E3: The Division Interview

We talk Tom Clancy with Massive.

At E3 Gillen McAllister talked to producer Fredrik Rundqvist and production director Petter Mannerfelt about Tom Clancy's The Division, which was announced during Ubisoft's conference at this year's event.

During the interview we asked for more information on the games concept. Petter Mannerfelt explained in more detail: "So we're making a huge world, but for us it's important that you can play solo. You can play the game solo, you can also group up with friends, or find people online to play with, and you can also seamlessly transition into the PvP areas."

"There is no linear path you have to take; you can go on side quests. Sorry, not quests. Hobbits do quests. So, it's an open world game."

The Division was one of the few games that looked like it would truly make use of the next-gen tech being showcased by Microsoft and Sony at E3, and as the game will be launching exclusively on Xbox One and PS4, we wanted to know a bit more how the player would interact with the world.

Mannerfelt then discussed how the game would utilise the power of the next-gen consoles to provide the player with an emotional connection to the game: "For this game we have developed a brand new engine, we really want to push those emotions to the player. We want you to be able to immerse in the game, so we have a developed a new next-gen engine called Snowdrop."

Development began on the game a year ago, but the studio had been working on the infrastructure for much longer than that: "We're pushing graphics. We're pushing lighting. We're pushing destruction, procedural destruction. We're pushing AI, we want to have a complex AI where you see the world adapt to the player. And also online, we want to do everything seamless, we want you to be able to find players to play with that are that are not only your friends, but are players you might want to play with, so we're trying to find compatible players for you."

There's going to tablet-based versions of the game that are fully integrated to the game world: "And also the companion gaming, you can play the game on iPad and Android with our companion gaming solution, and if you do that you can play together with your friends that play on the consoles."