The Division 2 Warlords of New York

If you were to boot up The Division today, you would be treated to one of the most polished live games currently available. As both labor of love and sheer act of persistence, Massive Entertainment rose their looter shooter from the ashes of a hobbled launch. Content issues that stifled the endgame brought The Division to its knees far too early but after several updates and thoughtful additions, players looking for a realistic RPG shooter finally had the game Ubisoft had teased for several years.

The philosophy to craft a sequel around the endgame and progression drove The Division 2 to a better place, especially at launch. Rather than strip things from the sequel to start anew, Massive built upon the franchise’s pillars ideas and refined them for a new audience. In the months sense release, Massive has had to contend with player frustration at sporadic content releases and the fact that people consume these games like crazy. Suffice it to say, The Division 2 remains fun, there’s just not a lot of new content to keep players invested and draw in new fans.

On March 3, that unrest will change with The Division 2 Warlords of New York, the first true expansion The Division has seen. Arriving on the heels of The Division 2‘s final free DLC chapter, Warlords of New York brings players back to the city that started it all.

The narrative thread continues in New York city, except this time, the snow is gone. Set in the eight months since the Green Poison devastated the world, Division agents are summoned from their exploits in DC to wrestle control of New York back from Aaron Keener. Keener, we learned at the conclusion of The Division, is a rogue Division agent that managed to get his hands on the tools necessary to create a new outbreak that could rival the Green Poison.

Since the snow has melted and America’s capitol has gone through war, New York has lived on. Society is trying to move on and grow. The promise of going back to New York under this new setting is an exciting premise. Not only is New York such an iconic location for The Division, players only got to see it in the cold despair of winter. The streets were just lined with enemy factions, desperate civilians, and the small remains of the JTF defense force. It was a dreary, isolated world that perfectly encapsulated the bleak tone of a world ravaged by absolute death.

The Division 2 breathed life into the streets of DC. After all, the world was trying to fight back and players saw that represented in the busy settlements and bands of civilians who would fight back against enemies. That design philosophy continues in New York. The busy city streets of Lower Manhattan are lined with skyscrapers and show the scars of a massive hurricane that ripped through the coastline.

At a recent preview event, I got my hands on a small slice of Warlords of New York and the Two Bridges section of the map. Anyone familiar with The Division will feel at home in the congested streets where the horizon is blotted out by steel and glass. I was tasked with hunting down Theo Parnell, one of the four Rogue Agents standing between players and Keener. Warlords of New York asks players to investigate four named sections of Lower Manhattan to hunt down these Rogues, with the ultimate path leading to Keener.

Parnell’s mission provided me with a taste of the narrative goals of this new dive into The Division‘s world. Keener’s philosophy of only the strong should survive plays into Parnell continuously taunting the player, especially with his use of drones and decoys. Keener’s idea of natural selection has been a fascinating thread to watch, especially as he lurked on the edges of The Division 2 through audio logs. Division agents will be asked the hard questions, if the orders they are following are truly in the world’s beset interests.

These Rogue Agent hunts will play out in the form of lengthy treks across New York. Players will go to a location to investigate clues and then attack a location that ends in a boss fight. Not counting the time I slowly walked around and observed everything, my time seeking out Parnell and wrapping up his storyline took a little over an hour. I would assume that the main “story” of Warlords of New York would take around five hours or so, as players also won’t be able to return to DC until they’ve taken care of Keener.

While new narrative content and a new location is tantamount towards drawing in players after long absences, it’s the other content additions and overhauls that are going to ensnare the interest of the hardcore and casual players.

I’m happy to see the Cleaners, Rikers, and Last Man Battalion return but more excited about the four new skills that drop after players take down each Rogue Agent. The sticky bomb comes back in two forms as an explosive and fire-spreading variant. Parnell drops a decoy, which players can toss in the middle of a firefight to distract enemies Finally, a shock trap can electrify nearby enemies and stun them in place. I only got my hands on the decoy and, without any knowledge of how modded-out the skill was, found it to be clever but it died way too fast.

What I didn’t have a chance to experiment with were the massive amounts of UI and endgame progression systems that players will be treated to both as a part of Warlords of New York and a new title update. What I’m most excited about is the infinite progression system players will encounter after reaching the new level cap of 40. After that point, players will be able to level up points and invest them in four core attributes (offense, defense, utility, and miscellaneous) along with a fifth that yields credits and crafting materials. These categories upgrade character aspects like health, armor, reload speed, weapon damage, skill haste, and more. Players who enjoyed Paragon levels in Diablo 3 or Badass ranks in Borderlands will recognize this system. For a game like The Division which is meant to be played for hours on end, SHD Levels are a crucial addition to incentivizing players to continue their grind.

The gear game in The Division 2 is about to get a large boost as well with Gear 2.0. Massive has reworked the current brand sets so that they align better with specific playstyles, god rolls come into play with maxed out attributes, talents no longer have requirements, and the UI has been changed so players can better see how a piece of gear will work with their build. Gear recalibration is also becoming a bit less complex as players can extract talents and attributes and bank them to be be used later in a library. Skill power is also being retooled and players now have skill tiers, indicating that a higher tier means the skill will be more effective.

Players should also be excited for new ways to increase the difficulty of The Division 2 if the game ever feels a little too easy. Players can boost the global difficulty of the game to Heroic, which makes everything in the open world harder. The world map can also be reset, so players can take everything back after having cleared it. Legendary difficulty is back to offer the highest challenge outside of the raids. Available for The Division 2‘s strongholds, Legendary difficulty will host a new elite faction of Black Tusk that will have improved accuracy, damage, and tactics. Fans of The Division‘s Underground DLC will appreciate the addition of Directives, modifiers that change the gameplay and difficulty of all non-raid activities. Five directives can be activated at a time that will add to an XP multiplier.

So what are players supposed to do once the hunt for Keener is over and they are left with all these new options for gameplay? Warlords of New York will introduce Seasons to The Division 2. Lasting 12 weeks, each Season is designed around an elite manhunt where players track down a new target by hunting down their four lieutenants, a very similar structure to the hunt for Keener. Supplementing the seasons will be Leagues and the return of Global Events. In Leagues, players will be offered various challenges to complete that net exclusive rewards. Global Events apply unique modifiers to the entire game experience (except for the raid) for a limited time. In the original Division, modifiers would provide buffs and debuffs and players would complete challenges revolving around these that would reward items like masks and materials.

Seasons will also see the introduction of a Battle Pass system to The Division 2. Offering both free and paid tracks, players will grow in rank by playing the game to unlock new gear, materials, and cosmetic options.

The Division 2 Warlords of New York feels massive, just by listing out each new thing item by item. I cannot wait for the Seasonal content coming up because it puts the game more in line with where The Division ended up before the sequel. The promise of multiple progression systems and multiple reasons to stay engaged with the game after launch will give the most hardcore of players enough reason to stay with the game. But the addition of new difficulty levels, Leagues, Directives, and Global Events means that content will be remixed in fresh ways that test out the new gear.

I relish the opportunity to return to New York, not only because it feels like a chance to open up this original location in a new way, but because I’ve always enjoyed the narrative threads Massive created with Aaron Keener. Seeing and hearing familiar faces is always great. But seeing the dedication the development team has put into making The Division 2 an intensely deep experience… well now I just can’t wait.