The Division is the newest franchise from Ubisoft and one of the more anticipated games of 2016. The Division is a third person shooter RPG with multiplayer elements, that takes place in a sort of post apocalyptic New York City. With the game set to release on March 8, the developers decided to test out the servers and let Xbox One, PS4 and PC players get a little taste of the game in the form of an open beta. After missing out on the first closed beta earlier this year, I was excited to get my hands on the game before its release in a few weeks, and came away from the beta both excited and a little concerned about the game.
Destiny Comparison
Let’s just get this part out of the way as many people are, and will, compare The Division to Destiny. These comparisons are valid in some ways, but also void in many ways. The key similarity between The Division and Destiny is the slight MMO aspect that both games have. Both allow players to team up with others players to do strikes, raids or PvP. During my time with The Division, I could easily tell the similarity between the two games in this regard, but how they go about is a little different.
The Division, unlike Destiny, almost always has everything interconnected in the world with almost no loading screens besides when booting up the game and during a few other moments. In The Division you can walk straight to a cooperative mission from your base and then head over to the Dark Zone, which is the PvP area, without having to see a single loading screen. It was a great way to make the player feel like they are never disconnected from the world itself. This seamlessness of game-play is a great change up from Destiny’s loading screens that occur any time you want to do any sort of mission. With The Division, you are always in control and if you want to go to a mission you just head on over without ever having to see a loading screen.
The other major similarity between the two games is the focus on getting new and better loot. In The Division, the system works pretty similar to how it is in Destiny with different colored loot that ranges from common, to rare, or legendary. With The Division beta only being a small chunk of the actual game, it wasn’t enough time to see how different or similar the loot system was to Destiny, but from the brief chunk I did play, it reminded me of what you typically see from a Destiny or Diablo loot system.
Besides these two similarities, I found that The Division was more different and its own experience than a Destiny clone. The two games may attract the same types of players, but they also appeal to different types of players as well. Overall The Division certainly shares some aspects with Destiny, but from what I played there is much of a difference than similarity between the two.
The Gameplay
During the beta, I was able to get a better idea of what the gameplay of the game was going to be like. For the most part, the game is focused on cover-based shooting. If you don’t get behind cover, you’re gonna have a bad day as I fell victim to this a handful of times. Your character cannot take much damage and if you are running around in the open, you almost certainly will get gunned-down. Knowing how to use and switch cover was very important from what I played and if you effectively use it, then you shouldn’t have to many problems.
The gunplay itself felt good for the most part and felt on par with what you would expect from a third person shooter, besides the the fact that most enemies are bullet sponges and can take quite a few to the body before they go down, headshots typically would do major damage to the enemies and usually dealt enough damage to instantly kill the average Joe. Since the game is also a RPG, it does make sense for the enemies to be able to take damage since weapons can deal different damage, I didn’t have a problem with the bullet sponge enemies but it did take a little time to get used to it.
There were only a handful of story mission and side mission in the beta, but overall they seemed to be pretty well done. While I found them to be pretty straightforward, as you basically go from shooting guys to a hallway to shooting guys and back to another hallway, they still were fun to play through. Some of the side mission types I encounter were pretty basic and what you see in most open world games today, as missions would have you take out a stronghold or defend a group of soldiers from a few waves of enemies.
While it is only a beta, I was a little disappointed in the side mission variety and I would like to see a little more variety in the full game. The missions overall felt like what you would expect to see from a third person shooter, which may be disappointing to some, but luckily, there still are the RPG and multiplayer aspects of the game to help differentiate itself from the typical cover based shooter.
Customization and RPG aspects
One of the aspects of The Division that has me excited the most is the RPG aspects of the game. The beta helped give me some idea of what those aspects were, as I mentioned before the loot aspect of the game is a crucial part of The Division, and getting new weapons and armor are a key part of that. Players will be able to get loot from enemies, chests and from completing missions. This loot as far as I could tell was random, and whenever a enemy dropped a new weapon or piece of armor, it had different stats than other weapons and armor.
While playing, I found three double-barrelled shotguns and while they all were the same double-barrelled shotgun, they each had slightly different stats whether to be more damaging or slightly more accurate. It was cool to see that I wouldn’t have to worry about having 20 of the same gun drop over and over. All the loot in the game is levelled, and if you are not at the level of the weapon or armor you can’t equip it, which is typically how most games already are.
As with most RPGs, your character has access to skills that they can unlock and use to become more powerful. The beta didn’t have too many of the skills available besides most of the starting class skills. These skills ranged from being able to take more damage thanks to a protective vest skill, to using a ping device that would mark the targets around you in a certain radius range. I found most of these skills to be underwhelming and besides the the turret skill, they really didn’t seem to help me much. These were pretty low class skills, so hopefully the skills later available are more useful for players like the mods in the game are.
