Tom Clancy’s The Division hands-on – the apocalypse in New York is near

The bigger the gaming industry becomes, the better trailers we get. They are full of dramatic events, Hollywood-like camera perspective and acting on the Oscars level; these trailers are small masterpieces that many times make you decide whether you as a gamer will or will not buy a certain game. Tom Clancy’s The Division got at least few trailers that you can describe in a similar manner. A trailer combined with gameplay that was revealed during the first E3 presentation was really impressive and gave hope to every player out there. A huge open world, interesting script and location of the game, a chance to play both alone and with others… what’s not to love? Unfortunately, during the production process the creators encounter “few” problems that forced them to delay the release of the game. The more the game got delayed, the less we were excited for it… Our excitement simply died out. I must admit – the same thing applied to me. Quite recently I had a chance to play The Division and a few days ago I spent some more time with the almost complete version of the game during a special event in Sweden. Not everything is 100% ready yet, but to be completely honest: what I saw made me believe once again that this can actually work. Let’s go back to the beginning, though.

Depend mostly on yourself

Although most of you already had a chance to familiarize yourselves with the general idea of the plot since The Division was announced, let me remind you how and why you need to fight for the better tomorrow. The game takes place in New York – an iconic city that became a target of a terrorist attack. The unknown perpetrators decided to place a lethal virus on American bank notes, and it started to spread immediately via skin contact. As a result, the city faced a very dangerous pandemic outbreak. The streets got overrun by complete chaos, and New York was isolated from the rest of the world. Agents who were prepared for a scenario like this for many years are the ones who need to bring peace to the city once again. However, nobody could foresee that the whole situation would be so dire. After watching a short intro and a brief introduction, it is high time for action… although the story is supposed to be a central point of the game later as well.

Equipment that we get during the game can be divided into five categories. Grey items are of the lowest quality, and the most rare and the most powerful ones are orange. We will also find green, blue and violet items in the game world. There is a lot of rewards in New York, but don’t expect weapons and armors to rain from the sky! Additionally, you will also find schematics, modifications, food… What’s important, the items that you loot from an enemy are bounded individually to you. This means that when you play in a team, you don’t need to worry about a “loot race” that you might remember from Borderlands.

We start this uneasy journey by creating our character. The tool seems to be quite complex – there are many facial combinations for our main protagonist, although you can’t really expect a complete freedom regarding the matter. The available options are sufficient, but they are pretty standard. However, I noticed that there is a special store in the menu, so I presume that it is possible to expand your list of available visual variants. Deciding on our character’s face is the only thing we select. There is no class system in The Division, and it’s the stats, talents and perks that we unlock and upgrade during the game, that decide on who will our character become. You can do this by using better equipment, levelling you character (up to level 30) and… expanding your base of operations.

Speaking of the base of operations. This is one of the elements that I can speak more of since very recently. On the contrary to what you might initially expect, this isn’t only a place where you go to pass time. This is a very important element of gameplay that is divided into three main sections – medical, technological and military. The moment you reach the base for the first time, it is completely ruined and none of the abovementioned sections are active. In order to make them active, you need to complete few plot-related missions and rescue certain NPCs. If you manage to do that, you will have the possibility to upgrade and expand these areas. You can do that by completing missions from a certain category. To make it simple – if you want to upgrade the medical section, you need to do the missions related to medical stuff, e.g. find samples of a potential antidote. It is worth highlighting that these upgrades not only improve the base visually, but they also give you real benefits - for example, you can get additional passive bonuses. To sum it up, if you want to develop your character better, you need to take care of improving both the character and the base.

Optional cooperation

While traversing the open world, you will meet not only enemies, but also characters related to missions. There are also regular citizens roaming the streets – the ones that somehow survived in the harsh reality. Some of them will ask you for help – for example, for a bottle of water. If you provide them with what they want, you will get some experience points and a random item. It seems that helping others will be worth it!

Your base of operations isn’t the only “safe” place on the whole map. Although the base is in no way shared between players (everyone gets their own “copy” and you can’t visit anyone’s base), you can meet other people in shelters. By the way, these are the only areas except for the dark zones (more on that later) where you can see other players that are not members of your team (that consist of up to three people). In these kinds of camps you can rest, restock your equipment and find companions for another adventure or accept new missions. You can do all of these in the open world as well, but if you feel the need to socialize with other people in a bigger group, that’s where you need to go. Just to make it clear – you won’t meet any other agents while roaming the streets of New York. The only exception is your team, but if you choose to travel alone, the only company you get are the NPCs. However, if you get bored of playing on your own right before entering a certain area, you can connect with other people interested in doing the same mission via a special HUD.

If you decide to do that, however, you need to be ready for a bigger challenge. Although I didn’t notice any changes in how the enemy behaves, they all have much more health points, and as a result skirmishes take longer to finish and you actually need to position yourself better so that you can fire at enemy location from a relative safety. I didn’t notice any differences in experience points and rewards you get, and that leads to a simple conclusion – you can actually play the game on your own for most of the time. Although playing as a team is slightly more difficult, it is much more enjoyable. I would like to make a personal observation here as well. If you play on your own, the fact that you don’t meet any other player on the open world map enhances the atmosphere and the feeling of the end of the world. There’s just you, the demolished streets of New York, and groups of bandits. Playing as a team doesn’t really take away that feeling so I need to admit – The Division works brilliantly in terms of creating the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic world.

