Tom Clancy’s The Division controversy

I think it’s important to ask the right question right away: why does The Division cause dissonance and controversy about its quality, why was it not possible to create a clear-cut game?? We have to understand the aspects, nuances and talk in more detail about the contradictions. In short, take a look at what is usually swept out of memory after the end of the next gaming session. If you, like me, wondered “how can Division be liked and disliked at the same time,” then you are in the right place.

I won’t beat around the bush, there are flaws in the implementation of almost every idea and mechanic in Division. And, of course, this in itself is not scary. There are no perfect games. No famous project has 100% positive ratings on Metacritic. Sometimes “roughness” is only beneficial, and some mistakes turn into a signature “trick”. Tom Clancy’s The Division suffers from a different problem – game elements contradict each other and ruin the narrative and immersion. This is interesting because it does not lie on the surface. The discrepancy is most often felt by the “subcortex” and it is not possible to formulate the reason on the spot. For example, the Division agents themselves. The fundamental idea of ​​the special squad is super-training and secretive service to society. Our “chosen ones” are the last resort for survival and restoration of the nation in the event of a global or national cataclysm. The fighters are seasoned, especially devoted to the sense of duty and responsibility, hung with hi-tech gadgets, they are brave and skilled jacks of all trades. And so that no one knows about their existence and cannot sabotage the execution of order 66, paragraph 51, the saviors of the United States dissolve among ordinary people: housewives, office workers, brokers, builders, etc. d. These people are James Bonds, Ethan Hunts and Jason Bournes.

Just how is such https://fivecascasino.co.uk/bonus/ a horde of specialists able to maintain their readiness for any event, from banal zombie invasions and alien invasions to the almost impossible riots of life-threatening weapons and precipitation in the form of meatballs?. If you think about it, there are many different specialties and subclasses in any emergency response services. Any policeman or firefighter should be able to provide first aid, but a medic can do it better. A cop can walk into a burning building and save victims, but a firefighter can do the job better. Even in “rescue” professions, it is necessary to undergo periodic certification to confirm your skills and status. Indeed, at a critical moment, a simple gap in theoretical knowledge can lead to the death of people. So regular training and retraining directly affect the effectiveness of any specialist, and therefore the success of the mission assigned to him. And if you delve into the lore, you can find all this ins and outs. And how did the US government come up with the idea of ​​the Division, and that 80 billion dollars are allocated for their maintenance and training annually, and the training itself is carried out according to an individual plan for each agent so as to fit into his daily routine activities and make it a secret even for loved ones. But in the game itself, there is almost no information. The picture is presented in general terms. And the main omission of the idea of ​​a secret special squad is that there’s no point in preparing another unit instead of retraining a proven professional? How much time, nerves and taxpayer money will be spent on the “secret housewife 007”, who can put stretch marks not only on tights, or the “superguard” of a shopping center who can spit in a squirrel’s eye from 10 meters?

For comparison, remember the first part of Men in Black, where during the selection process for agents there were no questions about why these guys even got an interview. They were "The best of the best of the best, sir"!“It was possible to select professionals in the same way, complete their training in a shorter time, provide them with fashionable division watches, a stash of turrets and drones, and then return them to work. How much easier would it be to contain the fall of New York if every tenth cop was equipped with homing grenades and portable barricades, and if firefighters had the ability to locate people through walls?. And the fighters would have remained at the forefront of their work. As before, they would be among the first to arrive at incidents, but they would act more efficiently. But no, Ubisoft couldn’t go against the idea of ​​"everyone can be a secret agent". Even if hundreds and thousands of them were holed up in Brooklyn while Manhattan was drowning in an epidemic. Hmmm yeah. But now it’s clear where Watch Dogs Legion’s legs come from. Although I personally think that the message “everyone is unique” has long since become obsolete and surprises with its naivety.

