1 week ago
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Clancy series celebrates 10 years of shooter-looting and looter-shooting
It seems like a million years have passed since the release of Tom Clancy's The Division 2, the squalid shooter-looter set in banged-up Washington D.C. In fact, it's only been seven. Which is quite a lot of years, in fairness, but that period also spans a lot of upheaval - the Covid pandemic, Trump's re-election, the exploding popularity of generative AI, the onset of chronic live service apathy, the lingering undeath of NFTs, and the literal invasion of Washington D.C. by the National Guard.
Both The Division 2's original looting mechanics and its 100% apolitical regime change storyline now feel to me like the products of a different universe, though Ubisoft have been updating the game and releasing new stuff for it throughout. Their latest addition is a Realism Mode, exclusively available through the existing Warlords of New York expansion, which will itself be freely available to all players until 2nd April.
Realism Mode mostly does what you'd expect for a realism mode. It chops away the HUD, map and hitmarkers, while making it a lot easier to kill people by shooting them. There's no health regeneration, and ammo is more limited – you'll need to acquire it from corpses. Skills have longer cooldowns, and heavier gear will make you slower. Lighter body armour increases speed but obviously makes you less resilient. If you're new to the game, you can create a separate character for Realism Mode "with streamlined RPG elements", which I guess will ease the pain of getting blasted away by experienced players.
All of this forms part of the original Division's 10th anniversary celebrations. Aside from rewarding the wizened oldsters who've been looting New York since 2016, Ubisoft are trying to entice new blood: they've cut the price of The Division 2 by 90% on Steam. All this comes amid layoffs at developers Massive Entertainment and the departure of the series executive producer.
English (US) ·