We’ve kept fairly quiet about how hyped we are for The Division, probably because of how long it’s taken to come out and Ubisoft’s lack of quality on titles like Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs. I mean, how long have we all been waiting to do this;
According to the internet, shutting this car door is the most anticipated moment when it comes to playing The Division. It’s interesting, as it’s such a small detail to include in the game, but also possibly significant as it demonstrates the game’s overall attention to detail. Odds are you could probably count the number of games which actively allow you to close a car door as you walk/crawl past on your hands. The main point is, the attention to detail Ubisoft are willing to put into this game is massive and has us waiting in anticipation for all the other little details we can fiddle with.
The game’s story is set in an almost post-apocalyptic world, during the winter. A devastating pandemic sweeps through New York City on Black Friday, and within days basic services fail and society collapses into chaos. Bring forward the unit called The Division, a classified unit of self-supported tactical agents who work separately of all command. You fight to prevent the fall of society, as well as dealing with a government conspiracy and forced to combat not only the effects of a manmade virus but also the rising threat of those behind it. It sounds very exciting, emotional and clever story based from the, quite frankly overused, post-apocalyptic genre.
The game plays as a third-person shooter and incorporates playing with friends online, although it’s unknown if it’ll play out like an MMO like The Crew or Destiny, although we hope not and is more like an optional co-op mode with a decent single player. As you’d expect from a Tom Clancy game, it’s not as easy as just running and gunning and requires some form of basic tactical ability to progress through the increasingly difficult areas of the game’s open-world. Based on what we’ve seen, there’s wild dogs, AI teams and potentially other human teams to hinder your progress outside of the main set of missions.
“It looks very beautiful” is how Hideo Kojima describes The Division in this YouTube video, and we couldn’t agree more. The new SnowDrop engine being used for this game looks simply stunning and, unlike Watch Dogs, hasn’t appeared to have had any major visual downgrades since we first saw it back at E3 2013, which hopefully we won’t see at all between now and it’s release, whenever that will be. The visual detail is up there as potentially some of the best of this generation so far and is easily one of the best looking games of this year, even above the likes of Metal Gear Solid V and GTA V. Hopefully the SnowDrop engine will be used in more games by Ubisoft in the future.
We haven’t got a release date yet for The Division, however, we’d be very surprised if this wasn’t at this years E3. If we had to hazard a guess, we’d say during the holiday period time or just before in November, following Ubisoft’s usual release window for major titles. We’re excited and we can’t wait to play this on PS4 later in the year.
