Most of the coverage I've seen of this game has been the two previous Ubisoft press conferences, and both of those have been multiplayer focused. So I've been wondering, does this game have a full-fledged single player campaign? I mean with story and character progression, not the solo training missions like there were in Rainbow Six: Siege. Hopefully Ubisoft's just doing the Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood PR thing and there is some significant solo content.

I've also seen talk of the beta floating around, but I don't want to pre-order it without knowing more about the co-op. Is the full single player campaign playable in co-op? Does the co-op use the entire open world?

I think it sounds like it will be pretty similar to Destiny in structure. It'll all be one mode.

We will have to see how open it is as an online game. I'm expecting again pretty Destiny like. But you should be able to play through the whole thing about co-op then.

Aren't we all curious? ... As much as the idea of that game sounds really cool to me I still have no idea how it actually works.

I remember most people not knowing how Destiny was going to be structured like before it came out. Then it disappointed on both single player story and trying to be MMO-esque.

This game is very similar to destiny in a lot of ways, but it seems a lot more like an mmo in many ways also. The tutorial mission is solo but you'll see other players running around, you go into a base and there are factions and vendors and they all have quests, the only time it seems you'll HAVE to engage with other players are the dark zones in the center of the city.

This is all based on the alpha footage I've watched which is an alpha so who knows, and also it was heavily NDA'd so I'd expect a lot to change. You could just go drop $5 at GameStop and play the beta soon

It's all heavily NDAed, so one can't say much, but...Destiny is good mention.

Why would you preorder it at all?

Because my friends will also be playing it for the co-op, but I don't want to pay full price if it has a short single player and lackluster co-op.

It's yet to be determined if there's any sort of interesting story, but most people seemed to solo the story missions in alpha. It plays like an MMO. The missions were very much "grab this, kill that". You don't run into other players out in the world. There are hubs with other players inside. Outside of the hubs, the entire world is instanced to only you (and your party, if any). You could theoretically play this entire thing without interacting with any other humans, assuming enemies are scaled based on party size. The initial reveal wasn't wrong, but it made it seem like your party might run into another party while out on a mission. That stuff only happens in the dark zones, which are special PVP-enabled instances.

The game straight up tells you that the best loot is found in the dark zones. In there you basically kill and loot a bunch of NPC's, but have to extract the loot by helicopter in order to keep it. When you call for extraction, every other player gets a marker on their map for the extraction area. They can try to kill you and take your loot. It was never an issue with the smaller player count of alpha. People just wanted to get their stuff out without risking a fire fight with players. Unless they were in a party, anyone firing at players on the helipad were quickly killed by everyone else. The potential problem that I see is if enemies for story missions become too difficult if you don't have the awesome dark zone loot, for those that don't want to participate in PVP. Does Dark Zone loot make story enemies trivial? Does the difficulty of story missions scale to gear? Certain areas of the map have different level enemies. I don't know how easy it is to over-level/gear your story mission. There are a lot of unknowns, especially if you want to play solo. I'm in it because I like colored loot levels, numbers flying off dudes when I hit them, and crafting. If you're in it for the story, maybe hold on for more information.

I'm not sure there's anything here that shines as a single player experience. At the same time I think some people will be disappointed at how the multiplayer is handled. I think it's fun.

The latest Humble Bundle includes beta access in the "beat the average" tier. You get a bunch of classic Clancy games plus a beta code, which you can use to redeem for any platform. If you happen to want those other games, it's a good way to go. Not sure when the beta is, I would guess it's coming in the next couple weeks.

@thatonedudenick: Thanks for the in-depth breakdown!

So far it sounds like third person Borderlands, which is theoretically awesome. I just hope the PVP is entirely optional, but forcing it upon you to get the best loot is a bit lame. Maybe you don't need loot from dark zones if you're only doing PVE content? I just hope the PVE content is substantial, in terms of having things similar to raids and strikes, and not just co-op exploration that eventually turns into PVP.

I don't mind the quality of the story, just as long as there's something more than there was in Rainbow Six: Siege. A bit strange since Tom Clancy media was all about geo-politcal/military intrigue.

Sounds like Defiance, which was ok for a little while.

Mingleplayer!

I think the overarching theme of the game was represented as a co-op focused title, by the demos we received from E3 over the years. As to whether there's any story or not, I hope there is. But people who've played the Alpha have said good things and the beta is coming soon, so I'm excited!

I just really hope it isn't rotten with microtransactions...I know it will be because that's turning into Ubisofts MO but I see potential in these types of games. I want to have hope that one day there will be someone that hits the mark with loot based multiplayer shooters. Someone that releases the full game right out of the gate and respects their players. Destiny has soiled my expectations so much on this type of game. They've set the bar so low from an ethical perspective and succeeded while doing it.

I think the Division could be reaaaaallly really really good. Like super extra ultra great....IF their multiplayer matchmaking is fluid and in the game (DESTINY!), if they don't cut the game up (DESTINY!), or pump it full of microtransactions (DESTINY!).

I have bad feelings about this game, it comes out in 2 months and they have shown NOTHING beyond the cheese-fest co-op presentations they did at E3.

There is a ton of gameplay out there actually, i mean the alpha happened and the betas coming up, not that they will make any meaningful changes.

I doubt the cash shop items will be meaningful, I'm sure there will be some but I'm sure they will be easily ignored, there are cosmetic items that have no stats on them in the menu so there ya go

You can play with people from the get start as its a always online game like Destiny.

The devs have said that you can also solo PVE.

Beta weekend on the 29th