Tom Clancey's The Division
Howdy, Intelligent Gamers!
Tom Clancy’s The Division is the game that I am most anticipating for this year; and just because I was aching for more information on the game to submerse myself into, I decided to do some research on it. I wanted to share with you what I found.
First of all, check out the latest trailer for the game just so you can start to get as excited as I am.
Now, what I want to do is go ahead and break this down into sections. First, we’re going to talk about the agents of the Division themselves (i.e. your characters). Then, we are going to talk about the gear, a little about their cultural/linguistic support in the game, and then about one of the main enemy factions of the game – The Cleaners.
Agents of The Strategic Homeland Division
First and foremost, it is important to understand what role you, the player, and your character have in this game world. The Strategic Homeland Division, or simply “The Division”, was established as a last resort department within the federal government. The primary purpose of The Division and its agents is to re-establish order, structure, and a functioning society in the event of a devastating incident such that could destroy the very fundamentals and foundations of society and government. There are secondary purposes underneath that, but that is the main idea.
Strategic Homeland Division Logo
As an agent of The Division, you are equipped with the best technology and the best training that money could buy when things like money actually mattered. We’ll touch on gear in a minute. Your agent is trained to survive in a world with scarce to no resources. As a matter of fact, according to Ryan Barnard, Game Director, one of the main inspirations for this game was the idea of how fragile society is and how we, as a culture and society are possibly only 3 meals away from total collapse. That is the environment that you, as an agent of The Division find yourself in.
According to Martin Hultberg, who has been working with research and IP development, “the Division is intended to ensure the continuity of government in the case of a catastrophic emergency. To do this, the Division has three branches – Analytics, Strategic and Tactical operations.”
Gear Is An Agent’s Best Friend
This is one of the visual elements that has excited me the most, to be perfectly honest. I have been into preparing for emergency situations almost my entire life, having grown up in hurricane-prone Florida. It has been something that I have gotten even more involved in since getting married and starting a family. In short, anyone who has prepared for any sort of emergency situation can be considered a “prepper”. This game is definitely going to appeal to the prepper-minded individuals, as well as others.
In the following trailer, you get to see some examples of The Division agent’s gear in use.
After I initially saw that trailer, I had some questions about it. The gear looks amazing. If I could buy that watch in real life, I would do it. No questions asked. But, how customizable is the gear? The game developers have answered those questions.
Having said that, it appears that customizability is important to the game developers. They realize that this is an RPG and they know that gear customization is important to RPG gamers. Before we get to that, though, your agent’s gear is based on, as was mentioned before, the concept of resource scarcity. So your agent is equipped with a go-bag (in prepper communities, it is often referred to as a BOB, or bug-out bag) and just like in real life, your go-bag is equipped with 3 days worth of gear. It has been mentioned that your character won’t need to eat or drink to stay alive (this is just a game, after all) but they will make use of water and food as currency. One of the aspects of this game that has been highlighted many times is that there will be player-to-player and player-to-NPC trading and exchanging. So, make sure you’re not neglecting to search your immediate surroundings when you’re playing in the game. This idea was articulated by Axel Rydby, Design Director, “not only will you be able to find gear from fallen enemies, but you will be able to buy gear from the black market in the game. When society collapsed, the regular economy collapsed along with it, and the black market sprouted in its place. It’s on this black market that players will be able to trade resources for gear and weapons.”
According to Martin Hultberg, “The key is of course to first make equipment that doesn’t drain power too quickly. The second part is finding ways to generate power from the environment. It could be about siphoning power from the grid, harnessing the sun, using movement in some way or simply providing means to drain various other power supplies that can be found. If you spend some time looking around prepper and hiking websites, you can find some pretty neat stuff that does just this and you can buy yourself!”
The customizability of gear was reinforced by Axel when he said, “Players will be able to customize the visuals of gear pieces to personalize them, but there are also tangible gameplay benefits from customizing gear, such as adding more armor or increasing carrying capacity.” I am definitely looking forward to this. Even the bags themselves will be customizable and upgradeable.
