ROGUE AGENTS
The Dark Zone remains the best end game, we learn as we go hands-on with Tom Clancy's The Division 2
“THE DARK ZONE IS A PLACE THAT TEASES US WITH OPPORTUNITIES TO DO BAD THINGS: KILL, OR STEAL.”
We reach the extraction point and there’s tension in the air. Our group, four Division agents laden with gear, separate and hunker down behind makeshift cover. We choose a burned-out car, partly covered in vines where nature is fighting back. It’s not the shrubbery that’s shooting at us, though, it’s another squad of Division ‘friends’ gone Rogue. And they want our loot.
At the tip of its paramilitary spear The Division 2 feels a lot like the first game. There’s a 40-hour narrative to play through, either solo or in co-op, a vast open world to explore (New York is replaced by a 1:1 recreation of Washington DC), again on your own or with friends, and the Dark Zone is still the best ‘end game’ draw going; yes, even better than Destiny 2.
“The Dark Zone is, and was, a beautiful social experiment. You have this unique player versus environment and enemies, and versus players, happening at the same time, but the whole versus part is completely optional,” explains game director Mathias Karlson.
The mode is unique in that it unlocks our baser instincts; the Dark Zone is a place that teases us with opportunities to do bad things: kill, be greedy, or steal from allies.
“There’s nothing forcing you. It’s really about ‘what do people do when no-one’s looking?’, and that’s really what we’ve continued to build on in The Division 2,” adds Karlson.
CAPITAL IDEA
Relocating the game to Washington DC has had a major effect on what Massive Entertainment has been able to do with the Dark Zone concept. Developed with the idea of ‘end game first’, everything about The Division 2 is created around making its unique atypical PvP mode even better.
First and foremost there are now three zones to enter, designed to make this end game mode more accessible to newcomers. Anyone who found the original game’s New York-set Dark Zone too challenging will welcome the variety. Some players, says Karlson, never reached the top of Manhattan.
Key to the addition of two more zones is the idea of ‘normalisation’, meaning when you enter a Dark Zone your gear and build will be levelled out to match other players in the zone. You can still play how you wish, whether that’s as a shotgun-wielding scout or as a sniper, but “the peaks and valleys of fallibility and survivability are even. It’s really about ‘my build, my perfect build versus your perfect build’,” explains Karlson.
If you’re a veteran balking at the idea of having your stats normalised to level the playing field, then take note of that number – there are three Dark Zones for this very reason. One of the zones will be what Karlson calls an Occupied Dark Zone, “a raw Dark Zone experience which rotates on
cadence,” where the gloves are off and anything goes.
The need to make The Division 2’s end game more accessible stretches into this sequel’s story campaign. There will be a narrative mission that introduces how to play in this back-stabbing world. “So you’re first dipping your toe into the Dark Zone and it doesn’t mean that you’re exposing yourself to other players, if that’s something you’re a little apprehensive about, so you can go in alone or you can go in with your group to get that feeling of ‘here be dragons, going beyond the wall into this time capsule’,” says Karlson.
Back to our anxious wait to be extracted. The helicopter has finally arrived and we’ve all attached our gear to the rope dangling enticingly in the middle of makeshift barricades in Fisherman’s Wharf, a southern district of Washington DC.
As the timer counts down, bullets ricochet off our car-cover, and team members shout for help, one spotting a group circling us. Being sneaky types we sit back and snipe from distance, picking off the turncoats as they emerge from cover and engage our team. The threat of having our gear stolen subsides and we allow ourselves a moment of celebration… only for a bullet to smack our character in the face. There was another Rogue squad waiting to pick off the victor.
The act of ‘going Rogue’ was a defining moment in the original game. Some Rogue players would even wait in hiding for two squads to pass, snipe one player from cover, and then watch the two ‘friendly’ teams slaughter each other, unaware they’d been set up. There was nothing quite like triggering a Manhunt and going Golden Skull Rogue, running the gauntlet of Division squads hunting you through Manhattan’s subway tunnels.
However, for this sequel Massive Entertainment has “extended the Rogue system downwards,” says Karlson. Manhunt is still the extreme level, but in The Division 2 you can go Rogue in ways other than by simply attacking other Division agents. “So we have opportunism,” explains the game director, detailing how you can steal a supply drop and not share the contents, or loot a downed player asking to be revived.
Theft and more low-key deeds will still flag you up as Rogue but it won’t be broadcast to everyone. Instead a new ‘Grey’ Rogue state has been added to identify players who aren’t killers but likewise shouldn’t be trusted.
