes with Rainbow Six Operation Solar Raid, there's more - we also have the new Rainbow Six Operator Solis. He remains unseen in the list of the best Rainbow Six operators. Either way, we can't wait to see much more from Iana.