It’s a long way to get… everywhere

Available missions seem to be very promising. During the time I spent with the game, I encountered at least few types of missions that required me to use a completely different approach. Some of them required me to simply kill the enemies or “mini-bosses”, others had me searching for items in a given time, securing the areas or rescuing hostages.

Speaking of the map, it is important to talk about one more thing – its size. The first impression isn’t overly positive – the world seems to be quite small, and when we see the distance of 1 kilometer displayed on the counter, you can’t help but frown. However, when you start to walk in that direction… you begin to realize that getting there takes a lot of time. Winding streets, multiple levels of buildings and other structures (underground as well) and the fact that the world is packed with more and less important “bonuses”, makes walking from point A to point B much longer journey than expected. We walk a hundred virtual meters in a similar amount of time it would take to do this in real life… so when you see 3 kilometers on the distance counter, you know that it will involve a lot of running. Luckily, Ubisoft decided to introduce a fast traveling system to make it easier. You can “teleport” to some more important locations if you visited them before. The same goes for our companions – if someone is on the other end of the map, you can immediately transport yourself to him instead of wasting a few or a few dozens of minutes of running.

Despite the available options, we will run a lot in The Division, especially during firefights. The game offers quite a nice covering system, and keeping in mind the dynamics of every skirmish, you will need to change cover quite often. If you add the “necessity” to flank the enemies and avoid grenades and other projectiles, it quickly turns out that you need to move constantly on a pretty small area. Running into a group of enemies with guns blazing always ends in quick death, so if you want to succeed in PvP or PvE at all, you need to learn how to use the available tools. Contrary to what you may think, it’s not that easy. Although covering and combat system is done quite nicely, you need to get used to them. Overall, it is quite intuitive but it requires a lot of precision. It is enough to misclick once and we accidentally take cover or stop in the middle of our sprint to another hiding spot. The repertoire of both offensive and defensive stuff is much easier to handle – we can use up to 3 weapons, three skills, grenades and first aid kits. Additionally, there is a simple hand-to-hand combat in the form of simple attacks with a bayonet. There’s not a lot of it, but the game actually offers more than most modern productions of this genre… and when we learn to combine everything with proper covering, there is no end to proper tactics. Especially when you play with other people or against other people.

Chaos isn’t always beautiful

The enemies we encounter in New York are divided into few types. Apart from regular enemies, there are elite opponents and mini-bosses with their own unique names. Every enemy belongs to one of the three available factions – rioters, rikers and cleaners – that are different in terms of equipment and tactics they use.

It’s time to say something about PvP – after all, that’s where the real test of skill takes place. The dark zones that I mentioned earlier are the only areas where you can actually play against other people. These areas are marked on the map in a certain way, and getting there requires you to cross special barriers – there is no way you could get into the “warzone” by accident. It is important to point out one thing – you don’t need to shoot other players in dark zones. No one says that you can’t join forces with other teams and together face AI-controlled enemies… or just have fun using emotes. However, if someone shoots in the direction of other player by accident, all hell breaks loose. I mentioned the feeling of isolation in the open world, but in dark zones you see total chaos. Everyone is shooting at everyone, you don’t know who to trust… and only self-discipline and focus lets you make it to the end. What’s important, you can also enter PvP areas on your own. If you don’t settle for playing with friends or matchmaking, you can still visit these areas of the city. There is no point in lying, though – you will be much safer in a group of three.

Let’s not talk only about gameplay (although I really liked it, despite it being far from perfect). I’m not completely satisfied with audio-visuals of The Division. Although sounds, voices and music are okay and not much will change before the release, my concerns for the graphics haven’t changed from the previous sessions with the game. The quality of textures is worse and the game (at least on Xbox One) doesn’t look as good as it was promised in the initial phase of revealing the project. However, this doesn’t mean that the game looks ugly. On the contrary – the world is full of details, light effects (especially inside buildings) are really jaw-dropping, but it is obvious that The Division didn’t avoid the visual downgrade. The creators decided to sacrifice the graphics for the sake of smooth gameplay experience, although you could sometimes see that it didn’t work out completely as it should. The version of the game that I played was not the final one, so I hope that everything can be tweaked for release, but for now the number of FPS dropped well below 30 in certain situations. There were some problems with animations as well, and a character simply glided through the air. It didn’t stop me from enjoying the game, but the console version still has some elements that need to be improved.

The Division of Reliability

Despite some small setbacks, The Division generally kept me on the edge of my seat for the whole time I spent with the controller in my hands. Let’s make one thing clear – this isn’t a game that will immediately become a hit of the decade and will get all Game of the Year 2016 awards; it won’t take the gaming industry to another level as well. To be honest, we’ve seen it all somewhere, but Ubisoft was able to combine everything into one unique gaming experience and running on the streets of New York is really enjoyable. What is a real highlight for me is the way the creators made it possible to play on your own and as a part of the team. Both these options are completely playable and we are not forced into either of them. What is more, cooperating with other players is super easy to initiate and it is available from any place in the game world. It doesn’t matter if we decide to play on our own or with others, the game is full of very characteristic atmosphere, it has an interesting progression system, and it should be fun for both the gear-collectors and those who look for diversity in missions. The Division doesn’t invent the wheel anew, but it definitely keeps its prerelease promises. Let’s hope we will be able to say the same thing about the game after March the 8th.