Ghost Town
I was late to the party with The Division. Not fashionably late, showing up at peak time turning heads and grabbing attention, just late. When I showed up the party had finished and moved on. There was me and a couple of others, shrugging and looking at our shoes, too embarrassed to talk to each other let alone exchange jumping jacks. By the time when I had started the game, the initial buzz was gone and player numbers had dropped off. So how does it stand playing solo?
There is a lot about playing The Division alone that feels right. The bulk of The Division is the side quests, and initially these play well solo: the scavenging, the supply drops, the poking around for intel, the civillians desperate for power bars, these activities tie in with the story perfectly (more so than the pantomime cut scenes from the main quest, where your character fumbles around silently in the background while the fate of NYC plays out in front of them). You genuinely feel like part of some fragmented organisation fighting against the odds to get back on its feet, more so than merrily storming about in a gang.
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Playing alone also makes you appreciate the setting. In a trashed city with a disproportionate amount of darkness, exploring alone adds to the tension and misery. Going it alone feels authentic. One of the things that felt strange about The Division 2 beta was how sunny it was, it just made everything too cheerful: when I unlocked one of the first bases in the beta it felt odd, the sun was out, lots of people were hanging out, watering the plants, milling about. It felt less like a bastion of hope, more like a startup.
There is a noticeable difficulty spike in The Division. Early on you can breeze through a mission with relative ease, to then be faced with a boss battle that feels well above the difficulty level of the mission. Initially these are manageable alone, but later it becomes agonising. The first real sticking point was the Napalm Production Site. There is a set piece where you have to protect a bomb long enough for it to detonate. Swarmed with enemies attacking both you and the ticking bomb, defending it long enough without dying is no simple task.
As you get further through the game these moments become more frequent. Outside of the main story, the side quests start to fall into the same routine. As the enemy level peaks, walk around the wrong corner and even a random skirmish becomes another trip to the safehouse.
This is the stage in the game where playing solo becomes a war of attrition. The mechanics are against you: difficulty is not raised by demanding any real increase in skill or ingenuity, the game just dumps more enemies on you. Dying frequently brings into question the placement of respawn locations and lack of checkpoints. Failing a side mission often demands traipsing half way across a district from the last safehouse for another attempt. Even within missions many checkpoints are placed before scripted NPC speeches which then demand multiple listens. In a game which is already heavy on the grind, going through these repeatedly becomes drudgery. Progress is possible, but it’s repetitive and ugly.
For the most, playing The Division alone works. In many ways it fits the story and setting better than playing as a team. However it was designed from the ground up for cooperative play, and as you progress the cynical mechanics make this painfully clear. There is enough to keep picking through, but as you and your enemies approach the level cap getting through set pieces becomes massively frustrating. Something no amount of jumping jacks will soothe.
