In The Division, players control an operative from a super-secret covert cell within the U.S. government, called The Division, which is activated after mysterious “epidemic” turns the city into a quarantine zone and rapidly devolves into a Mad Max-esque social breakdown. The trailer mostly focuses on establishing how bad the odds are for players and their secret agent buddies, there are many more many bad guys than there are Division members.
The trailer mentions that Manhattan, where the game takes place, has been “cut off,” and that “Brooklyn is on the brink.” As Polygon pointed out, past trailers and an early gameplay demo have showed gameplay from Brooklyn neighborhoods, suggesting developer Massive Entertainment may add the borough as a downloadable expansion.
The game’s upcoming release follows a series of betas on PC and consoles, the most recent of which gathered more than six million players last month. While fans and pundits were generally bullish on the game, the beta also revealed a serious design flaw: Statistics and other critical information for the PC version of the game were being stored in the game client rather than on remote servers, which allowed players to cheat rampantly. The Division was already a source of controversy for PC gamers, who cried foul after a video citing an unnamed member of the development team said the PC version was held back to maintain parity with the console versions. Ubisoft said the report is “simply not true.”
“From the beginning, the PC version of The Division was developed from the ground up and we’re confident players will enjoy the game and the features this version has to offer,” Ubisoft told PC Gamer. “And the feedback from PC players who participated in the recent closed beta supports this.”
Tom Clancy’s The Division activates on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC March 8.
