This game is NOT ready!! Needs six more months!! No Story! Detailed review...
Ok, I've been playing The Division 2 since the beta started on the 7th. I've tried to do as much as I can, got through the main story, played the DZ, did a bunch of missions, side quests, random fighting in the streets, resupply runs to flag points, etc. etc. I gave it my best, and I tried to like this as much as I could...but, it is just not here. There are serious problems, and there are critical things that appear to be completely absent.
My honest opinion is, while BEAUTIFUL, just like TD1, this game...as it currently stands...in the form we've been presented at least...is not ready for release in a month. It has too many problems, usability issues, gameplay issues, squishy issues, overcrowding issues, and general breaking of GREAT concepts in TD1 that just don't work in TD2. While I know this is a BETA, it does not feel like "A late beta ready for Release Candidate and a production push." It feels far more like "An early beta, not too long out of alpha, with a lot of fundamental content missing, and a whole lot of frustrating usability and gameplay issues." As in, not, by any means, ready for prime time in 30 days...
So, this'll be long...but, I feel I need to voice my honest opinion here... I fear TD2 is going to be a taint on the Division franchise name, if certain critical things are not fixed.
THE MISSING STORY
First off, the most important thing, IMO, that is SORELY missing from this beta. I can only hope that this is because it is, in fact, a beta, and not because the story is actually missing. But, given how the gameplay has worked in this game so far...I am very fearful that this game really does not actually have a REAL STORY, like TD1 had. For a bit of background to explain what I'm talking about (WARNING: TD1 SPOILERS). With The Division 1, you were playing a story from levels 1-30. Not just a "story", but a "STORY", a good one, complete with protagonists, antagonists, important side characters, an intriguing mystery character, and filled with, albeit somewhat miserable, PEOPLE and ongoing, daily LIFE. You start this story by losing some of your Division agent friends, and the one that survives, Feye Lau, is injured but able to help you from a command standpoint. You and her set off on a mission to rescue key people, critical for the survival of NYC. You save Paul Rhodes, Ray Benitez, and Jessica Kandel from a few "certain death" situations, and the story really begins to unfold. You explore the origins of the virus, encounter various factions like the Rikers, Cleaners and LMB, each of which have fairly rich back stories that flow right into the conflict and ultimate demise of each faction. Along the way you encounter other interesting characters, like the tech guy on the rooftop who did full systems checks, triangulations, you name it "in the middle of winter, in the APOCALYPSE!!", to Rhodes' surprise. You encounter a surprise...unexpected rogue agents - remnants of the backstory that supports TD1, the First Wave of division agents, sent in to save the city - a failure, and a cataclysmic one at that. You ultimately learn they are lead by, or at least encouraged by, the mysterious Aaron Keener, a truly bad dude who slips through your grasp. The story progresses to the point where you ultimately clean up the city, but...seemingly...not enough to save the world... Keener escapes...and...
...well, what? You never actually encounter Keener, the incomplete mystery storyline of TD1 that we really hope will be continued, in more depth, in TD2... The virus obviously spreads. How could it not, that is obvious (especially based on many of the underground tapes and how people, likely infected people, were trying to sneak their way out of Manhattan). But what happens? What is the backstory here? Who are the key protagonists in TD2? Who, really, are the key antagonists in TD2? TD2, as far as I can tell, does not really have any other interactive, storyline, critical players like TD1. You ultimately recruit certain persons to unlock certain features and functionality of the game...such as crafting, access to the DZ, skill and perk upgrades. You have people you talk to to complete projects. You have squads of JTF whom you can roam around the city with to help with certain tasks. You DO have enemy factions, like the Hyenas... But...where, the heck, is the STORY? There is absolutely ZERO story here, at least as the game has been presented in this private beta. Why, for example, to the JTF not just fight the Hyenas like criminals...but instead, exhibit a deep seated, foundational HATE for the Hyenas. They aren't "just" criminals, there is a backstory there, something deeper than just good guys vs. bad guys, a horrid conflict that has left the JTF somewhat demoralized, filled with seething hate, and elated when they actually start to succeed against the Hyenas...but, outside of these tiny clues you pick up on as you stumble through the game...there is nothing like an actual story to explain any of this. Why do the hyenas act so morally superior? They are murderous criminals, that is clear...but they seem to think they have some key moral high ground, frequently saying you are not the good guys. Why? What makes them believe that? Deeper than that, what exactly are they? How did they come about...there was one echo that seemed to very, very vaguely hint that someone put them together. But how? What is the drug they use? There is not really a shred of story so far in this beta...only inklings that there SHOULD be a story...which is otherwise entirely absent.
