Ubisoft announced The Division 2 today, but don't expect much more than confirmation of the game's existence until E3 2018. All we know right now is that it's called Tom Clancy's The Division 2, it's being developed by Massive Entertainment in collaboration with Ubisoft Reflections, Red Storm Entertainment, Ubisoft Annecy, Ubisoft Shanghai, and Ubisoft Bucharest (so, the same studios that made the original, plus a few new faces), and veterans of the first game will be able to earn unique rewards in the sequel.
"The Division 2 will be powered by an updated version of the Snowdrop engine that enables us to realize our ambitions for the sequel, but more importantly, we’re also taking everything we learned over the past two years and applying it towards the sequel to make sure we get it right," reads a post on the Ubisoft blog. "Part of that means recognizing your commitment to The Division. With that in mind, we’re adding a new type of achievement called 'Shields' to the game. Earning them will unlock special rewards in The Division 2 when it launches."
There's also this (very brief, very plain) teaser:
Agents, we're thrilled to let you know that we are working on Tom Clancy’s #TheDivision2. Stay tuned for more info at E3 2018! pic.twitter.com/2kg8j7sYdJMarch 8, 2018
I can hear a chorus of "people still play that game?" being typed even now, but the short answer is yes - quite a few, actually. Ubisoft launched Tom Clancy's The Division to generally favorable reviews and a wave of player hype in 2016. It was the French company's best-selling game, and enjoyed a huge launch week.
It didn't retain all those players, and the hype certainly died down after awhile, but in total the game has racked up more than 20 million players, and of those, half a million have sunk more than 400 hours into playing. So while it's not on everyone's lips like it was back in 2016, The Division maintains a dedicated playerbase that's grown increasingly happy with changes made to the game post-launch.
Speaking of changes made post-launch, there are two patches coming ahead of a full E3 reveal for current players to look forward to. Update 1.8.1, coming in April, will tweak the Amherst and Grand Central missions for Legendary difficulty, and will arrive alongside an update that gives the game a bit more graphical punch on Xbox One X. The aforementioned Shields are coming in update 1.8.2, scheduled for June.
Hopefully Massive, Red Storm, and the various branches of Ubisoft can apply lessons learned from the first game and make the sequel something the grabs players from the get-go. Whenever that will be.
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