Tom Clancy’s The Division Editorials

We have put together a round-up of recent notable editorials on Tom Clancy’s The Division, the third-person shooter/RPG focused on online play that has recently been published by Ubisoft. The articles offer some interesting perspectives on a range of subjects, from the game’s overall core gameplay to its relationship with the source material, and are very much worth a read if you have the time and are interested in the project.

ZAM analyzes the differences between Tom Clancy’s approach to fiction and The Division, before moving on to note that many of the acts that players commit in the game are out of the scope allowed by the US Constitution:

Tom Clancy games are, overall, about tactics and leverage — they reward players that have a plan. But planning an assault is largely dependent on gameplay structures where a headshot kills instantly, and that’s the antithesis of RPG mechanics. Headshots down low-level enemies in The Division, but past Level 15 every guy with a Louisville Slugger becomes a bullet sponge, and elite enemies brush off shrapnel like rice at a wedding. Tactical planning’s hard when a boss can survive 15 sniper rifle headshots, two grenades, and turret fire. I get it — that’s just what RPGs do — but in gritty New York, it feels laughable. That strange gulf between tone and mechanics makes it hard to take The Division seriously, and unfortunately, taking stuff seriously is the main appeal of Clancy novels.

Clancy built his reputation on plausibility. Readers picked up his novels primarily because they seemed like they could actually happen. Say what you will of him as a writer, but the man did his research. Clancy never hand-waved technical details or made stuff up as he went along. When he researched Red Storm Rising, he constructed intricate wargames to simulate a NATO-Soviet clash, and played through them with friends from the Naval War College. His passion for schematics and reports went so deep, that toward the end of his life he seemed more interested in writing nonfiction than novels.

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On its surface, The Division looks like it continues Clancy’s deep-research legacy. The disease-ravaged streets of New York come straight out of Operation Dark Winter, a multi-state epidemic/bioterror scenario the U.S. government conducted in 2001. Scenarios involving pathogens spreading through money recall the post-9/11 Anthrax attacks, when someone — most likely a biodefense employee — mailed anthrax-laced letters to several Democratic senators. The eponymous Division operates under National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 51, a government continuity directive President Bush signed in 2007. Directive 51 was not the U.S. government’s first government continuity plan (it revoked a similar directive signed in 1998), but it was the first released to the public, letting its vague language and heavily-censored text fuel conspiracy theories — which, unfortunately, The Division runs with.

Make no mistake, there are constitutional concerns about Directive 51. The document’s main thrust is that the three branches of government should cooperate to ensure (the continued functioning of our form of government under the Constitution,) and that cooperation raises real questions about the separation of powers. But the operative phrase here is under the Constitution. Whatever concerns one has about Directive 51, it’s unlikely to suspend the Constitution and hand government agents vigilante powers. Even the most extreme abuses of martial law — like Hawaii’s military rule during World War II — pale in comparison to those portrayed in The Division.

VG247 talks about the PvP-oriented Dark Zone:

It’s an amazing idea in theory. Constantly shifting, emergent alliances. The risk of facing a more cunning foe than AI could ever hope to equal. Teaming up for spontaneous multiplayer moments that linger in the mind long after the campaign has faded from your memory. The incessant fear of betrayal it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you(r loot).

In practice, it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way. I’ve heard plenty of accounts of players spending hours and hours in the Dark Zone without sighting a single Rogue, running farming routes with randos (grouped or more informally) until the whole exercise becomes a meaningless rinse-and-repeat grind with painfully little to show for it (again, make sure you’ve got the right gear to increase high end drops). Our own Matt Martin says there’s very little Rogue action in the Dark Zone. From his gentle aside about griefers you’d think that wandering into the Dark Zone is about as dangerous as calling for a pizza.

This has not been my experience.

The Dark Zone is terrifying and painful. I don’t know what sins I’ve committed to deserve it, but so far I’ve had the worst possible luck in there. These constant negative experiences have only fed my paranoia, to the point where even thinking about going into the Dark Zone makes me twitch under one eye, and I’m considering emailing Ubisoft to apologise for whatever it was I did that made the publisher perpetually feed my console ID into Rogue servers.

And finally, Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s John Walker wrote a piece about everything that is wrong with the title, though he still confesses he enjoys it enough to think of it as his favorite game of the year:

Tom Clancy’s The Division attempts a very serious tone. The corpse of the former best-selling person who put his name on the fronts of books other people wrote is apparently still propped up at a desk somewhere in Ubisoft’s HQ, ensuring that everything Is Very Important when it comes to running around and shooting pretend people. Super-small pox (which inexplicably isn’t called (Big Pox)) has killed most of the people in the world, Manhattan is overrun by rival groups of thugs and terrorists, and you’re trying to recover the city by, um, I dunno, collecting new vests I think. Characters are grimdark worry-lines with feet, imploring you to understand the severity of just how absolutely awful everything is, and how with your help things might become fractionally slightly less completely awful maybe a bit. And then when you get to a safe house, each quest-giving automaton (complete with repeated identical faces) is a HILARIOUS WACKY STEREOTYPE!

It’s so peculiarly incongruous to the tone the game works so po-faced to achieve, to have a sniffling simpering clot worrying about allergies and how things are too dirty, or a mumsy mum mummishly mumming about everyone getting home safe in time for tea. This one’s angry! This one’s a sycophant! This one’s a gun-lovin’ Southerner! Each is completely dreadful, a misguided attempt at humour that undermines the arc of the game, and isn’t in the least bit funny in the first place. Tom Clancy will be rolling in his office chair.