This, I have to say, is the single most disappointing thing about TD2. It feels, mostly, just like "end game combat" sort of stuff you do in TD1 after you reach WT5. Run around, do missions, get gear, rank up, so you can eventually fight in the PvP and WSP missions, underground and (the seemingly defunct) Last Stand. But by the time you reach level 30 and get to WT5, you've actually experienced and enjoyed the storyline of the single player game!!! You went through it all, the story concluded, and now you can have fun doing...whatever it is you enjoy doing in TD1. TD2...just seems to drop you into the mindless grind of repeat missions and the raw slog of a never-ending war with factions you really know nothing about...
I truly hope this is just some quirk of the fact that this is a beta...but, that would seem to mean that any actual storyline content had to be removed, so you weren't actually playing it "yet", or something... And it seems odd for Ubisoft to have done that. Which means...is the story really actually not there?
Anyway...on to other issues...
THE USER INTERFACE
I'm going to be blunt here. You broke what didn't need fixing!!! Can't put it more concisely than that. The new UI is RIDDLED with usability issues. You really did break what didn't need to be fixed here, as the UI of TD1 is, despite its relative complexity, much easier to use. I am not going to say that the TD1 UI was without flaws...but, why the COMPLETE overhaul and redesign in TD2? It was unnecessary. Certain things could have been tweaked and refined with the previous UI, rather than the disaster we have now. But let me get into it...
First off, TMI in the main screens. You guys tried to pack ALL of the information about...well, almost everything...into one single screen. I don't know why, you lost all the organization you used to have in TD1 by doing that. The way you did it, this single screen is rather confusing. But packing info into a single screen is not that big of a problem on its own, and something I think players could get used to. The problem is made worse by the fact that it is REALLY difficult to actually differentiate things in this UI. Or find important areas, or drill into other areas. Everything has been reduced to just an icon in a lot of cases, and rather small ones at that. A lot of these icons are...not self explanatory. So your eyes drift around the screen trying to figure out where you need to go to find what you are looking for...and you just waste time fiddling about the UI.
Further, selected items are very difficult to pick out. I'm constantly scrolling through lists of items in my inventory, trying to figure out which one I selected. The ONLY thing that indicates selection is a change of line color on one end of the block that represents an item. This is HORRIBLE for user experience. It is NOT obvious at all, and really needs to be fixed. The selected item should be very obvious, in one way or another. You shouldn't be able to miss it while scrolling through lists.
But selection and finding things is not the biggest problem. Lets take the modding interface as an example. This is just atrocious. It's a major step back from modding in TD1. It is just a usability nitemare. Hitboxes for mod points are tiny, and they do not respond well to the user trying to select them. You have to fiddle with this darn UI to try and mod your weapons for quite a while each time, because things just don't work in any really logical way, and different parts of the UI seem to work in different ways. For example, you have to click exactly in the right place, mostly dead center, on the mod points on the weapon to select them. They are listed off to the right in a list, however, the list does not respond to the mouse clicks at all. You can scroll it with the mouse wheel, but you cannot actually SELECT the mod point there. You also cannot double-click the mod point in the list to actually select which mod to attach. You apparently MUST first select the mod point on the weapon, which is very difficult, then hit the space bar to actually bring up the list. Once in the list of mods, that, too, is very quirky. The mouse sort of seems to work, but it seems to be picky about exactly where you click or how you click to actually attach it to the weapon.
This experience is replicated, to one degree or another, throughout most of the screens in the game. There are some additional problems as well, though, usability issues that are steps back from what we had in TD1. These issues greatly increase the TEDIUM that the UI in this game forces onto the player. This is a TEDIOUS UI!! Very tedious!! TD1's ui was, once you got the hang of it, a breeze to use, and it helped you along the way in many ways (and this doesn't take more than a couple of hours to get used to...I've been fighting with the TD2 UI for four days now...) One of the most prominent examples of this tedium is marking weapons as junk. You mark a weapon as junk and...it marks it, but does not move to the next item in the list. You have to click the item in the list, then mark, then click, then mark, etc. Why? Automatically move to the next item in the list, like you do in TD1, so we can move through our lists quickly and efficiently when either selling or dismantling gear. Which is a task we tend to do on a continual basis, it is a fundamental activity of the game.
