ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: THE DIVISION

[JudasPhysicist]

Here is something weird, while this is technically a Ubisoft title, the game engine and the game itself is developed by Massive Entertainment.

On their website it says they are a Ubisoft company https://www.massive.se but the studio's roots go way back till 2001 with their first title

Ground Control, a very competent fully 3D RTS, and Homeworld + Ground Control were the first fully 3D RTS games that I know of. In 2004

they released a sequel to Ground Control, which I love none of them have base building etc. they focus soley on the action and tactics

side of things. Finally in 2008 they released World In Conflict and almost went bankrupt and Ubisoft bought them out.

 

And at this point the story goes pretty bizzare in typical Ubisoft fashion, they had Massive Entertainmet cancel their work on the World In Conflict console ports and potentially any other RTS game they were making before their acquisition. Massive is at this point a studio known for

making purely RTS games and have ~8 years of experience under their belt, so naturally Ubisoft tasks them to make the tacked on multi-player

portions of their Far Cry and Assasin's Creed games for years on end and also puts them in charge of developing and maintaining their

Steam competitor DRM thingy Uplay (now it's called some other weird thing but whatever even Blizzard changed their DRM name but

people still kept calling it Battle-net lol).

 

I was massively surprised when I saw this Massive Entertainment's name attached to the Division because I thought they went poof under

all that AAA published slave driver culture, similar to what Activision did to Raven Software. The game was pretty much so so in my opinion

and I have no idea why they made it an online only looter shooter when it could have been a solid single player game. But the talent is

still there, the amount of detail and effort poured into making that city, that amazing winter storm atmosphere, I've never really felt any

other game conveyed a cold winter city any better.

 

To my knowledge the music in this game was made by Ola Strandh, who also made the music to Ground Control back in the day and that was pretty awesome. But I suppose corporate meddling or whatnot mandates that games don't have any musical identity anymore. I mean just listen

to this track from 2001 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir74RSi-5Gs&list=PLCF6ACD0618F0879D&index=5

Edited December 27, 2021 by JudasPhysicist (see edit history)

[HeartenedKorbo]

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.

 

Edited December 27, 2021 by HeartenedKorbo (see edit history)

[Generic-User]

On 12/26/2021 at 10:22 PM, kerdios said:

Why do you think Ross shows links during the videos (which requires an OCR to use) but doesn't put them also in the videos' description?

I wouldn't know. You could try asking him for the next video chat.

[Kaiosama TLJ]

On 12/27/2021 at 7:48 PM, HeartenedKorbo said:

(...)

 

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
 

(...)

 

The Rioter/Looter situation reminds me somewhat of the White Fang from RWBY: They could've been a more nuanced antagonist considering the fact that the Faunus were "supposedly" being opressed, but not only the writers messed up badly on showing the actual oppresion, they also made then into generic cartoon villains, and one of them can have his personality literally be summed up as "angry ex-boyfriend".

 

Black Tusk? I don't remember a group with that name in the game. If I recall correctly, the PMC was called Last Man Battalion. (LMB)

[BTGBullseye]

On 12/30/2021 at 3:01 PM, Kaiosama TLJ said:

Black Tusk? I don't remember a group with that name in the game. If I recall correctly, the PMC was called Last Man Battalion. (LMB)

Black Tusk is the real endgame SP content. They retake basically the entire city in both 1 and 2 after you complete all the "main story" missions. It's significantly harder in general, but you have what you think are top-end gear, until you start getting set items. The "main story" is really just the training mode, Black Tusk is the full long-term game, since they can go and recapture locations you liberate.

[Kaiosama TLJ]

On 12/31/2021 at 5:28 AM, BTGBullseye said:

Black Tusk is the real endgame SP content. They retake basically the entire city in both 1 and 2 after you complete all the "main story" missions. It's significantly harder in general, but you have what you think are top-end gear, until you start getting set items. The "main story" is really just the training mode, Black Tusk is the full long-term game, since they can go and recapture locations you liberate.

 

Even in the first game? Because I finished that game's story (actually, the first game is the only one I've played) and nothing of that nature happened. I decided to quickly check the wiki and it says there that they only appear in the second one.

[ygudik]

This will probably come off as ghastly, but I loved it when Ross ended the video with "stay tuned for the apocalypse". xD You see, given the apparent energy crisis gripping the world right now (175 EUR/? gas), and the experience of the previous energy crisis in 2008 (120 USD/barrel oil), it's not a stretch to say that in a few months the financial system will again seize up. Except this time the central banks of the world are out of means and will probably start printing money, causing hyperinflation and basically resetting the financial system. Additionally, a newer - possibly more deadly - variant of SARS-CoV-2 might emerge, which all together means the next winter might be a literal Division, in NYC, as well as other cities in the world.

 

Anyway, I feel that ending of the video will age perfectly. ^_^

[BTGBullseye]

On 12/31/2021 at 7:22 PM, Kaiosama TLJ said:

 

Even in the first game? Because I finished that game's story (actually, the first game is the only one I've played) and nothing of that nature happened. I decided to quickly check the wiki and it says there that they only appear in the second one.

Yeah, it's a different faction that does it in the original. 2 is a much better game, but with a worse city environment IMO.

[Mira]

On 1/8/2022 at 3:49 AM, ygudik said:

Additionally, a newer - possibly more deadly - variant of SARS-CoV-2 might emerge, which all together means the next winter might be a literal Division, in NYC, as well as other cities in the world.

To be fair, viruses don't normally evolve to become more deadly, since that would only hinder their ability to spread to as many people as possible (and thus be an evolutionary disadvantage). So I wouldn't worry specifically about a new Covid variant posing any more of a threat to civilization than it's currently doing. However, given the fact that a virus that only kills between 1 and 2% of infectees is capable of paralyzing society to the extent we're seeing right now, and that we've proven to be woefully inadequate in preventing the global spread of new variants of the disease, I shudder to think what would happen if a completely unrelated virus like Ebola, which has a mortality rate of over 40%, were to evolve to become sufficiently transmissible so as to cause a pandemic.

[ScumCoder]

On 1/13/2022 at 5:54 PM, Mira said:

To be fair, viruses don't normally evolve to become more deadly, since that would only hinder their ability to spread to as many people as possible (and thus be an evolutionary disadvantage). So I wouldn't worry specifically about a new Covid variant posing any more of a threat to civilization than it's currently doing.

Agree on the former, disagree on the latter.

Viruses don't, in fact, evolve to become more deadly; but they do evolve to become more contagious, and simple math shows that a virus twice as contagious will lead to massively more deaths than a virus twice as deadly. Not in relative percentages, but in absolute numbers.

And this is exactly where SARS-CoV-2 is moving, Omicron and all.

Edited January 13, 2022 by ScumCoder (see edit history)

[ScumCoder]

Adding to the "secret genius" list.

I skimmed through a letsplay, and apparently when you find the stolen morphine, the baddies (portrayed as if they were junkies seeking a fix) are rummaging through the crate frustratedly muttering "where the hell are the antivirals?!". Wow.

[kerdios]

A funny development

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-division-2-fix-broke-the-game-so-hard-ubisoft-cant-update-it

[Kaiosama TLJ]

On 2/11/2023 at 11:53 AM, kerdios said:

A funny development

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-division-2-fix-broke-the-game-so-hard-ubisoft-cant-update-it

 The AAA industry seal of quality ladies and gentlemen.