The Division: 10 Crucial Questions Ubisoft Must Answer

2. Can This Style Of Game Work Without Fantasy Elements?

There's a good reason a super-serious tactics-based shooter hasn't been matched with a loot-grinding RPG before; the former setting rarely allows for long-term investment. Destiny managed to captivate an audience through some absolutely exemplary art design; a choice that although the amount of things you'd see and do were slim, ensured everything on display was drop-dead gorgeous. When it comes to The Division, is having a gritty, post-apocalyptic setting going to help or hinder the immersion? Are you really going to want to spend hundreds of hours in a given environment, when that entails more of the same drab colours, "hoo-rah!"-style soundbites and all-round self-serious dialogue? This extends into the aforementioned enemy designs being routed in a particular aesthetic, too, as there's only so much you can do in terms of item/weapon aesthetics and general art design with something routed in real life. Even Call of Duty has taken to the supernatural with Black Ops III and to some degree, Advanced Warfare, and it's a question everyone will be asking one, ten or a hundred hours in.