In The Division, you can pick up mods as well as guns and armor, mods can be added to weapons to help boost stats and change the appearance of weapons. Depending on the gun, you could equip mods like, scopes, grips, barrels, magazines and give the gun a different paint job. These mods like everything else could be randomly dropped by enemies, or found in chests and received in missions. The mods each had different stats to them that would make a gun better, the main assault rifle I used had multiple mods on it that gave it a scoop that could zoom 8x, a grip that increased weapons stability by five percent, and a magazine that increased my magazine size. These were just a few of the mods I found and there seemed to be quite a variety of them, even in only just the beta, which got me excited to see how many mods there will be in the full game.
In Destiny, when you get new armor and equip it, it changes how your character looks. So if you got armor that had better stats but looked dumb on your character, you were pretty much out of luck unless you wanted your stats to get lower again. The Division changes this and while your weapons and certain armor pieces still are visible on your character, you no longer have to worry about deciding whether to make your character look cool or make them have the best stats they are capable of. Along with everything else you can get as loot, you can find items that solely are only for cosmetic reasons.
These items range from hats to shoes and everything in between. These items have no influence on your stats and let you basically choose how you want your character to look, overall from the small amount I found in the beta, each looked different and allows for a lot more freedom in letting you choose how you want to look, which I prefer over how Destiny has it set up. The mods and customization of your character were some of my favorite elements from the beta and I’m excited to see how many options are in the full game.
Multiplayer
As mentioned above, The Division features a similar multiplayer component as Destiny, in that there is both a cooperative mode and a competitive mode. The cooperative aspect has you playing through a mission (basically a strike) in a team of three. During my time with the beta, I didn’t do much of the cooperative gameplay of the game, the few times that I did give it a try were somewhat unremarkable. It could be due to the fact that the mission was an early game mission that overall wasn’t meant to be challenging, but the team I was on had little difficulty going through these missions and honestly did very little cooperation with each other besides shooting or flanking enemies. I really hope that in the full game the mission structure gets a little more complex and difficult for these mission, otherwise they will be nothing but dull mission that you can play with friends for loot. The competitive multiplayer called the Dark Zone in the game was a little more exciting than the cooperative missions.
The Dark Zone is an area in the game were players can kill other players, within the area is chests and enemies that drop loot that is infected. You can also kill other players and grab their loot that they have grabbed from within the area. The only way to prevent yourself from losing the loot that you grabbed, is to call an extraction helicopter that will deliver your loot out of the area, but once you call for extraction it notifies other players in the Dark Zone as well, which is where things get interesting. During the time you and other players are waiting for the helicopter, you will basically be surrounded with other players in the Dark Zone and any one of them may decide they want your loot and try to kill you.
During one extraction, I was surrounded by 6 other players who also were looking to get their loot extracted. During this time I made sure to keep an eye on every player around me and never let any of them get behind in order to surprise attack me. It’s moments of tension like these that helped make the Dark Zone more exciting than the cooperative missions I played. I should also mention that the Dark Zone is separated by character level in the Dark Zone, so you won’t have to deal with much higher leveled and powerful players when you first enter the Dark Zone, which helps makes it a little easier on new players, but I still found the Dark Zone to be a challenging area.
I really enjoyed the gameplay of the Dark Zone, but I felt that the loot you received within the area was a little underwhelming. Almost everything I grabbed from the area was worse than what I already had, which was disappointing considering the risks I took to get the items out of there. If the full game doesn’t change this and the loot is still lackluster, it would give players little incentive to go to the Dark Zone for new loot.
Final Impressions
Before I get to my final impression, I will mention that what little story there was in the beta, was pretty underwhelming and it definitely seems like the story is an after thought for this game, even though I think the setting is pretty interesting. It definitely reminds me of Destiny in terms of a story that might be pretty forgettable.
The Division beta left me with a few mixed feelings about the game. While I enjoyed the basic gameplay and exploring of the world, the missions themselves were pretty straightforward and nothing special. The beta took place during the beginning of the game so maybe the missions will get a little more exciting and complex later on in the game, but as far as early missions go, they could be a little more exciting. The two aspects of the game that have me excited the most for when the full game releases, are the loot systems and the customization aspects of the game. In my brief time with the game, it showed potential in making me excited to go find new and better weapons, armor, mods and customization items. Overall, I enjoyed the time I had with The Division in the beta and if the game can straighten out a few things, it could be a game I end up playing a lot throughout the year. If The Division can find a good balance between getting players excited to get new loot in modes like strikes and in the Dark Zone and satisfying gameplay, then I believe The Division may be able to give Destiny a run for its money, at least for a little bit.