10 Years Later, The Division Is Getting A Definitive Re-Release
Into the Dark Zone.
This March will mark the 10th anniversary of Ubisoft’s live service shooter series, The Division. Its developer, Massive Entertainment, is commemorating the occasion in several ways, including a surprise release that was leaked before it became official.
Over the weekend, Twitter account Domen Gaming noticed ads for The Division: Definitive Edition at the Rainbow 6 Siege APAC Cup in Tokyo, which is presumably a yet-to-be-announced re-release of the 2016 looter-shooter. The ad was posted alongside another for a Division 2 trial mode, which earns participants a chance to win game-themed merch like hoodies, shirts, and caps.
Ubisoft hasn’t yet confirmed what The Division: Definitive Edition will be. While a proper remaster is possible, it should be noted that the game just received a 60 FPS update on PlayStation 5 last month. If I were to take a guess, Definitive Edition is probably a repackage of the original game, including all the updates and expansions, along with a few exclusive cosmetics.
Re-releasing the original Division is a smart way to drum up excitement for the series’ future. Despite its age, the first game holds up remarkably well. Sneaking through the snowy, post-lockdown streets of New York City is just as moody as it was in 2016, a credit to Massive’s Snowdrop engine. The looter loop and extraction shooter elements still make for a compelling multiplayer RPG. And with the second game being more popular than the first, a definitive edition gives newer fans who might have missed the first game the perfect excuse to go back and try it.
Massive Entertainment seems to have a lot in store for the franchise leading up to March, having already announced some limited-time events for both games. The coolest has to be The Division 2 getting a Realism Mode, which will swap the game’s stat-driven combat for something more like a tactical shooter. Players will take more damage, and headshots will be lethal. This worked extremely well for the soft reboot of 2019’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, and its Realism mode, which harkened back to Tom Clancy games of the 2000s, became a permanent fixture. The mode will be playable in The Division 2’s Warlords of New York expansion, which briefly brought players back to the Big Apple.
Alongside the Realism Mode, The Division 2 will also have an Anniversary Season, which will add new exotic loot and crossovers with other Tom Clancy-verse games like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and the long-absent Splinter Cell series. Maybe this will finally lead to an announcement regarding the Splinter Cell reboot.
The conclusion of the Anniversary Season will kick off “Year 8” of Division 2. Meanwhile, series executive producer Julian Gerighty recently said The Division 3 “will have as big an impact as The Division 1.” All of this seems to put the series in a great spot. Just two years ago, the franchise was feeling unfocused thanks to its mobile game and the spinoff that turned the base game’s PvP extraction mode into its own thing. Thankfully, the extraction shooter was cancelled, with most of its team getting folded into The Division 3’s development. The sequel has no release date yet, but it sounds like fans will have plenty to keep them occupied in the meantime.
