The staff at Red Storm Entertainment has released a new video overview video explaining what new and old players can expect in The Division: Heartland.
The Division: Heartland is a live service, free-to-play version of The Division. It gets its name from its setting of Silver Creek, a small town deep in the heartland of America. Surprisingly, Red Storm hints that they were allowed leeway to put a realistic spin on this scenario, as they directly point out that while the bigger cities in the earlier The Division games received their government aid early, Silver Creek isn’t so lucky.
We don’t quite know if that difference in setting makes a material difference to the gameplay, but it’s easy to tell that the way The Division: Heartland is designed is in service of its nature as a live service game. In general, the gameplay design has been streamlined, AKA simplified, so that it would be easier to convince new players to jump in. It will also now be a survival game, making it harder, but also possibly, designed to make you addicted and eager to jump back in as soon as your character dies.
The main impediments to your progress will be contamination and dehydration systems. There will be different levels of contamination, with clear visual markers in terms of colored fog. Depending on the amount of filters you have prepared beforehand, you could possibly enter highly contaminated areas in search for loot. Dehydration is more straightforwardly dangerous, so you’ll have to carry water and monitor your supply. There’s also a day/night system that will incentivize you and your friends to pick a time of day to play together.
The game starts with you helping Mackenzie set up the base of operations, which in this case is an abandoned roller skate rink. Unlike previous The Division games, this will be a shared space, so you can socialize with other players alongside preparing yourself to play outside.
Red Storm also speaks a lot about this game being a huge PvEvP experience, which they don’t elaborate on but sure looks a lot like it means player versus enemy versus player. They also refer to Rogue Agents, but don’t elaborate yet if these Rogue Agents will all be computer AI, or if you can choose to switch sides yourself.
Red Storm’s overview is brimming with potential, but they also make it clear that this first part of the story was written by them, and that future stories will be partly determined by how the community shapes the game itself.
This is how you know that The Division: Heartland is a completely different animal from previous games. Knowing that Ubisoft won’t release new versions of the original The Division games on current generation consoles, however, Ubisoft is definitely incentivized to still make this a great experience, as the only true new game coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
The Division: Heartland will be releasing in 2023 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Microsoft Windows via the Ubisoft Connect client. You can watch the full overview trailer below.