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Global Support For A Universally Appealing Game
This is definitely one of the most impressive things about this game. The process of “adapting a video game to one or more specific target languages, cultures and markets” is called “localizing”. According to Ștefan Petrică, the Localization Project Manager, “Our goal is to provide nothing less than the greatest gaming experience, no matter where in the world you’re playing!”
Ștefan Petrică, the Localization Project Manager
The localization team is responsible to “not only work with translators, recording studios and testers, but they also have to collaborate closely with the rest of the development team to ensure that the engine and assets used for a given game will correctly support the target languages, and allow for easy and effective testing of localized versions.”
In other words, the localization team needs to customize the game in every way for each of the 20+ languages/cultures that Ubisoft is going to be releasing the game to. I don’t know if you understand how difficult that is, but it is not easy. Consider this: if you say the word “water” to someone from Florida (i.e. me), then there are certain feelings, emotions, and connotations that are attached to that word. The first thing that pops up in mind mind when someone says “water” is the warm Atlantic water of Jaycee Beach and the boardwalk. For most of you out there, you’re going to have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s okay. Just Google “Jaycee Beach Vero Beach FL” and you’ll get some imagery. If, on the other hand, you say the word “water” to someone from Ohio, I wonder what images and emotions would come to mind. I dare say it would be different than mine.
That is just in one language and one culture – the U.S.A. Imagine taking that concept to 20+ languages and cultures and then needing to find a way to make it relevant to each of the different sub-cultures of each of those regions. That is an amazing undertaking and it speaks volumes to me about the dedication of the team at Ubisoft to attempt to make this game the best they possibly can.
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It was really interesting for me to find out about what the thought process was for the team at Ubisoft when they were trying to figure out what factions there were going to be within the game. One of the points that has been reiterated plenty of times is the attention to detail and realism for this game. The developers have taken tours of the city, they’ve gone into the underbelly of New York and interviewed spelunkers (yes, there are actually people who have taken up the hobby of “caving” New York’s labyrinth of sewers). They have re-created New York city down to the square mile and the shape, size, and location of each building.
So, how were they going to go about creating the factions within the game? Here was their criteria:
Is the faction plausible?
Is the faction appealing? Is it cool/fun?
Does the faction allow for a variety of gameplay mechanics?
Is the faction a direct threat to the Division and the Division’s cause?
Does the faction fit with the theme and tone of the game?
They have gone through great lengths to make this game as realistic as possible while maintaining entertainment value. Meghan Watt, lead writer for the game spoke about the process they went through in trying to flesh out the various groups that a player would encounter as they go through their time in “mid-crisis” New York. “Generally speaking, the Narrative team wrote dozens of proposals for factions that they felt would arise from the sort of situation we’ve created in the game. The designers then grabbed a hold of what they thought would best suit the gameplay, and we started to iterate on a few of our favorite picks,” she said.
They wanted groups that would accurately represent New York and the people of New York. But, think about how diverse of a collection of people there are in New York. It would be close to impossible to create a virtual environment that would adequately replicate that. Instead, they decided to create groups of people that were more metaphorical for the various types of people one would encounter in a mid-crisis, panicked group of people that are either trying to stop a bad situation from getting worse, or trying to take advantage of the disenfranchised for their own personal gain.
In this case, the Cleaners are a group of people that likely genuinely think they are doing a good thing. The Cleaners genuinely want to stop the plague that has taken New York, but their solution is a drastic one. Their solution is to burn everything and everyone to the ground that is in or around plague-infected areas. This mindset is counter to what the objectives of SHD agents are. The end result of the Cleaners’ tactics would be to annihilate practically all life that has been exposed to “fresh” air. One of your secondary objectives as agents of the Division will be to stop people like the Cleaners from undoing all of the good that needs to be done so that order can be re-established.
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For me, for the time being, any game I play between now and when this game is released is just biding my time. This is the game I am looking forward to. But, hey – I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Leave some comments below.
Tom Clancey’s The Division was originally published on Player Intel