Another very flawed user experience is the crafting station. You get here, and aside from many similar quirks as described above, once you actually craft something, you are dumped entirely OUT of the UI. Not only that, you are dumped out of the UI, AND your character is now facing the other direction! So you have to first turn your character around, re-enter the crafting UI, find the next thing you want to craft, craft it and...are once again dumped out of the UI. TERRIBLE user experience. During crafting, the screen makes this odd move forward, like someone just shoved your PC's face into the wall, everything goes blurry, and this fancy "congratulatory" screen appears making you feel all warm and fuzzy about that little muzzle break you just crafted...WTF? Why? WHY?! Terrible design. Bad user experience.
There are more issues here. A lot of stuff I look for I either simply cannot find...perhaps these UIs that are present in TD1 have been removed entirely form TD2. Other times, it took me a while to figure out where to find stuff. Extracted DZ items for example. They are not in my stash, really. They are sort of..."emailed" to me? What? That makes no sense, and it was really odd finding my extractions that way. This is an example of needless changes in the UI from TD1. Why the change? What was wrong with having extracted items readily available in a user interface you are constantly interacting with and intimately familiar with: Your STASH!
Speaking of changes. Another very frustrating change from the previous game UI...all the keys have changed!!! For TD1 players, this is a travesty. Why all these changes? Suddenly keys that I am very familiar using for certain things now do completely different things. Scrolling left/right through menus and tabs and the like...Q and E. Q and E. Q AND E!! Not only are these keys very logical, as they are clustered there with totally STANDARD movement keys, but they are totally familiar now to TD1 players. However now, such movements are done with different keys. R and V, I guess it is? Odd, vertically aligned keys move you left and right...vertical, horizontal...Q and E were horizontal... Why was this changed? Right there on the starting screen before you get into the game, Q and E previously let you scroll through your characters. Now it is R and V. Why? And dismantling items? WTF? You change the DISMANTLE key from X...to TAB?!?!?!?!! TAB, of ALL keys on the keyboard, you switched the DESTROY ITEMS key to the one we used in TD1 to PRESERVE our items by favoriting them. Now, favorite is...what, R? Oh, but R, along with V, is used to scroll left and right through tabs and screens... Again, for TD1 players, this is a terrible key change. Was very confusing for me for a while, when I started destroying items I wanted to FAVE!
Final annoying change with the new UI... When you do...well, a lot of things now...you have to wait. There are these arbitrary, inconsistent, forced delays when activating many things in menus, and when interacting with some things in the world. You have to wait for an arc to draw itself into a full circle to "complete" a bunch of actions now. Or, you have to wait for a little box underneath a letter, usually F or X, to "fill in" before the action is completed. But the amount of time you have to wait is different, almost in every instance. Unlocking a perk, for example, forces you to wait for a good deal of time for this darn arc to draw a complete orange circle before you actually get your perk. Why? This is just another example of this game purposely slowing you down...why? What is the purpose of making the user sit there and WAIT for all these maybe pretty...but otherwise entirely USELESS animations to complete? It gets extremely annoying after you do it 500 times an hour...
MORE BAD USER EXPERIENCE
Ok, moving on from the menus and the like. The next disastrous thing in TD2 is the map. Aside from the way it looks...I'm a big fan of the TD1 map, it is a lot easier to use, and not as...in-your-face like the new map. I am not exactly a fan of the solid, opaque, sharp 3D of the new map. I much preferred the dotted edge rendering of the TD1 map and the more normal map-like appearance it had. I mean, its a map! It should look like a map... But that is the least of the issues with this new map. This new map now has "hover activation" all over the place. You hover over any indicator icon on the map, and it effectively selects it...but...not really. PSYCH!!!
This is really annoying, especially if you need to actually use one of the buttons that appear in the lower left for the item you ACTUALLY wanted to select. So you select something...then, because pressing X on the keyboard to travel to the selected makes you wait for the box under the X to fill in before it actually initiates the action, and CLICKING on the button to the lower left corner initiates the action instantly, you move the cursor over to click on the darn thing. Of course, because hovering the cursor over any icon in the map basically...but not really...selects that icon, by the time your cursor gets to the button, it is either gone, or it is actually representing a different icon, and thus a different location on the map.
This is another TERRIBLE user experience. You should not have to worry about hovering over anything while you move your mouse from the thing you actually purposefully chose to select, to the button you need to click to initiate an action for it. Further, you should really be able to just hit X to travel, and not have to hold X to actually initiate the action. Why the delays all over the place? Just...GO!! I really don't want to wait for arbitrary and unnecessary delays in the UI. There is enough "delay" in this game already...and with that...
