If you were watching the Ubisoft E3 conference, you’ll likely know by now that The Division 2 takes place in Washington DC, after the original game had us running around New York City. But now, Ubisoft has given us a reason besides story for the Division 2 location being where it is.
To start off with, it’s a difference in environment. New York in the first Division game was a tightly-packed city filled with various narrow streets with no real ways to go anywhere else. While there were various parks and smaller open areas, there wasn’t very much variety in what the area would look like.
Washington DC, however, gives us a much bigger playground. The city, being smaller and more artistic than New York City, has a lot of different open spaces like parks and forests and other such areas rather than simply being street after street. And with all of the different government buildings there (including the headquarters of the titular division), there’s a lot of new buildings for you to explore.
However, the Division 2 location being Washington DC is also relevant to the story. Now that the virus that crippled America during Black Friday has burned itself out, America is teetering on the brink of total collapse, trying to rebuild. But the politicians and Army have moved into underground bunkers, leaving civilians to fend for themselves. In the meantime, a new threat is rising from within, aiming to take America down a dark path.
While we don’t know how The Division 2 will actually play out, the game will hopefully be fixing all of the mistakes that the original Division launched with, which brought the game to low player numbers for a time before the game’s various expansions and patches allowed it to recover its numbers.
The Division 2 will be releasing on Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PC on March 15 of next year.
