Wonderful video on one of my favorite games. Finally made an account here just to talk about this. I had the thought that this game would be perfect for a Christmas episode because of all the Christmas stuff in the game and the just absolutely beautiful environments of the game. I loved the murder hobo thing Ross had going on. The whole feeling of "I know what Im doing is morally questionable, but Its fun so I dont care" was great.
Overall, Ross makes a lot of really fascinating points about the setting that I hadn't ever really considered before, mainly because I had just kind of played through the game without really thinking about it. A lot of the story being vague had never crossed my mind as it has been years since I ever really played the intro to it and consciously thought about it, so seeing the new perspective on it was a nice refresher. Especially when it comes to the plot itself. The sequel does a lot of stuff to remedy many of this stuff, although to the point of making a lot of the enemies more cartoonish and making yourself out to be more of a superhero than anything, which I do enjoy, but also ruins one of the things that really pulled me into the Division 1.
There's tons of phone call recordings you can find in the world that are hands down some of the best voice acting I've ever heard in a video game EVER. You can feel the panic and fear in these people's voices as they call loved ones and try to figure out how to survive or get out of the city. To me at least, they feel so genuine that it was what pushed me over the edge to love the game. Unfortunately, the second game just absolutely shits the bed in that regard, feeling like generic video game voice acting rather than actual people. 2 does some things better, it is also another visual feast, but unfortunately it's set up the same way so it's also another hard sell.
And when it comes to the whole rioter/looter situation, I think it's just a restriction of the setting that they didn't do enough to set up for. Which you can absolutely see them trying to get you to believe these are bad guys, as every interaction with them is them either beating up people, threatening people, and just straight up killing people, but at the end of the day they are still just, people in hoodies that aren't organized and are doing bad stuff to survive in a shitty situation. But the devs needed a low-level grunt type faction that they could give you to fight. Although, an easy way to work around this would've been to establish a faction that is a gang, which is essentially what Div2 does with the Hyenas, which is basically all of the local DC gangs coming together to form a gang conglomerate that combines all the gangs into one group. When it comes to the Cleaners (the flamethrower guys) I actually really enjoy the faction as an enemy. A faction hell-bent on just burning everything to me is a really neat idea for this kind of SHTF situation, where people who have lost friends and family to this virus are hell-bent on cleansing it. Which, while it is pretty unrealistic, it definitely gives me cult vibes that make them an enjoyable enemy to fight and from a narrative standpoint gives me a very "these people will not listen to reason oh shit what are they gonna do" feeling to it. The Rikers are probably a faction Ross hasn't encountered yet, but they definitely bring a good bit more of a "we are evil prisoners" and take up more of the gang role that the rioters should've taken, and is probably why the rioters didn't just become a gang, as it might've seemed to weird to have a gang of looters and a gang of former inmates both roaming the city. But they make for a bit less interesting villain, just being "teehee we are convicts and are evil >:)" After that you have the Black Tusk, which is a PMC that has ties to something that
Once you start getting further into the game, you do start getting more of the story. You're basically just trying to start things back up, getting the vaccine for the Virus going, getting power back to parts of the city, and generally trying to keep the factions from going murder-crazy, and then you find out that there's a rogue Division agent that is essentially one step ahead of you at every turn that is keeping you from getting what you need to complete the vaccine, and is straight up told to you that he's the guy who started the whole dollar flu thing and is the reason everything went to shit. This is expanded on in the 2nd game, and he has a really cool boss fight at the end of the Expansion "Warlords of New York." That expansion also does a interesting but possibly ruinous thing where it turns out that everything went to shit in NYC between the events of Div1 to 2, which might either be a good thing or a bad thing for the narrative depending on where you stand.
When it comes to gameplay, yeah I would've much preferred it to have tried to be a lot less Destiny and a lot more Gears of War or other 3rd Person cover based shooter. I like the idea of having all these cool gadgets at your disposal and having a realistic NYC to fight in, but making it a looter shooter really kills the amount of enjoyment I can have with them, where I can only have 2 equipped at a time and have to wait on cooldowns for them. I have still put nearly 1k hours in both 1 and 2 combined, but it'd be WAY past that if the game had less of the grind and more of the fun. I would love to see what kind of cool gadgets Massive could come up with for a setting to this game. Unfortunately (for me at least) it seems that they're trying to make a battle royale game out of it, which I mean Hyper Space didn't work out, and with Division being an already weird title in Ubisoft's catalogue I doubt a BR of it will catch on at all.
I might've written a bit too much for this, huh?
EDIT (like, 10 minutes after posting):
I FORGOT THE MUSIC
1's OST is pretty forgettable asides from the synth stuff, but 2 does a really good job at improving it. Throwing a lot more rock into it, feeling like it's taking some Doom 2016 inspirations from a lot of the djent and noise aspects of it. Balcony Rotary is a personal favorite that plays during one of the earlier missions in 2. A lot of the ambient tracks are really good too, Strandh did a really good job at reeling back a lot of the more generic aspects of the first OST and made a soundtrack I still listen to a lot outside of the game. Saint is another track I really like.