14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at the Massive studio of Ubisoft says that its upcoming The Division is based on the idea that next-gen gamers will be interested in experiencing dramatic and emotional situations that are based on plausible real-world events.
David Polfeldt, the managing director of the team, tells Edge that, “people are going to expect sensitive drama, and build up. I think a big part of our success was that we expected people to be smart, to have the patience to wait for the first bullet.”
The Division was first shown during the E3 trade show this year and many gamers were impressed with the focus on a disaster, a violent plague, that could actually happen in the near future.
Massive says that it initially based the plot of the game on President Directive 51 and on Operation Dark Winter, actual government-funded plans to deal with catastrophic events and rebuild civilization.
Martin Hultberg, head of communications at Massive, says that the team has since expanded on its ideas and is trying to subvert some player expectations.
He adds, “Clancy units traditionally stop the threat from happening. We thought, well, why don’t we take it a little bit further and enter a mid-crisis situation where something did happen and nobody managed to stop it? Then, as events unfold, someone has to take care of it. That would be The Division.”
The game starts three weeks after the emergency is initially declared and players will have to work with their peers in order to find out exactly what is happening and then use their unique skills to help.
The Division is a mix of traditional single-player and MMO elements and is currently set to launch on the Xbox One from Microsoft, the PlayStation 4 from Sony and the PC in the fourth quarter of 2014.