The Division has opinion divided

With Tom Clancy’s: The Division’s closed beta just around the corner, bits and pieces of information are coming out and gamers are getting concerned.

After the recent trailer release a lot of gamers suspect that the game has received a significant graphical downgrade from its initial reveal two years ago. While it is understandable for games to undergo a certain amount of change from proof of concept and reveal to final product, Ubisoft doesn’t have the best reputation after The Crew ended up looking like it belonged to the early 2,000’s rather than a new generation console pusher.

Not only that, new gameplay details have people sceptical about the game’s ‘vast open world’ which they were lead to believe would encompass all of New York, turns out it won’t; at least not at launch. In a recent interview, it was revealed that The Division will only include one of New York’s five borough’s on launch, Midtown Manhattan. Ubisoft maintains that their goal is to create a “one to one recreation” of New York, a process that is clearly going to take longer than expected. The Division is also set to receive multiple content updates which includes both paid and free content, it wouldn’t be too farfetched to assume that at least one of the new boroughs will be paid DLC along with the likes of new guns and tools. Another alarming bit of information that came to light was that the game will not have player based trading on launch, quite surprising given it is an online only multiplayer/cooperative game.

However Ubisoft’s official position seems to be that important features took precedence over a trading system. Earlier Ubisoft also ditched their companion app which despite being a major part of their initial marketing would have “caused an imbalance in the game”.

At this point it seems Ubisoft are either working at salvaging The Division from being a royal mess, or refining it into the game we all hope it will be; We will have a better idea once gamers get their hands on the closed beta that starts on January 28th for Xbox One and January 29th for PC and SP4.