Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 got its first premium growth, Warlords of New York, previously today. Players return to the Big Apple, scene of 2016’s initial The Division, to pursue rogue representative Aaron Keener, going through 4 of his lieutenantsfirst Polygon’s Charlie Hall and I are numerous hours into it, each, and we both concur that Warlords feels really familiar for those with a lot of time sunk into the game.
I’m likely to see that as a favorable suggestion; Charlie is a bit more agitated. Neither of us are truly sure that Keener will in fact get got, as this is the type of franchise that requires an uber-malevolence driving the larger photo, constantly tossing some new crisis for the heroes to manage.
So will a chase that has now covered 4 years and 2 games ever reach a conclusion? Charlie and I contemplated this and other concerns in hashing out our preliminary responses to Warlords of New York.
Owen: I consider myself a Division 2 apostate– not due to the fact that I do not like the game, however mainly due to the fact that I got myself to World Tier 2 around the time I was getting super-involved in other long-playing videogames I discover Warlords of New York is a good refresher and reintroduction to the factors I wanted to sink 150- plus hours into The Division 2 last spring and summertime (plus its predecessor the winter season prior to).
Problem is, returning into The Division 2 after so long away, I’m kind of yearning what I left in D.C., and there’s no going back to Washington up until you finish the campaign up in the BigApple Everybody who owns the Warlords growth gets to increase their character, or perhaps develop a new one and increase them, to World Tier 5, bypassing all of the advanced endgame grind that otherwise gates the journey north. I selected to increase the just character I’ve battled with, yet now I’m kind of jonesing for the Dark Zone and some other things I avoided over or left in D.C. Was that a dumb decision? What did you do, Charlie?
Charlie: Truthfully, I’m not completely sure that we didn’t all slip up here, Owen. I spoke to Faye Lau last night. Roy Benitez existed too. They both look so exhausted. Each of them simply sorta roamed into the frame to pinch out a couple of curs prior to the cam carried on. There’s another infection, I believe, and this one’s real bad now, and we got ta repair it so we can return and deal with the first one once again. I believe.
How did we even get here? I visited for the first time in a couple of months to be welcomed by a laundry list of statements and signals. I opened bundles. I cleared orange check marks from my menus, and after that … I simply sorta roamed around the White Home like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. I in fact needed to Google “how to get to New York City” due to the fact that I believed I had actually missed out on an action.
There was a bit of preview material that came out including Coney Island. Ends up you do not need to go there at all. You simply need to finish the main game, advance to World Tier 5, and talk with a pilot sitting like William T. Riker backwards on a chair, and off you go. I’m still extremely baffled regarding why I can’t return to D.C., however here we are. We’re here now.
Are you having a good time now, Owen, with all the pets?
Owen: Well, I went through the exact same “OK, where I did I end here” onboarding, or reboarding, however I’m a little more sanguine about Warlords of New York and how it reconnects me to the things I have actually taken pleasure in most about this franchise. I’m continuously blown away by how in-depth the world and the interior levels are, even if procedurally it’s more of the exact same things: Go check this location out, eliminate all these individuals, handle the level boss, hire aid if essential, and figure out your loot.
More concretely, Warlords of New York strikes a problem sweet area that the base game took a couple of months to accomplish. The first 2 big battles I have actually gone through have actually felt solo-able– however simply hardly. There were even early side objectives in launch-day Division 2 (considering the MLK Library) that were immensely hard to solo, and anything with a heavy system definitely required cooperative aid. Something occurred to the game in the late spring of 2019. Heavies’ weak points got a lot simpler to strike, and even the Bank Head office objective was now workable by myself. The game merely felt too simple, which’s around the time I put it down.
Warlords of New York most likely owes its attractive mix of difficulty and expediency to being created with all of the tweaking and rebalancing that has actually been performed in The Division 2’s updates over the past year. Since I firmly insist on solo play so much, this might be something that pops out to me. Has partying up with randos assisted the growth’s appeal for you, or is that, too, more of the exact same?
Charlie: Considering That the launch of The Division 2, I have actually been definitely floored at its technical elements. When the initial game introduced, you could not enter a celebration for a story objective if you attempted, and even the everyday objectives themselves quit working properly for a time. Multiplayer in The Division 2 has actually worked practically completely given that launch, and the exact same holds true in Warlords of New York.
I handled the first miniboss that I experienced with the aid of a random gamer. That’s how I made it through the main campaign and all the method approximately World Tier 5, and I enjoy to state that it is simply as practical now as it was then.
I’m simply not vibing with the narrative components, Owen. Or a minimum of, not the main narrative component, which is “go murder Aaron Keener, the big- bad you ought to have killed in the first game.”
I’m a solo gamer too, and at first blush I was quite delighted at the new “fog of war” function. When I set down in Manhattan, the game got rid of practically all of ISAC’s pathfinding, making me feel alone and susceptible for the first time in a long while. It feels like the map fills out really rapidly, and the narrative material itself has actually been quite sporadic. It’s likewise a bit uncomplicated. I’m stumbling over audio logs that appear to be dropped at my feet, however they simply do not total up to all that much. The most intriguing plot thread up until now has actually been the backstory for Theo Parnell, the child of a former senator and now one of Keener’s right-handmen Parnell gets crossed out in the taste text as a conspiracy theorist practically right away … however he sounds like he’s absolutely got a point? And a fascinating story to inform?
I eliminated him. That’s over. I feel now like I wish to get to the end of the story as rapidly as possible, so I can return to browsing the environment and getting lost underground and terrifying myself with new Hunters. Everything feels a bit like a squandered chance at closure, however we’ll see how it settles.
Who have you eliminated just recently, Owen? And with what surplus carries out of war?
Owen: I also eliminated Theo. In the expository discussion throughout that objective, I believed we may get some kind of considerate angle on the rogue representatives being abandoned. Nah, he was your fundamental patsy henchman for the sociopathic big- bad at the top of the pyramid. Still, Parnell’s new device– the holographic decoy– was kind of helpful. In the follow- up objective at One Cops Plaza, the decoy can be utilized to turn the heavy’s back to you. It’s a better choice than my turret, which a heavy still stomps right away.
Primarily I have actually been taking the map sequentially, as I have in the rest of my time with thisseries I believe I pursued Parnell first due to the fact that the other places (a quarantined high-rise and the Brooklyn Bridge) sounded more technical or unsafe. From what I can inform, there is no Dark Zone here (Lower Manhattan was a Dark Zone, in the story). I constantly made journeys to the Dark Zone as a kind of mess-around chaser experience after clearing a lot of products off my PvE to-dolist In Warlords of New York, my chaser is going right back out for some collection tasks or warding off yet another public execution. And the equipment I’m getting isn’t as interesting as what’s around the corner in a Dark Zone.
Structurally, I have actually taken pleasure in a good deal of what The Division 2 has actually used, so I see no problem with merely providing more of that. I can inform that this is a growth developed with totally new players in mind, too, such that things that would appear unique to them (or those coming back from a long layoff) may do not have zest for those who have a longer period. It’s an excellent factor to go back to The Division 2, however it’s not a remade game, nor an “it’s never ever been much better” sensation.
Charlie: Concurred. I appeared for the Ubisoft version of Fate’s The Taken King– a significant modification to the franchise that made it feel both fresh and refined. I’m getting a strong whiff of polish up until now, however that has to do with it.
