The Division's Depiction of Epidemic is Way Too Real
The first part of The Division did not have an impressive plot, but the collectibles contain something more interesting. The chronicle of the outbreak, which is eerily reminiscent of current developments in New York and elsewhere in the world.
The review is based on the PC version. It's also relevant to PS4, XONE version(s).
Shortly before the first restrictions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak were announced, I watched Steven Soderbergh's Contagion on the TV. It's a great thriller with prime cast, depicting quite a realistic scenario of the rapid spread of a deadly virus and the attempts to invent an effective cure. The original narrative and extraordinary authenticity with regard to medical matters were appreciated by critics and scientists around the world. In March 2020, the film returned to iTunes' top 10 movies, is the most viewed film on HBO GO, and the number of Contagion searches on torrent websites went up 5,000%.
Turns out video games also have their own Contagion. It's the first installment of Tom Clancy's The Division, which depicts the aftermath of the so-called "dollar flu." In case of the game, however, there's no sign of an imminent resurrection. In some ways, that's not surprising – the publisher has been strongly promoting the sequel in a science-fiction setting for a while now, and the plot was rather unremarkable here, as were the characters and the ending. Most players were just sprinting through to reach the endgame, which they would also find rather disappointing. Little did they know, they were missing out on something really interesting.
The obscure chronicle of the epidemic
Almost nobody discovered this collection of everyday narratives portraying the spread of the virus in New York City. These logs are not given to you on a plate. They have to be found among dozens of phone calls and voicemails of regular people. Then, you have to sort them out, since they're broken into many pieces and categories, unchronological bits.
6%
According to data from the PlayStation 4 platform's "trophies" tab, only 6 percent of The Division players found all audiologs giving the account the origins of the outbreak in New York City.
Listening to these again today, when literally half of the world's population is in quarantine, is quite eerie of an experience. Many of them are virtually identical to the news and comments you can find online today. There are, of course, countless inspirations of Soderbergh's Contagion apparent, but many of the small, human stories, not directly related to the movie, really hit home. The collectables from the first part of The Division have inadvertently grown into good educational material for anyone who thinks that the current restrictions are overblown.
Just like in a video game
Looking at the current situation in the United States, the obscured message of The Division becomes all too striking. The US Surgeon General compared the current situation to the attack on Pearl Harbour and the 9/11 attacks. The United States currently have the largest number of infected people worldwide, and New York is the epicenter. On Fifth Avenue, shops are boarded up because of increased burglaries, and a makeshift hospital has been set up in Central Park. Medical personnel can be spotted everywhere, same as Federal Emergency Management Agency's trucks, and more restrictions are being introduced every day.
At the same time, CBS News released a video entitled "Spring breakers say coronavirus pandemic won't stop them from partying" on March 25. Bearing all that in mind, the accounts of the epidemic presented four years ago in The Division look just like an epidemic handbook. Of course, a game is just a game, and we're fortunately still not looking at world governments collapsing. So, even though the loot and endgame were rather underwhelming, it seems the game got one thing right, after all.
Empty Apple
Before we even start looking for collectables, The Division strikes us with an incredible visual setting. And it's not about the winter and the snow, which always introduce an esoteric element to exploration. It's about the silence. A complete opposite to GTA IV's Liberty City, NYC in The Division is almost completely deserted, with no pedestrians, no traffic. The semblance to the empty streets of the city today is uncanny. The Times Square, usually packed to the brim, is completely deserted.
Then, there are the ubiquitous traces of the fight against the pandemic. A field hospital is set up on the basketball court in Madison Square Garden Arena. CERA (the game's counterpart of FEMA) tents and trucks are everywhere. You can see makeshift emergency points, traces of food distribution, contaminated sites under strict isolation. The aftermath of the fight against the epidemic is very apparent. While there's no way to witness the outbreak and the spread of the epidemic in the game, we can hear all about it. Hear about the things that we are witnessing today on a daily basis.
What epidemic?
“Hey, where’d you go? We were all set to raid.”
“My mom’s gone insane, she had me check for rashes again. I’ll be back online as soon as I’ve had lunch… she’s insisting we all eat together, and pray and shit.
“Sucks to be you. Since the curefew, I’ve leveled up my alt to twenty four. My mom doesn’t even want me leaving my room. It’s awesome.”
“I'll be online soon, I swear.”
“School aint gonna be closed forever, man. You’re missing it!”
Gamers
Closed schools were also in The Division. As was, apparently, intense online gaming. Now that we generally have a bit more time for video games, publishers are bending over backwards, coming up with new ideas, giving games away for free, and inventing names for online events, such as "Stocked Up, Locked Down" in Mordern Warfare. Some countries even introduced online gaming programmes to keep kids at homes entertained (those that have computers, that is), giving some respite from online courses and the ban on leaving their homes.
“Frank said he heard it on the radio. Says the National Guard is doing a lockdown.”
“What is this shit? Everyone getting all rallied up over the god damn flu.”
“Yeah it’s messed up.”
Cab drivers
“NASDAQ is dropping like a rock. Smart money’s expecting the NYSE to bottom out… Look, either way, we sell short.”
"Jesus. You’d think it’s the end of the world. A few people die and everyone with a cough thinks they’ve got the plague."
Stockbrokers
What else can they come up with? Ban on going to forests? Some already have. I cannot possibly count how many times I've seen comments online along the lines of "it's just flu; it's overblown; there are bigger problems." And not just online; governments around the world were initially reluctant to jeopardize their economies, less so to jeopardize the public health. States are putting in place more restrictions, and the news are slowly but surely becoming saturated with Covid info.
