Can The Division Overcome the Disappointment of Destiny?

For those of you who played Destiny 1.0 you are a sucker for hype, lol. Bungie owned up to their mistake and tried to fix their lack delivery of quality gameplay in Destiny 2.0: The Taken King expansion. When you look at what Destiny had to offer, the true question is what went wrong and what can The Division do right to avoid the same mistake?

Destiny's greatest mistake was its ambition. Destiny was a combination of first-person shooter, RPG, open-world, co-op, competitive and MMO-lite genres into a single package, but the sum of its parts didn't rise up to the challenge of over-hyped gameplay it advertised.

Looks like Ubisoft has paid attention to detail and noted the complaints raised against Destiny and integrated solutions to resolve what it’s advertising for The Division. Let's compare and contrast Destiny with The Division.

Destiny’s game world is a series of playable interconnected fauxpen-world hubs with required inefficient two-step travel to reach: to orbit, then to the next location, even if it’s on the same planet. This means that Destiny players are tolerating multiple loading screens just to get to where they want to play.

By comparison The Division has an enormous open world that allows players to seamlessly switch between solo play, cooperative antics and competitive multiplayer, without two-step travel and without loading screens.

There are specific safe spaces where you can run into random players or your buddies and co-op to tame the dystopia of a post-pandemic New York City. It’s resembles the Tower from Destiny, except there’s no situations of dragging everyone back to orbit before going into a properly playable space.

The Division has a selection of emotes, just like Destiny, which range from options such as star-jump, to wave and surrender emotes. Also, players can use proximity VOIP, so you use your microphone to communicate with anyone in close proximity to your playable character. It creates a practical impact in terms of inviting other players to join you, or warning them about hostile territory ahead, it’s also a tactical tool that means you can hear chatty and potentially hostile players in the Dark Zone, and get the drop on them.

The Dark Zone is rumored to be the best-integrated player-versus-player-versus-environment (PvPvE) space, to date. Halo 5’s PvPvE Warzone mode recently had a crack at the mode-straddling space, but fell short mostly thanks to the pay-to-win feel of the REQ system, particularly as it relates to the RNG approach to scoring meaningful vehicle drops.

The Division combines the PvE looting of Destiny’s formula, with the PvP idea of Crucible, except that you don’t have to engage other players, if you don’t want to. In fact, like playing a Raid in Destiny, it’s smarter to team up and work with up to three other players to take down the AI-controlled enemies in the space. Then again, given that these supporting players may turn on you at any point in the Dark Zone, you’ll never be sure of who you can and trust, or for how long they can be trusted if you choose to work with them.

Unlike Destiny and your average RPG, The Division doesn’t force players to pick and stick to a predefined class, with all of the pros and cons that this implies. While players in The Division can specialize in terms of three roles that can be broken down into damage-dealer, damage-taker or healer, players are also free to mix and match abilities (and the gear that complements a particular play style) on the fly.

The Division’s game world isn’t your usual post-apocalyptic space, either, with the developer pledging that players will feel that they’ve made an impact on winning back New York City at the end of the campaign. Players will actually be able to see tangible evidence of their impact on the game world, even if it’s only limited to the base of operation and particular NPC/wildlife encounters, instead of the Destiny-like approach to a game world where absolutely everything resets. Completing a mission from the trio of story threads in The Division lets players unlock a specific station in one of three wings in their base of operation that leads to the unlocking of a new ability in the associated medical, tech or security tree.

There’s a greater relationship between narrative and abilities, it also means that the solo player will be able to visit their base of operation and see the fruits of their labor in civilizing New York City. At the end of the original Destiny campaign, regardless of class, you were given the same weapon and felt as though you’d achieved a whole lot of nothing in terms of the grander narrative.

In conclusion, The Division will deliver what it PROMISED!