Tom Clancy’s The Division series has a story, of course: American society has collapsed following the release of the Green Virus, and a secret unit of specially-deputized agents is activated to restore order to what’s left. But the story has generally taken a back seat to the persistent loot-shooter mechanics of jumping in, completing bounties, and collecting new gear. So what about a single-player, narrative focused game set in the Division universe? It’s not out of the question.
Tim Spencer, a level director at TT Games (they make the popular Lego film tie-in games for WB Games), put forward the idea on Twitter this weekend.
“I love the idea of a single player narrative driven spin off of [The Division],” he said. “Focusing on an agent trying to get home to their family after being sent to NYC, during the SHD blackout from the fall of DC. [The Last of Us] x Division.”
In his tweet, Spencer tagged Julian Gerighty, The Division’s creative director. He retweeted the idea to his followers, asking simply, “Thoughts?”
The response from fans has been positive, to put it mildly.
Thoughts? https://t.co/f8sSHuD25V
— Julian Gerighty (@jgerighty) July 13, 2019
Part of the enthusiasm, I suspect, is because both The Division and The Division 2 are jam-packed with little proto-stories. Each ECHO and mobile phone you find hints at an interaction that takes place within a larger narrative, but also at specific nested narrative threads that make up the larger world. And apart from digging through brief text descriptions in the Collectibles tab, these threads are generally left unresolved – they’re there to hint at the existence of a larger world, but that’s as far as they go.
Read more: The Division 2 is heading back to New York
All that to say that The Division’s setting seems evocative and rich enough to provide the basis for a solid single-player narrative game, perhaps along the lines of The Last of Us or one of the Metro games.
“Apparently not something people are violently against,” Gerhighty quipped, remarking on the enthusiastic reception fans showed toward the idea.
Obviously, the fact that Gerighty wanted to get a sense of how fans felt about the notion doesn’t mean it’ll ever come to pass, and even if a single-player Division spinoff does happen someday, it certainly won’t be happening soon. In the meantime, we’ve got DC Outskirts: Expeditions to look forward to later this month.