Important news from Microsoft’s E3 press conference: The Division still has car doors that close when you run into them. Last time we heard from Ubisoft’s open-world survival-shooter, we saw a police car have its door shut by a man who was shimmying alongside the vehicle.
Today, in an exciting turn of events, we bear witness to a taxi cab the door of which is shut by a woman crouch-running into it. The Division: Car Doors That Shut is scheduled for a 2015 release.
Ubisoft’s on-stage demo showed off some other aspects of the co-operative third person shooter, besides the car doors. Some unsettlingly well-acted voice-chatter demonstrated the need for communication between players in order to progress through battlegrounds strewn with cars and other obstacles, as four survivors fought to reach a giant safehouse.
There’s a backstory to be discovered through techno-wizardry. In an abandoned subway station, players can project a holographic scene of the last moments before the area was abandoned, revealing a bunch of commuters pegging it towards the exits. More clever HUD elements can be seen when players flip through contextual menus to select skills, the last of which shown is a sort of cluster bomb useful for taking down heavier enemies.
Ubisoft’s drawn a bit of flak for having hyped the socks off of the distinctly boring Watch_Dogs with fancy, overselling trailers, so it’s probably wise to be somewhat wary of promises being made for The Division. Also, Ubisoft proudly announced that somebody has paid somebody else a lot of money to make sure the Xbox One receives some exclusive DLC — your standard anti-consumer rubbish. Cynicism aside, those car doors really are something else.