Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 is still going strong more than six years after its launch. The online open-world third-person shooter has received a steady stream of live service updates over the years, including the significant Warlords of New York expansion in 2020. Battle for Brooklyn, its latest piece of downloadable content (DLC), has just arrived and, with so much already added to the game and frequent discounts, it seems like a fantastic opportunity for both new and lapsed players to dive in.
With work on The Division 3 underway, Battle for Brooklyn is like something of a victory lap for developer Massive Entertainment, taking players back to the memorable city center setting of the original Tom Clancy’s The Division for what very well might be one big send off before the official reveal of the sequel.
Eager to find out what it took to bring Brooklyn back, and to gleam some potential insights on the general health of the game, I sat down with three The Division 2 developers ahead of the DLC’s launch.
Red brick
“We wanted something that would be appealing to both existing players, but new players and older players as well – those that maybe did not make the transition to The Division 2, or that did but then stopped playing,” explains creative director Yannick Banchereau.
“When we started looking at places and trying to identify where this DLC is going to take place, the idea of Brooklyn came up and it made complete sense because it was the perfect mix of everything. It’s familiar, we can rebuild those streets that people have seen in the past already, and yet we can still transform it to create something new.”
This desire to reshape the setting of the original The Division is evident in Battle for Brooklyn’s map, which has been faithfully rebuilt but still incorporates some new areas. “We, of course, looked at Brooklyn from The Division,” begins art director Andreea-Diana Cozarev.
“We’re very much anchored to that, but we’re expanding on that version of Brooklyn. We’ve created a brand new map there. We want to offer players familiar places, but also bring a lot of new stories, new experiences. Players will find both real life landmarks, like the Manhattan Bridge, but also familiar locations from The Division.”
“The city is a super important character. It’s a character in its own right and the game has a very accurate depiction of a real place. So we looked at that, we did a lot of research,” she adds. Two new neighborhoods have been introduced this time around, Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo, fleshing out the city, giving even the most experienced The Division veterans something fresh to explore, and more accurately mirroring the real-life geography of the area.
Both areas have their own distinct aesthetic, introducing plenty of visual variety. “Even in real life, they’re two very different places,” Cozarev says. “Brooklyn Heights is a residential neighborhood with low rise brownstone buildings, lots of vegetation, while Dumbo is a former industrial area with brick warehouses.”
Pumpkin spice
On top of all this, even those with the most distant memories of what the world in The Division was like will immediately notice one of the biggest changes made in Battle for Brooklyn: the progression of seasons from a brutal Winter steeped in snow to a much more mild fall, or autumn. “We wanted the players to experience a different season in Brooklyn, but also autumn is about time passing,” argues Cozarev.
“What’s striking about The Division is the snow setting, it’s white everywhere. We kind of echo that with the autumn setting with the colors, the leaves being spread everywhere, and guiding the player’s eye through the scene and through the environment in a similar way to what was happening before but in a completely different color palette and mood.”
The city is populated by a handful of major non-playable characters (NPCs), including plenty of familiar faces for The Division players such as the disease scientist Dr. Kandel. Like the world, these characters reflect the passage of time in interesting ways. “We wanted to show that things happened to them as well, even if they were not [previously] part of the game,” says Banchereau. “We find a Kandel that is a bit more gritty, a bit more angry.”
Even her updated appearance takes the time since The Division into consideration. Her medical outfit is more scuffed, with all the wear and tear associated with trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic society.
As for the expansion’s enemies, the psychotic Cleaners (of XDefiant fame) are back with a vengeance and a few new tricks up their sleeves. “Players are used to seeing the cleaners,” level design director Liviu Totolici says.
“So far, they’ve met them in The Division. They’ve seen them in Warlords of New York, and right now, under new leadership, they’re attacking Brooklyn. But they also come with a new weapon called the purple flame. Players that are facing these enemies and are hit by the purple flame will have not only fire damage to deal with, but also a corrosive effect that will lower their armor over time. Essentially, that means that the longer the fight takes, the harder it will become. It adds an extra layer of strategy that players will need to be aware of.”
Full circle
As for what makes this DLC a great time to check out The Division 2, Banchereau states that both new and old players were a consideration since its inception. “It’s a map, it’s missions, it’s story, it’s something that all people who played The Division usually had a good time with. When we lose players, we tend to lose them more when the game gets more complex,when the RPG mechanics come in, then it’s not necessarily for everyone. Some people are just satisfied with the campaign and the story, so that’s what we wanted to do here.”
Battle for Brooklyn takes roughly ten hours to fully complete, which is definitely a breath of fresh air in an era of live-service games that constantly demand seemingly endless attention. “You can jump in and directly start a level 40 character and play Battle for Brooklyn, so you don’t have to catch up,” reveals Banchereau.
“It’s very easy to approach as a new player or even a returning player. It does not require you to own Warlords of New York, so even if you didn’t buy the first expansion, you can play Battle for Brooklyn. All those decisions were made really with that in mind, to make sure that it is as accessible as [possible] and make it easy to understand as well.”
Even the DLC’s storyline is “quite disconnected” from the rest of the game, meaning that you won’t feel immediately overwhelmed if it’s your first time playing The Division 2.
As for what the future might look like for The Division 2, or the wider franchise, Banchereau assured me that “We wouldn’t be here if the game wouldn’t be doing well. I think the fact the game is lasting that long is a testament to the quality of the base game and the foundations on which we’ve been building.”
“It was meant to last, but I don’t know if anybody ever thought it would last this long. We’ve been very lucky to have an extremely dedicated and loyal community. We had ups and downs, and even through the downs, they stuck with us. They stayed here, and thanks to them, the game has continuously performed really well and so that means that we’re able to keep going every year, one year after the other. We prove that you don’t necessarily need the latest, the fanciest, the most beautiful thing. Some people are just really attached to value for money and making sure that when they make a purchase, they’re going to spend a lot of time with it.”
On the subject of value for money, the base version of The Division 2 is currently on sale for a whopping 90% discount on PC via Steam or Ubisoft Connect and, at that price, I would wholeheartedly recommend that you give it a go. The game is also available on Xbox One or PlayStation 4, plus PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S via backwards compatibility.
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dash.wood@futurenet.com (Dashiell Wood)
