Tom Clancy’s The Division managed to blur the line between role-playing and third-person tactical shooting when it released in 2016, and despite a rough start, it eventually turned into a game players could keep having fun with for months on end. Though news of a sequel to a game this big would usually not come until around E3, Ubisoft has announced the game a little bit early.
On the German language version of the stock-trading site 4-Traders, a press release revealed that development of The Division 2 has begun. Ubisoft officially announced the game a short time later via a Twitch stream and posted the same release on the UbiBlog.
The Division 2 is being developed by several studios, including Massive Entertainment as the lead developer, Ubisoft Annecy, Ubisoft Red Storm, Ubisoft Reflections, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Sofia, and Ubisoft Shanghai. The game will be built on the Snowdrop engine, used for the first game as well as South Park: The Fractured But Whole. It will be shown at E3 this June, but it isn’t clear if we’ll see gameplay or just a brief cinematic trailer.
“The Division 2 will be powered by an updated version of the Snowdrop engine that enables us to realize our ambitions for the sequel, but more importantly, we’re also taking everything we learned over the past two years and [are] applying it toward the sequel to make sure we get it right,” creative director Julian Gerighty said in the release.
Though it received good reviews at launch, The Division drew criticism back in 2016 for cheating issues in its multiplayer region the “Dark Zone.” Hopefully this won’t be as common in the sequel, and Massive Entertainment will be able to tell a richer story with a more decisive ending.
“There are so many stories and so many experiences we want to explore within the world of The Division that we really felt a sequel was the best way to investigate these things,” Julian Gerighty said in the Twitch stream on the morning of Thursday, March 8.
In the meantime, Ubisoft will continue to support The Division with new updates and “Global Events,” and the game will be getting Xbox One X enhancements as well.
No platforms were specified for The Division 2 yet. The first game is available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
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