Tom Clancy’s The Division Wiki – Everything you need to know about the game

Tom Clancy’s The Division is a brand new and upcoming massively multiplayer online third person tactical shooter with action role playing elements (MMOTPSRPG) that is currently in development by Ubisoft Massive, the same team that worked on Assassins Creed Revelations and Far Cry 3.

The game will be released under the Ubisoft owned brand of Tom Clancy games (Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon franchises etc), named after the now deceased Author and Historian Tom Clancy. Tom Clancy’s The Division is currently set to be published by the parent company Ubisoft and is slated to launch on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows based PCs. The game will be available at retail and via digital download through Digital Retailers, Xbox Live and the PlayStation Store at some time in Q4 of 2014.

• 1. Development
• 2. Gameplay
• 3. Story
• 4. Characters
• 5. Classes

Development

When development first started on Tom Clancy’s The Division, the game was only being planned for release on the new 8th generation consoles, but not all of them. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were set to receive the game but Nintendo’s new system, the Wii U will not be receiving a port of the game due to its comparatively weaker hardware than what can be found on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. This changed however after the game was first unveiled, during this unveiling period Ubisoft announced via their official twitter feed that if PC gamers were interested in the game, they should express this interest by signing petitions. Ubisoft took notice of this an the game was officially announced to be in development for PC as well on August 20th of 2013.

Since the beginning of the development period the game has been shown twice in a public demo, once at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2013 (E3 2013) where the game was first shown in a playable state via an approximately 7 minute gameplay demo that shows of various gameplay mechanics and some impressive subtle gameplay touches.

Like Assassins Creed Black Flag and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist, Tom Clancy’s The Division will have a companion app. This app that is primarily intended to be used from a tablet will allow a player to drop into the game in the form of a UAV-esque drone that enables better target acquisition on the part of the console or PC players currently engaged in a fire fight. The companion app hasn’t seen as much media coverage as the actual game however, so its current state of development is not yet known.

Story

The setting for Tom Clancy’s The Division is based of two real world events which according to developers “revealed how vulnerable we’ve become”; society has become “fragile” and “complex”. Operation Dark Winter was the code name of a simulation training event conducted over the period of a day in 2001 (June 22-23), during which the safety parameters and protocols of a senior level bio-terrorist attack are tested when faced with both a covert and overt smallpox terror attack.

Directive 51 is a presidential directive that was secretly signed in 2007 and inserted into Law, it was created in response to the conditions and various stages of a Dark Winter Scenario. If such a scenario is to occur and Directive 51 is initiated then the initiating party (most commonly expected to be the presidential staff and high ranking officers of high functioning bodies) officially assumes control over all executive procedures to ensure the continued functioning existence of the federal government in the face of a catastrophic emergency, such as those underlined via the Dark Winter training protocols.

During the game, whilst Americans pack closely together during the world criticized Black Friday sales crowd mentality a disease spreads rapidly. This rapidly spreading disease causes the collapse of the United States in only five days. In the aftermath of this, the player is inserted into the game as one of the SHD, or Strategic Homeland Division (or The Division for short). This group was assembled  (presumably under Directive 51) as a reactionary force to combat the threat of complete social downfall.

Gameplay

Gameplay in Tom Clancy’s The Division takes place in a primarily 3rd person perspective and focuses on squad based combat and survival in an apparently persistent world. While players can tackle the game on their own, the games focus on squad combat seems to be the main strength, with flanking manoeuvres and the use of items and equipment demonstrably changing a combat situation by considerable increments.

Players can make use of a projected GUI to help navigate the world, use various weapons and gadgets to level the playing field against other teams or team up with another player using the companion app to help spot enemy targets by using a UAV like device. In regards to the RPG elements announced to be in the game, a recent question and answer event amongst the developers and the gaming community brought new details to light. When asked whether the RPG features would have an effect on how you will deal damage or how accurate your player will be, the developers responded by saying, “We are a Clancy game, we are also an open-world game but really we’re an RPG first. Gear will be important, levels will be important, modifications to weapons will be important… everything that makes a fantastic RPG will be important to the game.”

This doesn’t mean the game will take the Borderlands route of dealing damage and have it work on a weapon by weapon basis (one gun being more dangerous than the last) it instead means that increasing accuracy, reducing recoil and spread will impact gameplay significantly. They also stressed that although the game does have an RPG structure and a story to follow, the choice of how and when you do it is in the players hands.

Characters

At the moment, there are no details regarding characters in the game. Although given the RPG elements, it’s entirely possible that the player will create their own in game avatar.

Classes

Much like sandbox fantasy rpg games the player has a great degree of control over the character they build in the game. Rather than having character classes, the player will acquire points that they can allocate to build a character the way they want to. What this means is that the game will take on a more “freeform” structure and design rather than being forced down individual paths. When asked to comment on this via a community Q&A blog, the developers made it clear that although the character you build will be unique to you, there is still the option of following common RPG tropes, “you’ll be able to spec yourself into a general RPG role (becoming more a “tank”, a “healer” or a “DPS” kind of character), but again the choice is yours.”

They then continued to say that communicating with other members of your team and keeping everyone aware of your players abilities in the field can make quite a difference in the game, ” This means that communication and teamwork are important to have the best group possible!”

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.