Disaster Control
It would not surprise me to learn that if the world were to be conquered by a malevolent AI, that at some point it was the power behind Ubisoft. How they remain so successful in spite of treating video game development like battery farming, how their armies of drones create so many games to the same overarching, focus-tested schematic is just too cold and calculating to be the work genuine human beings. I certainly got no sense from playing The Division that it was made by people who had a passion and love for what they were creating, as everything it contains, whilst serviceable, feels bland and cravenly inoffensive.
An open world third-person shooter with RPG mechanics, The Division is set after a virus outbreak cripples modern day New York. The authorities have so far failed to prevent the collapse of society and you as a Division agent must take the city back from the conveniently masked villains now rampaging through it.
You are given a gun, a upgradeable base, some ally NPCs, and then set off into the streets to deliver summary justice to the enemies of order and the status quo. Rather oddly though the agents of chaos and dissent are strangely well uniformed and often sound very alike. Nevertheless you have various missions to complete and collectibles to find that flesh out the story as to how everything got to this stage.
The map is divided into zones with increasing difficulty. As you level up you can explore more and unlock safe houses to fast travel between as well as buy and sell your gear. Safe houses also offer matchmaking should you want to take the co-op route.
The moment to moment gameplay is bog standard and unspectacular. You move from cover to cover shooting at the bad men then making a swift retreat should your screen get smeared with distracting cranberry sauce. Movement is stiff and unwieldy and I don't feel it was necessary for the UI to flag up every bit of useable cover. As it is the default UI in The Division is atrocious and it's a huge blessing to be able to turn these elements off as they clutter the screen and break immersion. Enemy AI meanwhile is at least smart enough to back off or flank as the situation dictates, yet occasionally will randomly rush out into gunfire as if trying to emulate my woeful performance exploring The Division's PvP arena, the Dark Zone.
Here in a walled off part of the city where the virus first broke out you can explore for better loot and a unique currency to purchase the game's more powerful weapons, however in order to take the contaminated spoils with you an extraction has to be made at set points on the map. Each extraction is some 2-3 minutes of nerve shredding tension and chaos as enemies close in and other players shoot you in the back. Whilst the idea is surely for a exciting mix of co-op and pvp, events almost always ended up with my bullet-riddled corpse buried in the snow, the result of yet another roving gang of super powered arseholes. No time to turn or return fire, just dead before my brain could even acknowledge the fact. In any case it is optional, despite the resigned disappointment I have for yet another game that plays favourites when it comes to those who wish to play solo and those who do not.
That there are no towers to climb to unlock areas certainly makes for a bold stride forward, but it's a shame that the most isn't made of New York's verticality. When you have so many skyscrapers and monolithic towers to potentially play around in, spending most of your time in the streets almost makes the choice of location somewhat irrelevant. There's the odd occasion that you get a sense of height, and you explore lots of modest rooftops, but to be honest you could have had The Division set in Milton Keynes and little would change. The architecture is dull and the copy paste interiors don't do much to help with immersion either. Seeing one bed with various bits of medical equipment surrounding it may at first catch you off guard with its implications, but seeing the same bed and room over and over cheapens any emotion that first encounter might have stirred.
That in turn highlights one the game's biggest issues; the lack of any emotion or sense of engagement beyond shooting things in search of bigger numbers. It certainly tries with its bodies in the street, humble shrines to the dead, and hung corpses of your allies, but the residents of the city are only ever represented as the objects of your charity, rather than as proper human beings. The game relies on audio logs from NPCs and virtual recreations of traumatic events to try and make you care, but it's all very half arsed as you never witness any of it. Quite why developers keep on having all the best bits take place off screen will forever baffle me. Instead it's just more tedious repetitive missions and lazy tell-don't-show storytelling. The UI also doesn't help, as you are never not having some bit of information shoved in your face, and so are never given the opportunity to feel properly immersed in the world.
On the RPG side of things you gather armour, weapons, mods, currency and other items to help you develop your agent. It's the usual selection of modern military weapons and while there's a relatively decent selection, there's never going to be much that wows beyond how much it increases your stats. Whereas fantasy and sci-fi can conjure any number of weird weapons and outfits, The Division is disappointingly conservative in its offerings.
The default look is one of a backpacker in winter, with a choice of either a more military or civilian slant. You always have a backpack and body armour etc. so you never really get to create anyone that looks unique or different. It's sensible attire at least if you're weird and into that sort of thing, but for anyone looking to join The Fashion Division you're likely to come away disappointed.
Crafting also makes an obligatory appearance but it feels token in how money is never really an issue and you can simply buy better equipment. Taking the time to round up the necessary blueprints and materials just comes across as a waste of time. Similarly the game ramps up difficulty by simply spawning more and more enemies and the many timed missions are simply made longer turning an already exhausting experience into an unbearable slog.
Visually the game is quite nice but the only real artistry comes with the impressive weather and lighting effects. The feeling of being caught in a snowstorm and the warm glow of a morning sun are well captured and do more than anything else to try and pull you in. Alas, load times are a pain and various pop-in issues prove a frequent yet relatively minor annoyance.
All in all The Division just lacks enough moments of awe or sublimity to make up for its dull middle of the road gameplay. Like so many major releases it is functional yet entirely lacking in imagination or ambition. There's nothing exciting about the setting or the mechanics and it all just exists as if to pass time watching a bunch of numbers go up. Every meagre attempt to engage you emotionally is bludgeoned to death by an experience that never fails to remind you that it's a game, and the game part feels like a tired checklist of the same overdone open world activities. It's almost as if the developers didn't quite understand how human emotions work, almost as if it were made by a machine.
