The Division Heartland puts a survival twist into Ubisoft’s loot-shooter format

Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland, the next chapter in Ubisoft’s seven-year-old loot-shooter franchise, brings the battle to rebuild from a devastating pandemic to the fictional viaduct town of Silver Creek. Far from the recognizable streets, buildings and landmarks of New York and Washington, players will face an ever-changing contagion, new survival imperatives and a deadly night cycle that appears to be a replacement for the Dark Zone of the first two games .

Developer Red Storm Entertainment revealed the first details of The Heartland Division on Thursday during a “Division Day” recap video of everything Ubisoft is cooking for the franchise. No launch date or window has been given, but fans are invited to register for it heartland‘s next closed playtest, which will be sometime this summer. First announced in May 2021, The Heartland Division will be a free-to-play game on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.

Narratively speaking, The Heartland Division begins with the player helping a new NPC, Agent McKenzie Reid, set up her base of operations (within a roller skating rink) to bring order back to Silver Lake. This will end up as the game’s hub world, where players begin and end their quest cycles, save any loot they’ve acquired, and meet others in the game to form cooperative squads and take on their next assignment.

Grid view

Players will need to pack a “go-bag” with more than just weapons to make it through a shift. The Heartland Division will force players to deal with dehydration and illness in a way the previous two games didn’t. Not only will players need to make sure they have water on hand, or at least be able to find it, but they’ll also need to equip fast-deflating breathing filters as they venture into an infested area whose boundaries are always changing.

At launch, heartland players can choose from three classes to specialize their character: weapons expert, medic, or survivalist, all with individual benefits. For example, Survivors can see loot containers behind walls. They will still have to deal with hostile rogue agents, including a new big bad named Killian Tower, who has disowned the Strategic Homeland Division and is wreaking havoc among the competing gangs threatening Silver Creek.

Ubisoft’s “Division Day” preview wasn’t limited to just one heartland. Thursday’s video also revealed Descent, a rogue-lite mode coming soon Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 this summer. Descent is nominally a training simulation, where agents drop whatever gear they’ve acquired and work with loadouts and special gear that the game chooses at random. Then they progress through a series of rooms and face increasingly difficult threats.

Descent does not require the $29.99 Warlords of New York expansion, launching in 2020. Anyone who owns the base game can play it, both solo and in a multiplayer team. Descent’s launch date will be next The Division 2 year 5 season 1’s debut, titled “Broken Wings.” That will begin in early June, Ubisoft said. Players with a PC copy of The Division 2 can preview Descent on the game’s public test server starting Friday. The Division 2Year 5’s content roadmap is below:

Image: Ubisoft