Tom Clancy's The Division 2 – The Capitol Gains

I do not know why I am in Washington DC; a lady just told me to be here. But there are civilians in distress, armed gangs roaming the streets and I, my friends and the second amendment are apparently the only ones who can really do something about it. I have no idea what is going on, if any, with the seemingly important people I meet. But as long as I help people, send (presumably) bad people to bed, walk me in the pretty streets and get a new pair of gloves from time to time, I'm very happy to hang out in the vicinity.

In the world of Tom Clancy's The Division 2, the United States has been ravaged by a virus and society has collapsed. While those who remain are trying to survive by grouping themselves into groups of diverse arrangements, the Strategic Homeland Division is activating highly specialized sleep agents to try to restore order. It's a framework conducive to the potential, perhaps to tell a heartbreaking story of techno-thriller that scrutinizes the structures of our modern society and our government, or perhaps to create a video game that exploits the chaos that occurs when several idealistic groups face each other in a race for power in a lawless city. Division 2 does only one of those things.

This is not the story. Throughout the main campaign of The Division 2, the game has never spent a satisfying time on a semblance of general conspiracy or the pitfalls of its so-called personalities. There are no arcs of characters, only sudden configurations and consequences. Narrative devices, such as audio logs found around the world, are of little importance. Even the biggest macguffins of the game – the president of the United States and his briefcase containing a cure for the virus – have a minimal amount of screen time absolutely forgettable. The opportunity to use The Division 2 to create a meaningful fiction is ruined.

Instead, The Division 2 focuses its efforts on building the world. The city, a devastated Washington DC, feels at first a bit homogenous like most Western cities. But after a while, the personality of the different neighborhoods – the buildings, the monuments, the natural spaces and the way in which they were transformed or affected by the cataclysm – begins to show through. It is this strength of the environment that lays a solid foundation for The Division 2 as a video game, creating a captivating, credible and contiguous open world.

Moving from your refuge to the open world and your next mission area is almost entirely transparent. This is something that was also true of the original division, but that does not detract from the fact that the mere fact of going from one place to the other is not the same. Another in The Division 2 is one of the most rewarding aspects of the game. A road can lead to a skirmish with a rival patrol or an optional activity, another can simply give you another moving scene of urban disrepair under the morning sun. A hidden shortcut in a building might allow you to find useful items in an abandoned house, which you might decide to donate to makeshift colonies where civilians have tried to rebuild their lives.

Visiting these camps – at first as slums, before they grow up and gradually become more charming and vibrant places thanks to your efforts in the world – becomes a powerful motivator from the beginning in the absence of A plot to pursue. Apart from the main missions, which are devoted to the weakening of rival factions and the achievement of blind goals, the "Projects" of the game are one of the most lucrative ways of gaining money. To improve your character. Projects ask you to donate resources you discover around the world and participate in parallel activities, encouraging you to spend more time around the world, discover new realms, fight new battles, search new equipment to use and enjoy. Division 2 is, after all, a game that aims to provide you with a steady stream of striking conflicts, valuable rewards, and a perpetual sense of progress and satisfaction. He does these things very well.

You spend a lot of time hiding behind the skin, shooting at it to shoot any enemy stupid enough to expose yourself. With the wide variety of weapons available, this familiar facet of combat is solid in itself. Add to that the ability to equip two out of eight possible special skills – which include tools such as riot shields, drones and, as far as I can draw, bee robots – the fight becomes quite interesting. But the vector that actually keeps The Division 2's fight alive for more than 60 hours is the behavior and diversity of its types of enemies.

What time do you spend on the cover? Division 2 does not want you to stay there. You can go down very quickly if you are in the open, but the game offers a dozen ways for you to always take these risks and you find better shooting positions: aggressive melee units, remote controlled cars equipped with saw blades, even the most classic ones. Assault units often try to get around you. These special abilities? You must use them to their maximum potential to survive certain encounters, whether throwing the search mines or automated turret to keep enemies away from the goal that you are focusing on a priority target, or by using the chemical launcher to light a fire. create a denial zone.

The effort needed to eliminate an opponent is relatively reasonable for a shooter who prioritizes the RPG nature of his combat model, but some of the toughest enemies have extra visible levels of protection that you need to focus on. first of all to be able to ask you critical questions. shots. On the other hand, some enemies have extra and obtuse weak points that can help you, but only if you can touch them. The fuel tank located at the back of a flamethrower unit may be feasible, but when you start to get into the terrifying quadruped robotics in post-campaign activities, whose tiny weak point only comes a few seconds before the shot of his devastating weapon, you have to assess whether you can afford to take up this challenge among all the other things that pressure you. Division 2 throws you a lot of obstacles, but also gives you the means to counter them and solve them quickly. That you can juggle so many balls at once is what makes the fight always tense and exciting.

What is also exciting is the treasure at the end of these gauntlets. Places in Washington, transformed into memorable battle arenas, are often rewarding (a fight in a planetarium is a remarkable example). But the improvement of your equipment is the vital and concrete part that allows you to continue to feel that you are progressing. You receive new equipment in generous amounts, some dropped by an enemy or looted in a container found in the world, others rewarded for completing a mission, and the next dose is always at hand. The variety of weapons requires you to consider something completely different to take advantage of a power boost, and the variety of armor offers an impressive number of different aesthetic aspects. Division 2 incorporates a microtransaction and luggage compartment system for its unimportant clothing options, although these can be found around the world and obtained voluntarily as well.

