14 DAY TRIAL // The upcoming third-person shooter from Ubisoft, Tom Clancy's The Division, is set in a pretty large urban world, where you'll get to see and duck behind a lot of cars that you won't be able to drive.
Today, Ubisoft has decided to offer more details on the upcoming title, and particularly to explain why it made the decision not to allow players to step behind the wheel of any of the many vehicles that are littered across the game world.
The world that the developer is building is packed with a wealth of detail and content, and Ubisoft doesn't want you to miss any of that by simply speeding down the street in just any car you can get your hands on.
"I think it's fair to talk about the density of content, all of the details and all of the realism. That's one of the reasons why we didn't want vehicles in the game because when we tried it out, you would just drive past all of these great things and miss them," The Division Executive Producer Fredrik Rundqvist tells The Examiner.
In addition to this, another feature that the team will implement in order to convey a more immersive experience is the introduction of contextual looting. This means that the game will make sure that you find the items you require around the area where you would expect them to be in real life.
"If you're looking for ammo, you will go into a sporting goods store or a police station. If you're looking for med-kits, you go into the hospital, so it's not going to just be spread out randomly all over the world. You can really imagine where it would be in the real world and head there in the game," Rundqvist explains.
Food and water for sustenance will be just a few of the items that players will need to scavenge for and collect during their adventure in New York City. Not allowing players to drive around the city will enable them to notice all the content there is to explore and to play in a much more strategic way.
Since The Division relies a fair bit on cover-based shooting, as evidenced by the gameplay demo revealed by the company at E3 2014, the absence of cars seems like a pretty good idea.
Smashing into a fortified position by using a vehicle sounds fun on paper, but the decision may lead to a more in-depth, long-term engagement.
Ubisoft also experienced first-hand the impact of driving on its latest open-world adventure, Watch Dogs, that was similarly described as being chock-full of interactivity, but the slower pace of navigating the map in The Division will make sure that the touted density translates into actual in-game experience.
The Division will be released sometime during 2015, for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One platforms.