Stephanie Bendixsen: How The Division 2 world feels so true-to-life

In the world of video games, we love an apocalypse and in The Division 2’s post-apocalyptic America, the world around you feels spectacularly true-to-life. I found out how exactly the brains behind the game made it so effortlessly realistic, writes Stephanie Bendixsen.

In the world of video games, we love an apocalypse. It’s probably one of the most popular settings out there, tapping into our desire to place ourselves in a challenging, relatively plausible scenario and test our likelihood of survival.

2016’s third-person shooter and action adventure Tom Clancy’s The Division saw us roaming the chaotic streets of Manhattan in the midst of a terrifying and deadly viral outbreak.

An elite task-force of sleeper agents called The Division are called to action to assist emergency responders and restore order to the quarantined city.

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The chaotic setting in post-apocalyptic America.

Diving into The Division 2, seven months have passed and the virus (manufactured, as it turns out, by an ecoterrorist trying to save earth from human impact) has decimated the population. America has fallen into ruin, several murderous factions have formed amid the disorder and The Division has been forced into civil war in order to protect the remaining civilian survivors.

If you’ve ever played the historical marvels that are the Assassin’s Creed games, you’ll know that when it comes to creating a living, breathing, believable setting — developer Ubisoft don’t exactly go about the process “casually”.

Likewise, when exploring The Division’s post-apocalyptic America, the world around you feels spectacularly true-to-life. Or at least, how I envision it would be following a pandemic like this — a not altogether impossible scenario to imagine.

Imagination is one thing — but I had the opportunity to travel to Washington DC where the sequel is set, to experience first-hand how these developers went about their approach to recreating the nation’s capital.

Perhaps predictably, there is a set of very real systems in place to protect the city should say a disaster strike, an invasion occur, or should government itself fall. All this was used by Ubisoft to flesh-out this conceptualised scenario.

The Division 2 is set in Washington DC and iconic American monuments.

For instance, even the 2006 floods in D.C. resulted in a series of protective levees being built — the focus being less on protecting the city’s people, but rather the precious historical documents (the Declaration of Independence, for example) on which the entire country is founded.

All these documents are housed together in the National Archives in D.C. (yes, you can go there in the game) and you get the feeling that, regardless of any digital recreation or records of these artefacts — if they were to be lost — some essence of the country would be truly lost.

Keep an eye out for a mission that features a bit of a Nicolas Cage-style National Treasure rescue-mission.

Washington D.C. is recreated in The Division, incredibly, on a 1:1 scale.

I remember visiting Paris for the first time after playing Assassin’s Creed: Unity — and the absolute thrill I had seeing all those iconic buildings I’d climbed and explored in the game, there, in real life.

A similar uncanny feeling occurs when you set-up your base of operations in the middle of the White House. It’s a surreal sensation only a video game can provide.

Getting hands-on with the game, I noted a lot of similarity gameplay-wise to the first instalment, you rely heavily on team-based communication as you move through each mission. The gunplay is excellent, improved-on from the first — and the enemy AI definitely feels ‘smarter’.

The Division 2 is a multiplayer online shooter set in Washington DC.

They do still take a heck of a lot of bullets to go down, but we’re assuming everyone in the apocalypse is suitably armoured-up for the sake of a good challenge.

Movement felt fluid and intuitive — essential for a cover-shooter. You never find yourself annoyingly stuck behind objects or fighting against the controls.

I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a few additional challenges to seek-out in addition to standard missions — some of these serve to encourage more exploration which is always a plus.

Environmentally, it’s a real step-up. The real hero (if I haven’t made that obvious already) is the city itself, in a state of crisis and reclaimed by nature.

The sense of unease as you make your way through a city that is such a true point of pride for Americans so utterly destroyed is palpable — the defaced Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial.

Being a cover-shooter, Manhattan lent itself well to the genre being such a close-quarters, condensed city. Washington DC however — is quite the opposite, with broad streets and wide-open spaces.

The apocalyptic world gives players a sense of unease.

The danger here, is that points of cover can feel obtrusive and obviously-placed — but there is thought in the placement and detail of every object in this game.

At its core, this is still a multiplayer shooter that is very-much capitalising on the currently hostile political climate to create this extreme backdrop.

If you are looking to explore a collapsed society through a detailed narrative, filled with clever writing to highlight how close to dystopia we really are — you won’t find it here.

But The Division 2 doesn’t set out to be anything it’s not.

It’s a responsive online shooter set in a world that feels like it hasn’t just been plonked there like a movie-set.

It’s meticulously designed, as, indeed DC is itself a city planned with grand ambitions for its country.

It’s more of an expansion on the original game than an all-out sequel — but in this new setting, The Division is really able to stretch its legs — and I’m ready to dive back into the chaos.

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Stephanie Bendixsen travelled to Washington as a guest of Ubisoft Australia.