The Division (BETA)

Set in a New York on the brink of anarchy following the release of a deadly virus, The Division is a mixture of third person shooting and RPG mechanics. You play as a special operative or ‘agent’ who has been ‘activated’ and sent into the quarantine zone to assist local law and military forces to re-establish some semblance of order and control.

I can’t say much more about the narrative/character aspects of The Division, because the beta only included a single campaign mission. This isn’t entirely surprising, but as a result, it’s hard to make any kind of judgement about its story driven campaign. In fact, I’d say it’s hard to form any solid judgements on any aspect of The Division based on this beta, due to how limited the content was. Hell, I think I completed all the available content within about two hours.

You begin by creating your agent, although the beta only offered a couple of basic defaults, so how extensive the customisation options are remains to be seen. Your character doesn’t have a name, voice or personality. They’re of the ‘mute weirdo’ variety who people speak at but not to. Although you can always ‘speak’ for your character if you want, I suppose, making sarky remarks in conversations. It’s always fun when every other character is so bloody serious.

 

The Division is an RPG, which means you’ll level up by completing missions and killing things, although I don’t know how many levels the full game will ship with. You have a skill tree, with the choice of equipping two main abilities. But once again, it’s hard to talk much about the skill and progression system of The Division, because so much of it was locked in the beta. It wasn’t even possible to view certain character skill/talent screens to see what would be available.

It kind of left me wondering what the point of this beta was. It was a ‘closed’ beta, but the way they were handing out keys, it may as well have been open. I suppose it may have served as a useful technical / server test, but with such limited content in terms of character progression and skills, I doubt it was useful in terms of testing balance. I suspect the whole thing was just to drum up some pre-release hype.

Your character can equip three weapons – a primary, a secondary and a pistol. This is in addition to various grenade types and some special ammo types. Weapons are graded on the typical colour based system of rarity / power. They can also be modified in terms of stats and appearance. Your gear can also be improved, and there’s even a selection of cosmetic items to personalise your character.

There’s a crafting system in The Division, but this was also locked out so I can’t comment on exactly what it is or how it works. There was also an ‘intel’ section which I assume acts as a library to all the various audio logs and information you gather on your travels. I assume, because this was also locked out. Yeah.

 

When you first step foot in the game, your first objective is to travel to your primary base which is currently in a bit of a mess. This spins off into three core missions to start getting the base up and running again, although only one of these missions was available to play.

It involves entering a stadium to rescue a doctor. The interesting thing about The Division is that it’s a game you can play solo or in co-op. I was concerned how viable it would be to play the game solo, but thankfully, it appears to balance the content accordingly, not only to player numbers, but also to level. I played this mission twice, first on Normal and then on Hard. I don’t know how the difficulty will scale for a solo player later in the campaign, but it felt fairly balanced here.

Beyond this core mission, there was a few side missions to undertake in the beta, but nothing particularly exciting. There were also various bonus objectives to clear an area of enemies, or to rescue hostages. I don’t know if these were ‘set’ missions, or missions which would repeat over time. They felt more like the latter.

These missions reward points you can spend to upgrade your main base which will then alter visually to represent the addition of new staff and equipment. The beta was only limited to a single wing (medical) and two upgrades though, but I thought the system looked pretty neat.

In terms of gameplay, it behaves as you’d expect a third person cover shooter. You can vault over cover, perform a combat roll, blind shoot, use grenades etc. It’s fairly standard stuff. The movement system can feel a little unresponsive at first, but you soon become accustomed to it. The shooting is fairly satisfying, with a nice punch and recoil.

 

Of course, being an RPG, all your enemies have a level and a health bar. Which means, depending on your level compared to theirs, and if they’re an ‘elite’ enemy or not, you’ll find yourself in situations where you’re repeatedly shooting a guy point blank in the face with a shotgun and he won’t instantly die.

It’s a little weird, but it’s not quite as silly as it sounds. Most enemies do go down within a few hits, especially if you get a head shot. Some ‘elite’ enemies can be a bit of a bullet sponge, but that’s just the nature of the game. It didn’t really bother me.

I’ve not yet touched upon the multiplayer aspect of The Division. There are ‘public’ areas in the game and the instant transition between these is great. The MP, beyond the co-op of the campaign, is all about the ‘Dark Zone’. It’s a free for all area of the city where players can team up or go ‘rogue’.

It has its own level system and unique gear, but gear acquired in the DZ can also be transferred to the main campaign. It’s quite neat how it all ties together, but once again, the beta was limited in terms of what was on offer in the DZ. There are NPCs to kill and loot, but any gear you acquire in the DZ isn’t safe until you extract it by air. And until then, it’s up for grabs by any player who fancies their chances.

This is going ‘rogue’, although doing so will then make you a target for everyone else in the area. It’s an interesting system, but the DZ wasn’t particularly interesting to play in. NPC spawn times were very long, meaning you’d often be running about for significant periods without ever encountering an enemy.

And beyond doing that, what else is there to actually do in the DZ? Based on what I saw in the beta, there’s very little reason to bother with it other than the fun of teaming up with/murdering other people. Maybe the full game will feature specific missions or events or something. I hope so, because at the moment there’s nothing really to do in there beside grind for gear in order to grind for more gear.

 

Visually, The Division looked a bit shit when I started it up. But I can’t fault the game for its PC options, as it’s a pretty extensive menu allowing you to tweak the graphics to an impressive degree. Once I’d fiddled with those options for a bit, I got the game looking pretty damn good. It varies depending on the location, time of day and weather, but at times, The Division looks f**king gorgeous.

Of course, all this pretty can come at a price in terms of performance. Using a custom mix of High/Ultra settings, I ran the game at about 40-50 FPS. I could get a fairly stable 60 if I knocked down some options, but I found 40-50 acceptable enough, and I was willing to pay the trade off to have the game looking so nice.

There’s a really nice attention to detail throughout the environments, although I do have concerns about just how large the game map is. The beta was maybe just under one quarter of the full release map, but it was a fairly small area. That said, there were a lot of interior and underground areas to explore, some of which may only unlock for various missions.

My only other major concern is how substantial the story driven campaign is. How many missions? How many hours? Also, how much variety in mission types? Or will every major mission be a ‘go to X, fight waves of enemies, hit checkpoint, fight boss, return to base’ kind of thing?

Overall, despite my irritation at how much was locked out and my concerns regarding length and variety, I must admit that I enjoyed what was on offer in this very limited slice of The Division. I went into the game with fairly low expectations, but it surprised me in a good way. I doubt I’ll be picking this up on release, but it’s certainly something I’ll consider in the future.