”Hey, how’s Lisbon?”
“Wearing thin. Listen, I don’t have good news. They’ve grounded the entire fleet, and it looks like nothing commercial is flying to the USA or Canada.”
“So you’re stuck there?”
“Lisa, everyone is stuck everywhere… I don’t know how long it will be before I see you again.”
Lisa and her husband
Grounded airplanes and cancelled flights are now the order of the day in many countries and a dark scenario for many airlines, even the biggest and richest. As you can see, in The Division, the government took the most radical step and completely blocked all commercial air traffic. Meantime, most governments urged their citizens staying abroad to return home – the UK, for example, predicted there's about 1 million Britons overseas.
Sanity in insane times
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Customer service
There's a minor mention on the game of most stores being closed. We know this well, because the rules governing the operation of retail outlets are tightening week to week. Fortunately, we still have online shopping and the courier service, today virtually as important as the emergency services. This is something that certainly was emphasized in Death Stranding , and The Division seems to have forgotten about the blessings of the Internet.
“I don’t know exactly. But all games are called off, airports closed. Nobody can travel, and the league is suspended.”
“What? No games at all?”
Bobby and his friend
From NHL, NBA, to European Champions League – the entire world of sport is in a standstill not unlike the one described in The Division. The global halt didn't even spare Formula One and the Olympics. Can e-sport fill the temporary void left by the emotions that have always accompanied these competitions? Well, while it will certainly not be able to fill it completely, events such as the online F1 races are surely a nice substitute.
”Yes, hello. I took out a travel insurance policy with you on November twentieth, for my stay in New York. Now I’m sure you’ve seen the news. All the flights out of New York are cancelled and I’m stuck here, but now my hotel is telling me you’ve stopped paying for my stay.”
“Unfortunately, our ‘travel disruption cover’ does not cover flight restrictions due to public health concerns. We are not liable for any expenses incurred.”
“Oh hell no, you are not pulling that shit on me. Get your manager on the line, I’ll hold.”
Turystka
A great many people and companies are now struggling with conditions that few of them ever tried predicting, let alone coming up with solutions for such cases. In New York from The Division, the changes were gradual, but abrupt. The blockade of airports and ban on travel weren't as palpable as the subsequent lockdown of the entire Manhattan.
Main characters
“I don’t wanna be here anymore. It’s boring.”
“I know bunny. But I can’t ahave you here in the hospital.”
“Aunt Jane says I can’t watch TV either. Says it’s only bad news there.”
“She’s right. But don’t you have some DVDs you could look at? I packed some for you.”
“No… I’ve already watched them…”
“Alright, bunny. Well, put one on again, and I’ll be back by the time it ends. Okay?”
Father and daughter
Photos showing doctors "hugging" their children through glass, and reports of medical staff severing all physical contact with their families contrasts sharply with videos of celebrities getting bored in quarantine. The Division doesn't portray such dissonance, but the game gives lots of attention to the work of medical professionals during an epidemic. In this case, it's not just about the collectibles and conversations like the one above. One of the main characters in the game is Jessica Kandel – a virologist who tries to develop a vaccine for the "dollar flu."
They started coming in, just a couple at first. Symptoms they presented looked like flu, and that’s what we though it all was. I mean, we knew it was going to be a bad season, and that’s what we thought this was. So we gave them fluids and sent them home, like you do. I mean, how were we supposed to know?
But the thing is, the patients kept on coming… Every day and it never stopped. Three-four days of this, we’re pretty sure it’s not flu. DCD was calling every couple of hours for updates, and they asked all these questions that made it pretty clear they didn’t think it was flu, either.
(…) That was hell, you know? But we couldn’t do anything for them. We were out of beds, we were out of medicine, the staff was starting to come down with it – it was a nightmare. By the 17th, they shut us down. Too much risk of infection, they said.
(…) What happened next? The city was falling apart. Too many people were sick, too many jobs weren’t getting done. And then, they lost control of those CERA facilities and had to wall them off.
Nurse Sharon Diaz
"So we’ve got 120 beds, and an additional thwenty-five now in the east wing."
"All in use?"
"Yes ma’am, with a wait list. But that’s just the start of our problems. We’ve got staff shortages as well."
Hospital phonecall
The biggest concern during any outbreak is not how many people will be infected in general, but the way these infections are distributed over a period of time. Overcrowded hospitals, shortage of doctors and nurses, sick police officers, firefighters, and prison guards – this is what an epidemic can become if it's not properly contained. A similar situation does currently prevail in NYC and the epiicenters of the virus in countries like Spain and Italy. The game gives a lot of exposition to this aspect of the epidemic in Sharon Diaz' audiologs, and through environmental narration. The collapse of the health system is perhaps the most conspicuous result of the outbreak in The Division, and it is unsettling.
Stay calm and find them collectibles
The latest installments in the Tom Clancy's saga from Ubisoft never really lived up to the name. This, however, is the rare exception. The statements cited above are just bits of the extensive chronicle of the epidemic in New York City. A chronicle that sadly becomes real today. Ubisoft's collectibles don't have a good reputation, but in this case, I think it's worth making an exception and looking around for them. The writers at Massive Entertainment probably never suspected their work would become so meaningful. It may not be as appealing and innovative as using the pen in VR in Half-Life: Alyx, but it is definitely far more educational and eye-opening. So, #stayhome, and take a look at Tom Clancy's The Division – before the endgame.
Tom Clancy's The Division
Tom Clancy's The Division was supposed to be a terrific game aiming to attract a new kind of players to Ubisoft. Ultimately, we got a mix of ideas that don’t always add up, and you can really feel that the game is missing something.