On the opposite side of the coin is the idea of ​​the Dollar Plague. The topic is surprisingly meticulously worked out. Distribution route: cash. The timing of the start of the epidemic was chosen ideally – Black Friday, when money circulation is at its most active. The story will directly or indirectly tell about isolation and filtration measures in cases of epidemic, show sports facilities converted into hospitals and camps, mention the difficulty of developing antiviral drugs, touch on virus mutations and the importance of finding patient zero. The impact of the pandemic is also noticeable in the surroundings on the city streets: boarded up doors and windows, mountains of corpses and garbage, field rescue camps and chaotically placed tents of survivors, cordoned off buildings, rats and stray dogs. It is noticeable that a lot of time and effort was devoted to creating the atmosphere of a powerful pandemic. And this is 4 years before the ill-fated Covid-19. It turned out not brilliant, but very, very good. The poorly thought out basic backstory of the operatives gets in the way and looks stupid compared to the equally important basic story of the pandemic.

The second serious drawback, in my opinion, is the stub of the role-playing development system in the form of levels of heroes, opponents and guns. The “classic headshot problem” (just made it up, it sounds good, but the word “classic” adds weight) is when a player points a shotgun point-blank at the opponent’s head, and he squints his eyes and comes even closer. I like to choose snipers with killer rifles and eliminate enemies long before getting to know each other. And what a disappointment awaited me when I was unable to kill an enemy of my own level with one shot to the head using the appropriate bullet. Stupid situations only develop when an armed gunman with a bat rushes towards you, armed with a bat, to make a welcome “bonk”, and you cannot kill him with a whole magazine of cartridges. Damn, is it that the special squad has water pistols instead of firearms, or the Dollar Plague endowed the morons with superpowers? Well, okay, you politely say, this is not the first such “role-playing” game, everyone is already used to it, where is the contradiction? It, polite reader, is in the realism of the firearm itself. What you can’t take away from The Division is the fun of shooting itself. The weapons are very nicely implemented: the sounds of shots, reloading animations, some kind of impact, the difference in the “feelings” of using barrels, customization mechanics. These things work for realism. I was especially surprised by the adequate display of body kits on the barrels themselves and their practical impact on firefights: the sight changes depending on the chosen model, silencers have different effects on the sound of shots. And the modifications themselves cannot be applied to any weapon. It will not be possible to attach a NATO collimator sight to a Russian AK-47 and vice versa. Well that’s cool! And then you find yourself on the border of an area with opponents that are a couple of levels higher than you and you realize that you find yourself in the “John Connor vs. Terminators” mode. Butt pain, annoyance and disappointment. By grinding your teeth and using up all your ammunition you can defeat them, although without pleasure. And it would be okay if the higher-level opponents were from a cooler faction. But no, the same convicts-cleaners-mercenaries, whom you pacified in batches in the previous area. Too noticeable contrast. If this was a game about fun and excitement, like Borderlands, then I wouldn’t be complaining. But The Division is a project based on “serious cabbage soup”, which only partially corresponds. So it turns out that realistic weapons cause too unrealistic damage.

The game looks great. The graphics at maximum settings still look very good, New York is designed well and with attention to detail, the process is smooth and without additional loads, the weather and time of day change, the light and effects are pleasantly surprising. And for all its beauty, the city feels sterile and lifeless. So the world is filled with warring factions and peaceful survivors. Here and there you can meet people asking for help, who according to the script will approach the player, or will diligently ignore. If you get close, you can see people arguing or fighting over supplies, trying to console each other, or showing off the rats they caught for dinner. Or two patrols of warring factions begin a firefight until the enemy is completely destroyed. Seems good, but done clumsily. After a few hours of playing, you will notice that the scenes are repeated, and the “actors” do not react to anything other than a shot or a blow with a butt. Civilians are not embarrassed by the patrols of evil groups five meters away from them, or the fresh corpses of those killed in a recent shootout, or the weather conditions. People continue to complain about conditions, search for supplies and ask for help despite standing near the entrance to a safe shelter. Due to the fact that the passage to such locations is marked with arrows, and a banner “We have food and water” is almost always located nearby. It’s safe here” the artificiality of the situation is felt. Often, leaving the safe zone, I came across beggars who wanted a certain consumable, and after receiving it, they limped away to suffer away from the shelter. The safe zones themselves are not guarded and are never attacked by bandits. And at the same time, in the city, people form gangs and rip each other’s throats out for the sake of a can of stew.