The Division 2: A Brighter Dark Zone

On March 8, 2016, I took off work and celebrated my birthday with a few friends by binging on Tom Clancy’s The Division until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. We had all been frothing at the mouth for the game’s release, poring over footage and losing ourselves in pre-release betas. Destiny, the catalyst for our tight-knit bond of companionship, had hit an exhausting slump. The Taken King was losing its luster and the promise for any exciting (albeit new) content was a distant dream. Much of The Division‘s appeal seemed to bubble up from the fact that it hit many of those addictive qualities of Bungie’s rollercoaster. Players could group up with friends to take on endless loops of online content while grinding out better loot, it was a natural substitute.

But The Division also had a strong numbers game with a focus on min-maxing builds in a realistic setting. It was different enough to seem unique. Plus there was the Dark Zone, that deadly Wild West slaughterhouse where players could rob and kill each other, hoping to ascend the Division agent food chain to become a near-immortal bullet sponge of New York.

Maybe it was rose-colored glasses or the yearning for a communal game that infrequently assuaged fears that The Division wouldn’t suffer the same fate of Destiny‘s early days. Surely there would be plenty of content to keep players engaged for months. Surely the story wouldn’t be over just as quickly as it began. If anything, Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment had a prime example of how not to botch a release of a living game and further stumble on how to keep players engaged. Sadly, those opening weeks and months were not smooth sailing. My group’s love affair with The Division was quite short as we burned through content and encountered issues. Loot exploits were used to curb the randomness. The Dark Zone was far too punishing and cunning players were finding ways to screw others over. To rub salt in the wound, one of my friends was the victim of a game-breaking backpack bug that prevented him from being able to access his account for more than a week.

Ubisoft has proven itself as an incredibly competent publisher but also a gracious one. Struggling games that may have been abandoned by other publishers have instead been nurtured into products that thrive and have morphed into beloved series. Luckily, that same grace was bestowed upon The Division. I always had my eye on the game even after abandoning it a couple months after release. A faithful community grew around it while Massive toiled away at updates. In December of 2017, I again found myself struggling to remain engaged with Destiny, this time with Destiny 2. The Curse of Osiris expansion and bungled Dawning event did nothing to keep me invested in a game that I felt had lost sight of what made it so great. So, on a whim, I bought a digital version of The Division that included all the season pass content and lost myself.

The work put into the game was astounding. It felt as if nearly every aspect of had been transformed for the better. There were reasons to play hours each day and feel like your time was being well spent. Fundamentally, few things had changed but it was almost as if I was playing a sequel rather than an updated version of a game I tried to love. The Division became my new obsession and despite having to play so many other games, I put a few hundred hours into it because of the intense fun I was having.

While my dalliance on a personal history lesson on The Division may seem long-winded, it is crucial to understanding the enjoyment and bliss I felt when I got my hands on The Division 2 for the first time last month. After being invited to Red Storm Entertainment, I sat down for several hours to experience the new Washington, D.C. Dark Zone and competitive PvP modes. Rather than a regression of ideas, The Division 2 is shaping up to be a full-blown sequel built on the back of a carefully constructed foundation.

Red Storm teased that The Division 2 would feature a 40-hour campaign–which already outshines the first–but emphasized the end game was put in mind first with a robust post-launch plan. When a developer does not properly account for what players will do for the dozens and hundreds of hours after the story, games like this crumble. Upon hearing Red Storm introduce the game, there felt like humble and subtle acknowledgement at the failings of The Division‘s opening months and even year. Acceptance, it seems, has been an important step on the road to recovery.

The Dark Zone stands as one of the most unique features I’ve come across in a game. A dangerous space with the hardest enemies provided a way to gear up faster but it all came with a twist. The items you grabbed in the Dark Zone had to be extracted before they could be used. Either going solo or alone, players had to make their way to an extraction point and live out a tense handful of minutes before a chopper would arrive to put their loot on. The tension was not only due to the fact that enemies would rush in to attack but that at any time other players could show up. Were these Division agents going to go rogue and turn on you in an attempt to steal your gear? Were they going to wait their turn to extract? Were they just dicks who wanted to harass you for fun? Or were you going to shoot them first, no questions asked, and steal their gear?