PEA-SOUP-NEBULA-SPACE-WALK MOVEMENT
Getting right down to brass tacks here. Movement in TD2 is terrible. I get it, I know why this global movement NERF was done. We all know about it. We all pretty much hate it. The dreaded Chicken Dance! Yes, the chicken dancers in PvP suck, it's annoying, and something should be done about it. A global nerf on movement speed was, IMHO, the wrong way to solve the problem. Movement in TD2 feels like you are slogging your way through a thick pea-soup nebula while on a space walk. You sort of swim-float through the game. Movement is not fast in general, but when you turn, you slowly lean over...really far...and more or less "roll" in the direction you want to go. When you hop off a ledge, you literally float down to the ground. Ironically, some of the movement animations look a bit better than TD1 in TD2, like vaulting over a barrier. But when you are actually trying to get from point A to point B...it really feels like a SLOG.
This is the biggest time waster in the game. With The Division in general, your only real mode of transport aside from fast travel is to run. You run everywhere. So being able to move quickly is important, because you spend a HECK OF A LOT of time in these games running around, getting from a safe house to an HVT, or a mission or whatever. Again...I don't want my time WASTED in these games. I have limited time to start with, and TD2 really sucks a heck of a lot more time out of you with confusing menus and this slow movement.
It gets worse than just the slow, floaty movement though. In TD1, you could move up and down ledges, ladders, around corners and obstacles, etc. with great ease. It was pretty hard to actually get "caught" on anything in TD1. The game fluidly helped you get where you needed to go, and you did not really have to think about it. Slap the spacebar (or whatever key you have) to vault, climb, drop, zip up or down a rope, etc. Moving around was easy, fluid, even FUN! In TD2, you get caught on everything. And half the time when you get caught, exactly WHAT you are caught on is not really obvious, so you sit there kind of spinning yourself around trying to un-catch yourself...usually while a throng of enemies slowly surrounds you flinging bullets into your face. The number of times I've died because I got caught on some invisible force... It is infuriating. This should not be the case. We shouldn't have to think about this, it shouldn't be a problem. The combat in this game is very different from TD1, far more tactical, FAR more reliant on being in cover. Being unable to easily slip into and out of cover, move around without snagging on things, is extremely important. I don't want to and shouldn't have to think about this level of minutia while I've got 6, 8, 10 enemies closing in on me, especially with higher level stuff.
As an extension of this "Catching" problem, there is the ledge problem. Climbing up or down things in TD1 is a breeze. You can walk or sprint at something, and just climb it. I use spacebar as my key, and you don't even have to worry much about timing...slap the spacebar to climb or drop a ledge and it happens, fluidly, naturally... In TD2, climbing or dropping a ledge of any kind only really works if you are not running. If you are running, then it seems no matter what you do, once you meet the ledge you aren't going to climb it. You'll strafe it, wobble around it, get stuck on crap along it, but you won't climb it. You have to stop running, hit your key to climb or drop it, then start sprinting again. In the amount of time it takes to do this awkward sequence of actions, you'll most likely be dead as well, given your character is about as squishy as a squirrel fart in a soap bubble, and all it takes is about 3 bullets to shred your armor and another couple to rip through your skull.
Movement really needs to be as fluid as TD1. TD2 is really infuriating when it comes to moving about. I've never had so much trouble getting around, especially when in combat.
SQUISHY AS A SQUIRREL FART IN A SOAP BUBBLE
So this brings me to the next issue. Look up a line. Yup. That is about as accurately as I can describe it. Pop. Pffrrpppt. Ded. I get that TD2 is supposed to have more realistic combat...but, this is just...it's so bad it's laughable. I mean, it IS more challenging...but, it is not a "good" challenging. It is sort of the bottom rung, "cheap" challenging, the lowest order of gameplay quality here. The PC character doesn't seem to have anything like the NPC characters when it comes to armor or life. I've watched both friendly and enemy NPCs duke it out for up to a couple of minutes at a time. You can tell both are getting riddled, blood spurts showering off both like fountains. And they just keep taking the hits, keep taking the hits, keep taking the hits...oh, ones almost dead....almost...there he goes... Of course, three seconds after you poke your head above cover, your armor has been shredded. Two seconds after that, you have a 1-pixel wide red sliver of health left, and your already out of armor kits... And of course, you managed to drop the purple guy, so a whole bunch of new baddies are coming in the second wave and you are just...a squirrel fart...soap bubble's already gone...
