The Division Should Have Been More

We have a lot of loot-driven games in the gaming medium, and they are often fun ways to kill some time and baddies. For the uninitiated, loot-based games are centered around a gameplay loop of killing baddies for new items and equipment, using the loot that's better than your own equipment, then using that new equipment to go kill bigger and badder baddies. It's a simple yet satisfying progression system that provides a steady influx of tangible rewards that can be used to earn even greater rewards. Game franchises like Diablo and Borderlands have used this system to great effect. Diablo starts the player with weak weapons and very little armor, and has them finding better weapons and armor as the game progresses. Borderlands is all about the guns, grenades, and passive buffs. You start with a simple pistol that does nothing more than shoot bullets, then find bigger guns that add elemental damage to their bullets or just explode. Both series feature simple premises, that make the loot-driven system the focus of the game. Diablo pits the player against the denizens of hell, and Borderlands drops the player on at lawless planet full of colorful people who let their humanity fall by the wayside in favor of madness and anarchy. Both games use violence at the main way to interact with their worlds and the people/ creatures in them, and they make it work by distancing the gameworlds from reality enough that the violence as main interaction passes without much attention. Tom Clancy's The Division does not have that luxury. The Division is undoubtedly a slick game with an engaging gameplay loop. As a loot-driven game it's great, but it's missions and premise cry out for The Division to be more than looting and shooting.

Premise
Tom Clancy's The Division (yes, that's the actual title) is a game published by Ubisoft and released in March 2016. It's part of a series of games based on the writing of author Tom Clancy, who wrote Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and a ton of other books. The premise of The Division is set in a fallen New York. An illness spread on Black Friday (doesn't turn people into zombies. That would be George Romero's The Division) devastates the population of New York, specifically the island portion, causing law and order to break down amid riots, death, and destruction. The Division, itself, is an organization of sleeper agents who live among the population. When society breaks down, they are activated, and sent in to ostensibly keep the peace. The player is one of these sleeper agents, activated in the second wave, well after society has collapsed. I'm going to gloss over how The Division has the same sleeper-cell setup that has been used to scare consumers of media since the cold war, (It even uses some of the same language, "We are your friends. Your neighbors." to describe who makes up The Division. The writers just changed the pronoun from "they" to "we." That's the power of pronouns, baby.) and look right at what the game asks players to do.

Missions
Loot-driven games have violence as the main method of player interaction because the focus is killing things to get better equipment to kill bigger things, which does not work with The Division's premise. Shoot and loot's simplicity doesn't work with the close-to-home societal break down, which involves a lot of nuance and motivational complexity. The first three missions of the game are solid examples for this conflict between premise and system, as well as a missed opportunity for some variety. The starting missions have the player rescue hostages, secure stolen food, and secure stolen morphine. All three missions are functionally identical. Go to the place marked on your map, shoot the initial perpetrators, shoot the backup perpetrators, then press X finish mission. This structure is kinda boring, as mission structures go, and reduces what could be a morally complex situation down to the baddies stole things and kidnapped people because they are bad, with killing being the only solution. Imagine if more thought was put into these missions.

Secure the Food
What if the food was stolen by a group of people who want to give it to hungry people who need it throughout the city. Sure, they stole supplies from The Division, but they have good intentions. That would put the player in a position where they have to make a decision. Kill the thieves and reclaim the goods, or connect this group with The Division who will help provide more food for this group to spread (which would give the player a concrete example of The Division doing more than killing people) among the hungry and needy, while spreading The Division's influence. There could even be more options, so the choice isn't a binary good vs bad situation.

Secure the Morphine
This mission could follow a similar line to the food mission. The morphine is represented by multiple crates, so what if it was taken by someone who is working in a hospital that's full of sick people. Maybe the thieves are actually a group of doctors and nurses trying to keep this hospital going, because society has collapsed, and people need medical care now more than ever. Perhaps, The Division could help support this hospital, by helping them find more medicines and supplies throughout the city while defending them from attackers. This could create a series of missions, based solely on what this hospital needs.

Rescue the Hostages
This one gets little explanation in game. People do not take hostages without reason. Part of this mission could be figuring out why. Hostage takers are often desperate people acting on that desperation. Maybe you could negotiate with the hostage takers, or kill them if you prefer. Maybe the hostage takers are scared of someone threatening their families, and they take the hostages because the real baddies want them for whatever reason. The player would have to navigate this delicate situation, making tough decisions and potentially uncovering a deeper plot than what appears on the surface.

Using the simple loot-driven system, reduces the human elements into good guys (The Division) and the bad guys (everyone else with a gun). If you aren't The Division, you're either a non-combatant civilian or an enemy to be killed. That's a big problem, that shows the designers may not have been thinking through their decisions. From a gameplay and story perspective, that makes the missions no more than samey brief distractions, instead of interesting stories that make the player think about what they are doing and why they are doing it. Putting more thought into these opening missions would also be a significant boon to the game, as the player would get a ton of depth and mission variety in the first hour or two of the game. Put that best foot forward.

The Division should not be a loot-driven game. It should be a role playing game, with morally complex missions and a dialogue system. The agents should still have their guns because they are trying to keep the peace after society has fallen, but those guns shouldn't the only option or even the first option. In fact, they could add some weight to the use of guns, by letting the player use them as an intimidation tactic. People don't just want to fight and die. When you approach a baddie who doesn't have his weapon ready, pointing your gun at him could put him at a disadvantage and initiate dialogue. I have yet to see a game do something like that. Use your gun form something other than shooting or melee.

With a bit more imagination in the design, The Division could have been so much more than a loot and shoot game. It's premise pretty much demands a more complex gameplay system supporting a nuanced story. Ubisoft could have made a truly special game, instead of just a solid game with some serious issues. I would like to see them revisit this idea and put more thought into the design and story. I think The Division deserves to reach it's potential.