The Division's Depiction of Epidemic is Way Too Real

Shortly before the first restrictions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak were announced, I watched Steven Soderbergh's Contagion on the TV. It's a great thriller with prime cast, depicting quite a realistic scenario of the rapid spread of a deadly virus and the attempts to invent an effective cure. The original narrative and extraordinary authenticity with regard to medical matters were appreciated by critics and scientists around the world. In March 2020, the film returned to iTunes' top 10 movies, is the most viewed film on HBO GO, and the number of Contagion searches on torrent websites went up 5,000%.

Turns out video games also have their own Contagion. It's the first installment of Tom Clancy's The Division, which depicts the aftermath of the so-called "dollar flu." In case of the game, however, there's no sign of an imminent resurrection. In some ways, that's not surprising – the publisher has been strongly promoting the sequel in a science-fiction setting for a while now, and the plot was rather unremarkable here, as were the characters and the ending. Most players were just sprinting through to reach the endgame, which they would also find rather disappointing. Little did they know, they were missing out on something really interesting.

The Division is a little too accurate in its depiction of epidemic.

The obscure chronicle of the epidemic

Almost nobody discovered this collection of everyday narratives portraying the spread of the virus in New York City. These logs are not given to you on a plate. They have to be found among dozens of phone calls and voicemails of regular people. Then, you have to sort them out, since they're broken into many pieces and categories, unchronological bits.

The collectables provide some captivating, little stories.

6%

According to data from the PlayStation 4 platform's "trophies" tab, only 6 percent of The Division players found all audiologs giving the account the origins of the outbreak in New York City.

Listening to these again today, when literally half of the world's population is in quarantine, is quite eerie of an experience. Many of them are virtually identical to the news and comments you can find online today. There are, of course, countless inspirations of Soderbergh's Contagion apparent, but many of the small, human stories, not directly related to the movie, really hit home. The collectables from the first part of The Division have inadvertently grown into good educational material for anyone who thinks that the current restrictions are overblown.

Just like in a video game

Looking at the current situation in the United States, the obscured message of The Division becomes all too striking. The US Surgeon General compared the current situation to the attack on Pearl Harbour and the 9/11 attacks. The United States currently have the largest number of infected people worldwide, and New York is the epicenter. On Fifth Avenue, shops are boarded up because of increased burglaries, and a makeshift hospital has been set up in Central Park. Medical personnel can be spotted everywhere, same as Federal Emergency Management Agency's trucks, and more restrictions are being introduced every day.

The hospital set up in Central Park looks exactly like CERA tents in The Division. Source: Nbcnews.com

At the same time, CBS News released a video entitled "Spring breakers say coronavirus pandemic won't stop them from partying" on March 25. Bearing all that in mind, the accounts of the epidemic presented four years ago in The Division look just like an epidemic handbook. Of course, a game is just a game, and we're fortunately still not looking at world governments collapsing. So, even though the loot and endgame were rather underwhelming, it seems the game got one thing right, after all.

Empty Apple

Before we even start looking for collectables, The Division strikes us with an incredible visual setting. And it's not about the winter and the snow, which always introduce an esoteric element to exploration. It's about the silence. A complete opposite to GTA IV's Liberty City, NYC in The Division is almost completely deserted, with no pedestrians, no traffic. The semblance to the empty streets of the city today is uncanny. The Times Square, usually packed to the brim, is completely deserted.

Then, there are the ubiquitous traces of the fight against the pandemic. A field hospital is set up on the basketball court in Madison Square Garden Arena. CERA (the game's counterpart of FEMA) tents and trucks are everywhere. You can see makeshift emergency points, traces of food distribution, contaminated sites under strict isolation. The aftermath of the fight against the epidemic is very apparent. While there's no way to witness the outbreak and the spread of the epidemic in the game, we can hear all about it. Hear about the things that we are witnessing today on a daily basis.

What epidemic?

