The wait is finally over, after almost 3 years of waiting since Ubisoft unveiled it at their E3 press-conference last June 10, 2013, there was no stopping the hype train for Tom Clancy’s The Division after it impressed not only the attendees but also the ones who watched at at home. As for me, I really do not like to play shooters for its bland, generic and over-repetitiveness, however after playing around with Defiance, Destiny and Firefall, I wanted to give this game a fair shot as well.
The story of the The Division puts you in the shoes of an agent, activated on Black Friday by the government to assist the Joint-Task-Force (JTF) because of a smallpox pandemic (called the “Green Poison” as it was inserted into banknotes) breaks through New York City and puts Manhattan on quarantine, as the protagonist of the story, you are asked to assist in taking back the city from numerous gangs and finding out the details of the virus so the government can produce a vaccine to stop the epidemic. The story is simple, your goals are straightforward however, and while it does get mildly interesting once you explore the tons or “lore” the game has to offer, from picking up phone recordings, to missing agent trackers, to reconstructing scenarios and even up to the dungeons the game currently has, it is still forgettable for the most part due to its predictability and lack of proper storytelling in the mission proper.
The game looks visually stunning especially on the PC (having more graphic settings and all, respect to the consoles version too as it also looked amazing despite their hardware limitations), I have tried putting the graphics all on max/ultra and I was ultimately left in a state of euphoria watching all the gorgeous sun rays, the fog that blatantly blinds you as you wade through the streets of New York, the sun rays, water reflections, etc. this game has definitely one of the best graphics I have ever seen, if you are playing on the PC you are going to have to spend a ton of cajones to pull it off, as it does eat up a lot of resources. I used a i5-4670k (on stock clocks, a GTX 780Ti, and 8GB of ram, and I defaulted at High and get around 45-60 fps, usually at 60 fps unless tons of things are happening at my screen. Presentations look and feel smooth from cinematic camera movements to quality-controlled CCTV footage recordings to the audio that depicts a broken-down city, dogs howling (and pooping), crows and rats fighting, to gunshots from afar, to footsteps and a decent soundtrack to accompany the whole of it (the game doesn’t really have any background music when you’re roaming around, it does on the loading sections though, also on another note, the world is seamless, loading screens are very minimal and only appears upon entry to the Dark Zone and cut-scenes to name a few.
For me, The Division is mostly a Third-Person-Shooter MMO with some RPG injected into it, it is a bit like Destiny but in a third person view, you can see your character, change his clothing and not just your hands, and I say with some “RPG” because the character creation is just too limited, no sliders but a preset amount of faces, no height/weight sliders, no custom face sliders, none of that, you get to pick your face, your hair, tattoos, beard, hair/eye color, and gender. The only “role-playing” I find in this game is the clothing, in which you can collect different jackets, shirts, pants, etc and equip to them to visually distinguish yourself from other agents. Too bad they didn’t put “Eyewear/Glasses” as clothing pieces though. I believe that a role-playing game lets the players express their characters in their own way, at this point, I do know some games that beat The Division at this aspect and I hope they do at least add a barber/plastic surgeon just as a quality of life change.
The game-play is solid, smooth (minus the launch issues) and the most fun I had on a shooter, you are given tons of options to set-up an attack and to use the environment as covers, moving from wall to wall is as easy as pressing and holding a button, and while it does get “sticky” at times, it is still better than manually crouching on the corner and hoping you hid well enough to not get hit. There are main missions that usually are just dungeons that you have to clear, side missions that task you to power up generators, collect virus samples, protect/gather supplies, etc and encounters which are like smaller versions of side missions that grant you research points, which in turn can be used to develop your base of operations which also unlock skills, talents and perks that your agent can use. Leveling also doesn’t mean effective as leveling only grants you the ability to equip higher weapons and open skill slots, the talents, perks, skills are all unlocked by upgrading your base and equipping them manually. Crafting is also present, simple and yes, high-end gear can be crafted and the schematics are available at certain vendors as well. Also note that loot trading is impossible at the moment but it will come according to Ubisoft’s “Year One” trailer. End-game PVE at the moment revolves around grinding missions and dailies to get “Phoenix Credits” which can be used to purchase end-game gear at certain stores.
In terms of PVP, the game offers the “Dark Zone” which is a part of the map in which there are both NPCs to kill and “rogue” agents, having it’s own levels, the Dark Zone is currently where loot is easily found but riskier to get, upon picking up your loot, you must proceed to an extraction point to “decontaminate” the items. at which you are given 90 seconds to wait for a helicopter and defend yourself from attacks from both NPCs and players. Dying is also a bit serious in the Dark Zone as you drop some experience, all your contaminated loot and other valuables, the punishments is higher for rogues though. Both weapons and armors can be modded by adding scopes, barrels, magazines, etc without having the need to be in a specific location, and the perks can be “re-rolled” as well. The AI in the open pve map may be a bit of a push-over but inside the Dark Zone they do hit hard, to the point at which they can 1-2 shot you, which adds more thrill to the over-all experience and while you can solo all parts of the game, it is indeed more fun with more players as it amps up the challenge and depending on your builds could still hamper your chances in both PVE dungeons and the Dark Zone, from planning when to strike and where to hide, to making your skills work off one another for a common goal.
However most games these days rely on dynamic events and I find it a bit depressing to not find any of it in The Division, while encounters may seem to be the thing closest to it, it would sure as hell be a lot better if there were more things happening around the environment as grinding encounters do feel repetitive at a certain point. Dungeons are also very unrewarding as the only perks of running it more than once and on a harder difficulty is the chance to get better loot (which is not always guaranteed as I have seen a hard mode run drop “green” loot which is similar to a normal mode run. Time will tell what happens to the PVE side of the game when the new “Incursions” (part of the Year One updates) arrive.