Like the fight, the material remains intriguing throughout The Division 2, not only because of the abstract desire to assign more to your person and to progress further in the challenges of the game, but also through a multitude of "talents". These add unique benefits that complement specific skills or game styles, such as offering bonuses within a certain range or when enemies are burning or your armor is exhausted. The armor brands also have a role to play, the equipment of a number of parts from the same manufacturer offering additional benefits. These bonuses become especially appealing to the end-game obsessed, when the world is taken over by a tougher and more ruthless enemy faction called Black Tusk, and you must make sure that your ability to fight them is the best you can.

For the hundreds of pieces that you will inevitably want to discard, the ability to sell or dismantle them for parts to buy or craft parts that you want gives value to everything you take. Or you can keep them to improve their equipment of the same type. And, for your convenience, Division 2 implements many features to inspect, mark, disassemble, or equip items that you find so quickly and gracefully … sometimes without having to enter a menu, it improves the quality of your items. experience of being in one's world.

The same can be said of the game's multiplayer integration, which allows you to easily group and progress with friends (the game will evolve the underpowered players so that they match the more powerful ones). You can also create or join a clan, which opens the way to a variety of weekly challenges, offers valuable rewards, and offers group-wide integrated group communication options. Even if you're only interested in playing alone (which is more difficult, but quite achievable for everything except the most demanding activities at the end of the game), the ability to match with other players at any time, whether in the open world , before you start a mission, or when you are on a last boss, is a very welcome and useful feature.

And when you beat the last leader of the game's final mission (however, the lack of intrigue in The Division 2 honestly prevents you from telling him his name to save my life) and you think that you are finally short of treasures to continue to attract more fights, the metaphorical table is reversed. Returned hard. The aforementioned Washington Tusk takes over completely the control you have spent so long in Washington DC to free you from rival factions. You unlock three unique class specializations, each with their own skill trees to develop. Your focus on the growing number of two-digit numbers on your character (your level) is changing to three-digit numbers (the quality of your gear). The wealth of activities that are available to you once you finish the campaign is huge and builds on your momentum. It motivates you to continue to see more, to do more and to grow more.

More difficult remixes of campaign missions and longer fortress missions featuring Black Tusk become available. These "invaded" missions often exploit new types of enemies to create terrifying new combat scenarios that keep the challenges constantly rising, and they give you a fantastic reason to revisit the memorable battle arenas with determination. Open world events become more dynamic and risky – factions face more often for territorial control, and your involvement in some activities can dramatically increase the danger and benefits to others. Time-limited challenges, in the form of new projects, higher difficulty missions and additional bonus objectives found around the world, offer more lucrative premium opportunities. There are even more activities beyond that, and the strength of the final phase of The Division 2 lies not only in the wealth of content available, but how far all of this is viable to improve your position in the world.

The way to go to increase your speed score to qualify for higher levels and content is always clear. Whatever you do, the game continues to ensure that you are always rewarded significantly, and the feeling of improving your character persists.It is remarkable how simple the game is, it allows you to see all the richness of its content and to maintain this feeling of constant progression until the end, especially in spite of its intrigues, characters and its narrative themes not substantial. Once I finally reached the stage of progression of the game, I was impressed by everything there was to pursue.

The world of The Division 2 also includes three distinct dark zones, which are systematically accessible throughout the campaign, which promise the possibility of high quality equipment but pose more risks beyond the usual open world. The power dynamics between you and the enemies is normalized, and there is an uncertain element as to the possibility of interacting with other players. In the Dark Zone, players can choose to cooperate with other players around the world to eliminate enemy outposts and explore areas in search of equipment, but the possibility of being "thief" and undermining the other players' work offers the opportunity to earn more points. risk of bigger losses if you do not manage to escape. Exploring the Dark Zone is a fascinating aspect of The Division 2, which adds additional facets of tension, mistrust and dishonesty to a game that already offers high stakes fights. In addition, it is a completely optional way to reach the highest levels of achievement of the game. Similarly, the optional Conflict activities of the game offer incentives for participation in traditional multiplayer modes. as a team, which proved useful in the few matches I attended, but were relatively under-populated compared to other modes of contact at the time of writing.

The frame of The Division 2 is ripe for potential, and it is a pity that the game does not use it to say anything. I do not know why I am here, what are the motivations of anyone, and I would like to have a powerful narrative engine to fuel a goal behind my endless appetite for progression. It's hard to ignore this disappointment during the early hours of the game, but the strength of the systems and design that fuel Division 2 as a game are compelling enough to keep you enthralled for dozens of years. The diversity of enemy types continues to make fighting difficult, the equipment I have acquired and recovered continues to feel different and valuable, and asks me to consider new ways of playing. The ravaged environments continue to intrigue, and sometimes they are so staggering that I find myself forced to take screenshots before continuing. This may not have much to say, but The Division 2 is a perpetual cycle of tension, relief and rewards, hard to avoid.