There are players who have lost an ungodly amount of time in the Dark Zone and I applaud them for their skill and their patience. But it took a long time for that mode to be a stable and mildly fair experience. At launch, the New York Dark Zone was a madhouse. Players found ways to trick others into going rogue and any type of death meant an unfair loss of Dark Zone-exclusive XP and funds. Like all other aspects of The Division, it took time before everything became stable, let alone enjoyable.

At The Division 2‘s launch players will be treated to three different Dark Zone areas, each in a different biome that represents different styles of gameplay and player engagement. The New York Dark Zone, which comprised a huge chunk of the middle of the map, was a snowy epicenter of chaos where the streets were lined with broken-down cars. For all its innovation, that space wasn’t wonderful for player-on-player gunfights because most would encounter each other on the streets or condensed extraction points. The action unfolded with players tucked behind low cover and taking pot shots over long distances. Small-scale strategies could be executed if a large truck or scaffolding was nearby but it was often too easy to see players flanking.

Three Dark Zones in D.C. means three different opportunities for the development teams to tailor intense battlegrounds packed with enemy NPCs and unpredictable humans. Dark Zone East, which focuses on long sightlines, is in the Capital Train Station where the military set up camp and funneled supplies in. As the location where the initial infected were sent, Dark Zone South is overrun with vegetation and collapse and meant for close-quarters. At Georgetown, players will find the Dark Zone West, a medium range residential area where a compound to combat the green poison was tested.

Players who roamed the streets of New York will instantly recognize the similarities between how their character will interact and kill in the environment. Plenty of vehicles and waist-high cover are available to soak up bullets but the layout of each “map” feels more deliberate. New York was a world of streets and skyscrapers that were usually impenetrable. D.C. is packed with monuments, small gardens, military installments, and other natural pieces of scenery. Though the fundamentals remain, there are new tools to execute the gameplay loop. During my demo time I was given access to the East and South Dark Zones and left feeling like I had only dipped my feet in the water. There were obvious nooks and crannies that begged to be explored and extraction points that held the possibility for some wonderful group dynamics. I was glad to see that Dark Zone Landmarks were back, rewarding players with loot that did not need to be extracted upon a clear.

To evolve the Dark Zone experience, players now unlock them over the course of the story. In The Division, the story never forced your hand into the Dark Zone because there was the risk of being trounced by other players. Now, players will first open the door into a Dark Zone and be able to play out the story mission with only AI to worry about. This allows everyone the opportunity to explore the Zones and find out what lies in wait. Red Storm emphasized that The Division 2 will make the Dark Zone more accessible for everyone. Not only will players have their time of peace during the story but the Dark Zone is now being normalized.

Gear stats in the Dark Zone will be balanced out while still respecting build choices. This move is meant to make the Dark Zone a space more focused on player skill and not about who has invested the most time. It is a smart move because the New York Dark Zone often became too brutal for newcomers. Even those who had played The Division a reasonable amount were no match for those who had invested several hundred hours into the game. By normalizing stats, some of that intimidation is gone. Of course, the development teams are also making smart choices to reduce toxicity and cheating by removing hostile VOIP and improving their anti-cheat system. Because the timing of every bullet matters, the online client and server architecture are being reworked, along with an increased server count to improve latency.

Personally, I feel that a normalized Dark Zone is necessary for The Division 2 to succeed. Despite everything that did work, The Division‘s Dark Zone was not always easy to engage with because of those roadblocks the team are now working to remove. Normalized stats mean that I can walk away from The Division 2 for a week for whatever reason and not return only to be destroyed on sight because I ran into someone who hasn’t stopped playing. And let’s be fair, the amount of time these types of games require can already be quite grueling, there doesn’t need to be any further reason to feel like you are being punished for not playing. And before there is a riot: Red Storm knows that those who do not want rules exist. At the end game, one of the Dark Zones will be marked “occupied” and all hell will likely break loose. Gear normalization is gone. Friendly fire is on. If you’ve gone rogue, no one will know because your status isn’t shown. Outside of being able to show you are the ultimate badass, there was no hint as to whether or not loot will be even better in an occupied Dark Zone but I’m sure that The Division‘s fondness for Dark Zone leaderboards will come to good use.

