Tourma's Longform Ramblings

Or how an already squicky premise has been made worse by time.

Its been a hot minute since the Division 2 came out. I finally bought it, $5 used at Gamestop.

I’ll say this up front, the gameplay loop is actually good. A healthy mix of Bungie’s Destiny and Ubisoft’s open world melange. If you’re unaware, it’s an open world third person looter shooter. It’s absolutely an Ubisoft game, it has that flavor. So your mileage may vary right from there. But the shooting is really solid and the looting works well as a loop. Its not gimmicky like Athem or Outriders either.

That said, the premise and plot are...oof.

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Washington DC. You play a member of the Strategic Homeland Division, or “The Division” that is towing what’s left of the US. The Division’s very concept is not good. They’re sleeper cells with extrajudicial power that answer to no one but the president. This was made in the early half of the 2010’s. As the Youtube series Extra Credit put it, ‘this might seem fine in the hands of [then president] Obama, but think about it with someone less stable. Like say, Trump.’ Trump had not yet won the primaries IIRC at the point of that video.

Trump was bad enough, (knocking on wood that he stays past tense,) but having access to his own trained Sturmabteilung, (aka SA, the stormtroopers that helped Hitler rise to power that he later annihilated and replaced with the more stable/in his control SS,) seems like a goddamn nightmare. I don’t want any head of state to have this kind of military power. Our military at least ostensibly answers to the Constitution over the president.

It feels like a neocon wetdream. Which fits Clancy pretty well to be honest.

Also, the apocalypse was caused by a worldwide pandemic.

Yeah.

This game has a real Cassandra thing going on with the curse of prophecy.

The game is at least a worst case scenario as opposed to what’s happening with Covid. The Chimera Virus/Dollar Flu/Green Poison was a genetically engineered smallpox variant unleashed on Black Friday. I think by a non-governmental actor. This coincided with the destruction of the internet and a lot of other infrastructure. Still, the game coming out late 2019 and Covid happening a few months later was not a good look. Especially after, “hey maybe the president having this kind of power” happening a few months before Trump.

They make the Division seem like the good guys by making all the people you’re killing thoroughly puppy kickers. Of those whom I’ve come across so far, there are the Hyenas, people that took Mad Max to heart, and the True Sons, who would be Nazis, but they have a black commander so it’s totally not that.

But the sheer amount of people you kill to make the peace seems extreme. I know that’s a gameplay thing, but it’s still uncomfortable.

And then there are people whom I’ve seen that are like, level 5900. Given, if Destiny’s current leveling scheme was retroactive and persistent, mine might be somewhere up there, but the game is also almost 10 years old.

So I don’t know. I’ve got mixed feelings on the whole thing. Glad I didn’t give Ubisoft any money at least.

#TourmaGaming #VideoGames #Ubisoft #Division2 #Destiny2 #Review

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