I posted my first impressions of The Division beta after playing for about 1.5 hours. You can read those impressions here. I’ve now spent 5-6 hours with the game, enough to feel comfortable sharing some further thoughts.

Setting – Details and Immersion

I still am enjoying the setting. Wandering this decimated version of Manhattan creates a somewhat lonely and eerie tone, and seeing the city’s famous landmarks without the hustle-and-bustle of the real thing is a treat.

Beyond just the setting in general, there are details that both add to and detract from the overall realism of the world and my ability to get lost in it. On the good side, when I threw a grenade at two rioters looting a body, the explosion set off a nearby car alarm. Having spent a significant amount of time in New York City, hearing car alarms brings the world to life. Ubisoft has also kept the closing-car-door animation; when you walk along a car with an open door (or stand on an open hood or trunk), it will close. Unfortunately, they have included so many cars with such open doors that it starts to feel ridiculous, as if the developers just wanted to show off that animation over, and over, and over.

The most immersion-breaking situation occurred in the Subway. I was wandering around the underground and came across an abandoned subway car. It was filled with boxes and bags, and both doors were wide open, so I thought I’d poke around. I approached it, only to run into invisible walls over both open doors. There is no reason to show me an open subway car with open doors but not allow me to enter it. While it’s not a major issue, it absolutely takes away from the realism of and immersion in the world.

Repetition – Feeling the Grind

In my first impressions, I also noted my concerns about the repetition. There are two areas in particular where I’ve noticed this. First, the dialogue. You run across many random NPCs while wandering the city, and there only seem to be a few phrases, so it wasn’t long until I was hearing the same things time and again. This was also a problem during one of the encounters. I was asked to assist in defending a particular agent. I went to the scene, killed a handful of enemies, and spoke to the agent in question, who thanked me and said how awful they would have been without my help. We then proceeded to eliminate two more waves of enemies, after which the agent repeated the exact same set of dialogue. If this type of repetition is constant throughout the full game, it will certainly become tiresome.

The other element of repetition is in the gameplay. This is, in every way, a loot-driven grind-fest. The map is scattered with encounters, which range from freeing hostages, to clearing enemy hideouts, to assisting in an operation. Although they ask different things of the player, the routine is essentially the same: go to a place and eliminate one or more waves of enemies. The one exception to this was an encounter that asked me to upload some virus data. I went to a computer and activated a virus scanner. This triggered a 5-minute countdown, and I had to go through the building, find two more scanners to activate, then hustle across the rooftops, eliminate a small group of enemies, and upload the virus data to the cloud before the time limit expired. While the gameplay was not fundamentally different, the timer and exploration made this the most fun encounter for me to play.

Entering the Dark Zone

The other thing I tried in my extended time with The Division Beta was the Dark Zone. This is the area where players can, if they so choose, attack others players. I don’t generally play online multiplayer games and don’t generally enjoy competitive multiplayer in general. But, for the most part, my experience in the Dark Zone was fun. Within a few minutes, I was fighting a band of enemies with a random other player. After killing them, this other player turned on me, shot me down, and ran away. I was frustrated, but just a few seconds later, another player came along and revived me. I followed this second player around for about 10 minutes and together we took out a few more sets of enemies. I also had some fun encounters around the extraction points, and when one agent turned on the others (“going rogue”), a group of about 6 of us took off after him. This was a fun, emergent gameplay experience that even I – the non-multiplayer gamer – enjoyed.

Exploration – Give Me Something to Loot

The final thing that jumped out at me was the lack of interesting loot to find scattered around the world. Drops from enemies seem pretty random, but beyond that, there just isn’t much interesting stuff to find in the world. Ubisoft has created a wonderful version of New York City that I love to wander alone, but give me very little reason to actually explore beyond the simple joy of seeing the landmarks and streets I recognize.

Final Thoughts

Despite my frustrations with the beta and concerns about the full game, my impressions of The Division are mostly positive. I certainly have some reservations and can already tell this game has serious drawbacks, but the setting and RPG-elements are enough to keep me intrigued. It is not the best RPG, not the best third-person shooter, and not the best loot grind. But it’s adequate at a number of things, and that is enough to make it worth keeping an eye on.

 

So, that’s what I think of The Division beta. What about you? Have you guys played the beta? Let’s talk about it!