Some of the touches that refreshed The Division‘s Dark Zone are present in The Division 2. Going rogue is about in line with the current state of the franchise. The process does require a couple steps rather than just shooting another player. You can disavow the Division by stealing loot from a downed player or breaking the lock on a Dark Zone chest. Players can initiate a warning on themselves where they are not actively rogue and initiate a gameplay loop called the “Thieves’ Den” where stealing from a few chests and activating some consoles between a number of points will open up a small space in the sewer. During this time players run the risk of being attacked because they are somewhat rogue but once making it to the sewer the status is gone and a special vendor opens up. Manhunts also return when players go violently rogue long enough. Those being hunted must remove their status at a specified location while showing up on the map for others to be easily spotted.

Strict PvP returns in The Division 2 as Conflict but it is significantly improved over The Division‘s Last Stand DLC. With its own progression system and skill-based matchmaking, Conflict comes across as a very competent spin on team deathmatch and point capture with Skirmish and Domination, respectively. Rather than use the entire game space of D.C., Conflict matches take place in their own custom-made spaces that players load into. For Skirmish, I played on the Georgetown map where long streets and alleyways led to rooftop fights and a central intersection riddled with cars. For Domination, the Capitol Ruins served as an open area littered with long pillars and a central garden–perfect for busy zones that would be constantly contested.

Strict PvP did not feel like an afterthought or underdeveloped when I played The Division 2. The game will launch with three unique maps which is a first for the series but fairly small for other franchises like Call of Duty or Battlefield. While that launch number may seem small, I was left impressed with the flow of each map and how it made engagements feel. That comment I made about it being hard to flank in the New York Dark Zone? Georgetown and Capitol Ruins allowed for such tactics. The Division‘s strength may be in the loot grind but when playing in a PvP setting, you really get a feel for the interplay between utilizing multiple team skills and guns. Players can use their agents as a support class protecting the back end or toss turrets and drones to suppress the opposition. This group dynamic was hinted at in the Last Stand DLC but truly benefits from maps built with PvP in mind.

Clans were talked about but not accessible during my demo time. Red Storm told us that clans feature their own progression and XP gains while completing activities. This will lead to unlocking special perks and vanity items. Players in a clan will also be able to directly message each other, post on a bulletin board, and have bragging rights within the clan’s leaderboards.

My complaints from my time with The Division 2 currently only stem from the limited time with my demo experience. We were playing a demo build that wasn’t always stable but Red Storm was right on hand squashing out any bugs or server-side issues as they happened. Because I loaded into the game with characters that already had everything unlocked, there wasn’t the customary time to get a feel for the new skills and equipment. I only briefly scanned over weapon perks and item stats which, thankfully, are still delightfully dense. Throwing equipment like turrets seemed to take a bit more effort and I especially remember the seeker mine being particularly troublesome. Again, some of this may have been user error as I was not as accustomed to everything as I wanted to be.

After spending around five hours with The Division 2 and the Dark Zone (the only story content accessible was the introductory Dark Zone mission), all I wanted to do was bring the game home with me and grind out content for days. I cannot emphasize how happy I am that Massive and Red Storm didn’t go back to the drawing board like others and erase the work and advancement that years of community feedback and developer experience brought. I sneaked a peek through the menus and searched for Commendations, one of the features that should have been in The Division at launch. I found them laying in wait, a list of accomplishments and hard work that players could unlock over time. It was then I felt all would be well with The Division 2‘s release.

Ubisoft is staying silent on things like raids, global events, and other burning questions players might have about the end game of The Division 2. However, based on everything I’ve seen and played, I have hope that longtime fans won’t be disappointed and that jaded players will be drawn back in by the prospect of free content drops and a refined base game. On February 7, more people will have a shot at the game when a private beta drops. But unfortunately, that is still too long of a wait until The Division 2 releases on March 15.