“IN THE DIVISION 2 YOU CAN GO ROGUE IN WAYS OTHER THAN BY SIMPLY ATTACKING OTHER DIVISION AGENTS.”
“IT’S NOT ONLY OTHER PLAYERS WHO’LL TEST YOUR NERVE IN THE DARK ZONE BUT ALSO THE AI.”
It’s a nuanced approach that drifts into other aspects of Dark Zone play. For example, friendly fire is turned off in two of the three Dark Zones, ensuring no more accidental Rogue agents – or, at least, no more excuses.
ZONE TROOPERS
As we play, the core loop in a Dark Zone is a familiar challenge. We search for and clear out ‘monuments’ occupied by the sequel’s enemies. Called True Sons, they’re a force of ex-soldiers gone bad. They are led by a former Joint Task Force officer who has set himself up as a warlord in the ruined US capital.
It’s a simple drill but one enlivened by the world we’re in; moving from cover to cover using q and jumping debris by holding e Assassin’s-Creed-style, Washington DC is an easy place to scurry around. Surprisingly so considering the detail on offer. Massive Entertainment’s Snowdrop engine is being pushed to the limit, and when we’re not gawking slackjawed at the wreckage of Air Force One strewn across The Mall, we’re admiring a wild deer that hops and skips across our path.
The AI and variety of enemies we face add to the spectacle. While the cannon fodder are easily dispatched, the heavy units – armoured enemies carrying rocket launchers and heavy machine guns – take more time to dispose of; first we have to whittle down their armour, then deliver the final shot. We soon discover teamwork and weapon selection are key to clearing these tanks.
Soon we run into more True Sons militia, who group together and use cover convincingly to confront us. Taking cover inside the Old Post Office Pavilion, these soldiers bed in, attempt to flank us, and set up ambush points inside the building’s entrance. It’s a frantic battle, proving it’s not only other players who’ll test your nerve in the Dark Zone but also the shooter’s AI.
Washington DC has given the game’s campaign higher stakes, says Karlson: “It really tangibly feels like ‘shit, this is something that could happen, that could actually go down for real’. It is that Clancy legacy of Clear And Present Danger, and plausibility that really sets it apart.”
Being set in the real world, seven months after a homegrown terrorist released a smallpox pandemic on New
York, gives The Division 2 an instant accessibility. As we patrol through the American capital, which has been ravaged by riots and then overtaken by nature, the world and its backstory connect on an emotional level.
“You internalise it instantly, you don’t question it, so you can start enjoying the richness of what makes it different rather than understanding the world in the first place,” says Karlson. “That’s where the transformation comes in, where ‘okay this is Washington DC’. If you know the city you’re going to be able to literally follow your internal compass in The Division 2, but the transformation of what has happened in this seven months since New York is what makes it extra special.”
GRID UNLOCKED
The fidelity to the real-world Washington is also what makes it so much fun to play in. The city is a blend of old and new, of narrow streets and modern buildings. There’s a variety to Washington DC that was often lacking in the original game’s Manhattan-set grid-based layout.
“Manhattan is iconic but limited in the type of environments [we could create]. Washington DC is very rich by contrast; you have an almost subtropical climate in the summer,” details Karlson. “Nature is just so full of life. You have an almost jungle-like nature in Roosevelt, wherever there is nature it’s trying to claw itself back and takeover; you have the wide-open spaces of the Mall, huge lawns and epic monuments; and places like Georgetown, which is European in nature and is full of narrow streets and back alleys […] variety is not just about the pleasure of getting contrasting visual variety but it needs to play differently; fundamentally it’s a shooter.”
It’s that last statement that catches us, as more than anything The Division 2 is a shooter, albeit one with strong role-playing layers, “where the RPG is true, deep RPG,” affirms Karlson. The game walks a fine line between offering an action RPG story campaign set in the real world, which is now matched with a revised Dark Zone, as well as more traditional shooter modes, including the PvP [see World In Conflict, p51] at launch, and the promise of eight-player Raids. It’s a series that has helped make the online co-op blended gameplay genre, started with Destiny and dominated by Monster Hunter: World, so essential on PlayStation 4.
At its core, however, behind the epic what-if narrative (Karlson teases “Maybe” when we prod whether The Division 2 is taking the story global) this sequel is about that unique experiment, to see what we do when no-one is looking and the lights go out. How we’ll behave. As it turns out, a divided world is a whole lot more fun than a united one – but thank goodness it’s just a game.