Closed schools were also in The Division. As was, apparently, intense online gaming. Now that we generally have a bit more time for video games, publishers are bending over backwards, coming up with new ideas, giving games away for free, and inventing names for online events, such as "Stocked Up, Locked Down" in Mordern Warfare. Some countries even introduced online gaming programmes to keep kids at homes entertained (those that have computers, that is), giving some respite from online courses and the ban on leaving their homes.

The occasional ordinary passers by increase the authenticity of the post-apo city.

What else can they come up with? Ban on going to forests? Some already have. I cannot possibly count how many times I've seen comments online along the lines of "it's just flu; it's overblown; there are bigger problems." And not just online; governments around the world were initially reluctant to jeopardize their economies, less so to jeopardize the public health. States are putting in place more restrictions, and the news are slowly but surely becoming saturated with Covid info.

When hospitals are overcrowded...

Grounded airplanes and cancelled flights are now the order of the day in many countries and a dark scenario for many airlines, even the biggest and richest. As you can see, in The Division, the government took the most radical step and completely blocked all commercial air traffic. Meantime, most governments urged their citizens staying abroad to return home – the UK, for example, predicted there's about 1 million Britons overseas.

Sanity in insane times

There's a minor mention on the game of most stores being closed. We know this well, because the rules governing the operation of retail outlets are tightening week to week. Fortunately, we still have online shopping and the courier service, today virtually as important as the emergency services. This is something that certainly was emphasized in Death Stranding , and The Division seems to have forgotten about the blessings of the Internet.

Madison Square Garden became a morgue in the game.

From NHL, NBA, to European Champions League – the entire world of sport is in a standstill not unlike the one described in The Division. The global halt didn't even spare Formula One and the Olympics. Can e-sport fill the temporary void left by the emotions that have always accompanied these competitions? Well, while it will certainly not be able to fill it completely, events such as the online F1 races are surely a nice substitute.

A great many people and companies are now struggling with conditions that few of them ever tried predicting, let alone coming up with solutions for such cases. In New York from The Division, the changes were gradual, but abrupt. The blockade of airports and ban on travel weren't as palpable as the subsequent lockdown of the entire Manhattan.

Main characters

Photos showing doctors "hugging" their children through glass, and reports of medical staff severing all physical contact with their families contrasts sharply with videos of celebrities getting bored in quarantine. The Division doesn't portray such dissonance, but the game gives lots of attention to the work of medical professionals during an epidemic. In this case, it's not just about the collectibles and conversations like the one above. One of the main characters in the game is Jessica Kandel – a virologist who tries to develop a vaccine for the "dollar flu."

School’s out! Let’s grind them Alts!

Dr. Kandel is one of the main characters of The Division.

The biggest concern during any outbreak is not how many people will be infected in general, but the way these infections are distributed over a period of time. Overcrowded hospitals, shortage of doctors and nurses, sick police officers, firefighters, and prison guards – this is what an epidemic can become if it's not properly contained. A similar situation does currently prevail in NYC and the epiicenters of the virus in countries like Spain and Italy. The game gives a lot of exposition to this aspect of the epidemic in Sharon Diaz' audiologs, and through environmental narration. The collapse of the health system is perhaps the most conspicuous result of the outbreak in The Division, and it is unsettling.

Even she’s carrying a mask!

Stay calm and find them collectibles

The latest installments in the Tom Clancy's saga from Ubisoft never really lived up to the name. This, however, is the rare exception. The statements cited above are just bits of the extensive chronicle of the epidemic in New York City. A chronicle that sadly becomes real today. Ubisoft's collectibles don't have a good reputation, but in this case, I think it's worth making an exception and looking around for them. The writers at Massive Entertainment probably never suspected their work would become so meaningful. It may not be as appealing and innovative as using the pen in VR in Half-Life: Alyx, but it is definitely far more educational and eye-opening. So, #stayhome, and take a look at Tom Clancy's The Division – before the endgame.