The Division is more RPG than Shooter

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With this in mind, Cortes wants to make it clear from the off we should expect a title that owes more to its RPG heritage than anything else. While gameplay does indeed take the form of third-player cover-based shooting, the actual wider “point” of the game is all about that genre-defining progression of levelling up, hunting the best loot, and using all you find to scale even greater heights.

"For us, one of the biggest challenges is figuring out how to tell people how much of an RPG it is," Cortes explains. “It has shooting, and is shooter-like. If you look at it, that’s the whole point because we want it to be very immersive. But it’s not a shooter with some RPG stats tacked on. It’s actually a proper RPG from the very beginning. There’s deep progression when it comes to loot, gear and levels and you’ll be able to customise every skill, do exactly what you want and choose roles. So, that’s probably the biggest communication challenge. We want to make clear to everyone that it’s an RPG."

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What he will offer, however, is a tantalising glimpse into the game’s class or archetype system, which sounds like it could be a refreshing mix between the traditional nod towards damage-absorbing, damage-dealing and healing classes we see in MMOs and RPGs and the loadouts found in shooters. The real draw on this front though is the flexibility Ubi is also adding, however.

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In essence, it sounds like The Division will have pockets of the world reserved just for you and your group mates, in much the same way as Destiny’s “no respawn” areas. Cortes explains the team decided to go down this route to prevent situations where you feel like you’re meant to be the chosen one, destined to save the world, only to encounter 30 compatriots in the exact same scenario. Taking this route allows Ubi Massive to craft a stronger and more immersive narrative for you and those you choose to play with.

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"We want to keep the players playing for a long time," he says. "We don’t want to do a story that ends and it’s like you can take the disc and put it on the shelf. We want to keep the players enjoying the game in many different ways so we would obviously offer different activities like PvP, PvE and several progressions. First there’s the story progression, where you can finish the story and get more tidbits later on, but then there’s the progression of your gear, your stats, also of your base of operation. You can continue upgrading your base and yourself together. We’re hoping for endless gameplay. On top of that we’ll support the game heavily post-launch, though we won’t go into details yet."

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The game is honestly starting to sound a lot like Destiny in the way it is set up. I'm going to remain cautiously optimistic on this one thanks to the let down of Watch Dogs and hope they take notes on a lot of the issues Destiny has run into.