As a very large fan of the first entry in the series I have been looking forward to the division 2 for some time now. similar to vanilla destiny I powered through The Division 1, leveled my character to the max and conquered the dark zone mostly playing solo or with randoms. After that was all done the world felt very empty unless you wanted to run the same missions repeatedly hoping for better look drops to complete a build.

Initial Ups and Downs

As soon as you start up the Division 2 you can instantly see there is a new level of polish and improvement on the snowdrop engine. In the time between the release of the two games in series, 4k and HDR has become a thing. The HDR really pops especially during the dusk hours. The bright sun is almost unbearable to look at as its crashes through the city buildings. However, something that didnt come to my attention in the first game is how poor the NPC’s look. The mouth movement is bad! Considering the noticeable improvement for the rest of the engine this really took me out of the immersion.

Another issue I have had is similar to what I had in Destiny 2 and thats the lack of variety in the enemies. After completing a few missions and side quests I am encountering the same woman with a mask that pushes me for melee attacks, the same sniper who never changes for better positioning, and the same RC car guy who seemingly has an unlimited supply of cars. I am already hearing the same dialogue from the enemies as well, which is understandable but I would hope that I wouldn’t be hearing the same things so early on. I feel that if the main character is designed with so many different areas for customization that a random generator for enemies including outfits, sex types and dialogue it could have gone a long way. This is just the beta and only features a sectioned off area of Washington so hopefully Massive just didn’t want to reveal to much of the experience.

Either it has been too long since I played the first game in the series of the systems have become much more complicated. It seems like the amount of systems going on at once is a lot of information to take in at one point. There are a lot of nice customization options and settings that can be changed in the menu. One feature that I would have liked to be taken a little further is the realism, you can turn off a lot of the HUD and a lot of the enemy damage numbers for immersion but for some reason you can't turn off the health bar. I would love to be able to turn that off. I think it would also help the level of tension if you have no idea how close enemies are to dying and wouldn’t be snapped out of this world they have developed just trying to get the yellow shield down.

Bumps In The Abandoned Road

Near the end of one of the early missions in a no respawn zone, an enemy was pushing me with melee attack I rolled backwards and fell underneath all of the assets. Somehow I had managed to roll under the game. It took a few seconds for the game to figure out that I was out of bounds and then it started me back at the start. The good news is that it didn’t end my progress in the fight and I was able to jump back in from the starting line.

I typically prefer to play most games solo, but for sake of science I thought I would try to matchmake with other team members to do a mission. I was right in front of the mission at the entrance of a hotel, and could either push in solo or use the matchmake button. I hit the matchmake button and was prompted to join a existing agent. A couple major issues arose from this, the first was that the loading took forvever,. Maybe I am wearing rose coloured sniper specs but I remember the first game the matchmaking was fairly quick. This probably took upwards of 60-90 seconds. Hopefully the matchmaking times can improve. Then the bigger of the two issues in my mind arose. It teleported me a couple kilometres to the agent that I joined who was currently in a safe house. The main reason that I chose to use the matchmaking system was to complete the mission easier and faster. The slow loading combined with the time sink that was running back to the mission entrance and having to fight patrols along the way was a souring taste. Once the mission was actually happening, it didn’t feel like a cohesive unit, everyone was just powering through the mission guns blazing. No regard for story if there was one, I feel like if you were to be a little more patient solo it would be more fun and you would take more time to appreciate the story.

Carrots and More Carrots

All that aside, I did find myself just doing one more mission. The carrot on the stick is always dangling just in front of you. You get a new set of gloves or a new weapon that you just want to try out and next thing you know you’re close to the next quest so you get stuck in the loop. This is a compliment to Massive and how they have populated the world with plenty of options for the player to do. There are main missions, side missions, caches to find,. enemy strongholds to reclaim, darkzone to explore, collectibles to find and so much more. Its too early to tell if all this will just feel like busy work just yet.

Before playing the beta, I was a day one purchase based on my love of the first game but after playing the beta I find myself asking if all of these problems are just because or the beta and will be fixed before the game launches in a few weeks. Speaking to some fellow gamers that also played the beta, both the open and the closed one, they didn’t experience some of the same matchmaking issues or bugs that I did. This sounds hopeful because my expectations for this game were high but after the beta I am a little more tempered.