A lot of fans out there are hoping that the forthcoming The Division 2 will be a much longer lasting experience than the first. While the original no doubt had its moments, many were disappointed by its lack of an “end game,” as it were. But managing director for The Division 2 David Polfeldt made it clear that the team has an entirely new focus, based on his recent interview with GamesIndustry International.
Videos by ComicBook.com
In terms of how his team is treating the follow-up, Polfeldt explained, “It’s like a second marriage. The first time you marry, you’re probably happy enough just to fall in love and see what happens. If you’re in your second marriage, you probably know a little bit more about what’s going to follow after the infatuation. You pay more attention to how it’s going to develop over a longer period of time.
“That’s really the difference – we now know there’s a huge expectation on the game, not just as it is on launch day, but in year one, year two and even year three, which we’re in now with a bigger player base than we’ve had in a while. We’re…I wouldn’t say less naïve, but we’re much more aware about the fact that it’s a long relationship.
“It’s easier to project yourself into the future and go, ‘yeah, this feels fine in the beginning but what about after one year, two years? How’s this going to work?’ That’s where we started when making our design choices, from the perspective of how’s this going to work in the long term? What are people going to enjoy after two years of playing the game? From there, you can work backwards towards the ‘falling in love’ part, which is actually what the campaign is – it’s just a long love story. In our case, I think it’s going to be longer than the first one.”
Polfeldt is also aware of the strain that it puts on the studio, especially with the large audience still playing the original Division. “You’re right, that doesn’t work, does it?” he explained with a laugh. “It’s true, though. The Division is still a pretty big project in and of itself, The Division 2 is enormous – and then we’re building [James Cameron’s] Avatar in the studio as well, plus Snowdrop, which is being used by quite a few Ubisoft games now. It really is a lot.
“But we often remind ourselves this is the spotlight we wanted to be in. If you’re a football player and you want to play in the Champions League, you’re not going to complain when you realise there’s a lot of pressure there. In one way, I’m actually looking forward to it more because the spotlight is so big now and the expectations are so high, but this is what we’ve dreamt about. I’ve been in the games industry for 20 years and it’s been something we always fought for.”
You can read more about the interview at this link. But it sounds like the team is ready to jump into a much bigger experience with the sequel. Fingers crossed they pull it off! You can check out the latest trailer for the game above, straight from Gamescom.
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 releases on March 15, 2019 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
