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 struggle to rebuild from a devastating pandemic to the fictional flyover town of Silver Creek. Far from the recognizable streets, buildings, and monuments of New York and Washington, players will have to cope with an ever-changing contamination, new survival obligations, and a deadly nighttime cycle that appears to be a substitute for the Dark Zone of the first two games.
Developer Red Storm Entertainment revealed the first details of The Division Heartland on Thursday during a “Division Day” roundup video of everything Ubisoft has cooking for the franchise. No launch date or window was given, but fans are invited to register for Heartland’s next closed playtest, which will be sometime this summer. First announced in May 2021, The Division Heartland will be a free-to-play game on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Narratively speaking, The Division Heartland begins with the player helping a new NPC, agent McKenzie Reid, establish her base of operations (inside a roller-skating rink) to bring law and order back to Silver Lake. This will end up as the game’s hub world, where players begin and end their mission cycles, store any loot they’ve gained, and meet up with others in the game to form up cooperative squads and take on their next assignment.
Players will have to pack a “go bag” with more than weapons to make it through a shift. The Division Heartland will force players to cope with dehydration and sickness in ways the previous two games did not. In addition to making sure they have water handy, or can at least find it, players will need to equip rapidly depleting
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