So yeah, there are SEVERE imbalance issues here. NPCs are like tanks, and can soak up 2, 3, maybe even 4 mags (if you are low enough level) before you drop one. Both friend and foe NPCs. You, on the other hand, pop like a paper bag full of pudding. I don't know if this was the general idea for making things harder...but, IMO, it's the worst way to achieve that goal. It feels like the sloppy cop-out way of increasing the challenge of the game. So far, the squishiness of the player character, combined with the fact that it is so easy to get caught on edges, get stuck on ledges, and otherwise float through the game when moving from one point to another, say cover to cover, has made overall gameplay very frastrating, and not very fun. And, I am not a bad player. I'm not #1 on the leader boards in TD1, but I'm a pretty darn good player in TD1, I land on the leaderboards often enough, and I find the gameplay there to be quite challenging at times...without being a squish-monster. It is a vastly more balanced game, and the challenge is...more real, more tangible, and more enjoyable.
I think TD2 really needs to approach gameplay difficulty in an entirely different way. The NPCs need to be more intelligent, more clever. Right now, I don't see that NPC behavior in TD2 is even as good as in TD1. They use cover, but they don't really actually seem to use it intelligently. And they will then pop out of cover and sort of side-shift their way over to another cover while shooting at you. If you are clever yourself, that's the moment you drop them, 2-3 mags at a time, because...well, they just...sloooowly shift their way sideways, facing you broad, from one cover on one side of the street, all the way to the other side of the street. Or, they just charge you screaming...rather strange vulgarity...seemingly at the top of their lungs... That seems a little scary at first, then it just becomes weird, and as in TD1, the chargers are easy enough to drop. The only thing that really makes anything difficult in TD2 is the fact that you are basically tissue paper.
The NPCs need to be smarter. The PC needs to be more resilient. The NPCs should be difficult because they use cover, and move cover to cover, more like a player. One of the things that blew me away about TD1, once I reached WT5 and started playing in the high level DZ areas and the like, was just how much like a PLAYER some of the NPCs were. Especially hunters or the high level nameds in the northern reaches of the DZ, sometimes you think your playing against a decent human player. The NPCs in TD2 have not once exhibited that kind of behavior. Instead, it feels like they KNOW your a squirrel fart caught in a soap bubble, and all they have to do is land 5 or 6 bullets from their 800rpm guns to drop you...and that....is really, really disappointing.
Interestingly, when fighting other players in the DZ in PvP combat, heh...they don't seem to be anywhere remotely as fragile as I seem to be when facing an NPC. I suspect that some of them simply have better gear than I do, but squirrel fart soap bubbles they are definitely not...
AN EMPTY WORLD
Ok. Last thing...hope this will actually post, it ended up longer than I expected. So I'll get right to it. This world is EMPTY!! I mean, there is NOTHING here. Oh, the world is BEAUTIFUL, and it is packed with an interesting and rather lush landscape (really though...how long has it been since Green Poison decimated the world? The overgrowth in WDC looks like...well, years, at the very least...maybe even a decade? Has it been that long? That would be, you know...one of those STORY things...that are so lacking..) The graphics are at least as good as TD1. I was pretty blown away by how the rain and wetness worked...I couldn't believe my eyes at first when the street got wet during a rain, then slowly, naturally, realistically DRIED afterwards! Jaw dropped. Damn good job there, guys! The environment is pretty wonderful.
The problem with this beautiful environment is...it's just totally empty. There is no one around! I didn't realize it at first, as I guess the first thing you do when you start the game is notice, then collect, all those wonderful loot bags, boxes and cases. Well, after the opening sequence...which is another STORY point...there really didn't seem to be much story involved in the opening sequence where your dropped in a field, sprint through some trees, then an old Christmas shanty town, fight through a few bad guys and...suddenly you've unlocked the base of operations. But there wasn't much of a storyline to play through, as there was with TD1 and the recovery of the base of operations there. Anyway, I digress.
So as I'm mindlessly running about snagging goodies from loot bags on my first foray into this new world...it took me a while to realize, I've been wandering around for nearly five minutes now, and I HAVEN'T SEEN A SOUL........... Not one single NPC. Not one single person in distress, no one coming up to me asking for help...not even a bad guy! I've just been wandering around, following the trail of orange glowy lines, and I've traveled some distance from the White House...and nothing. After another minute or two, I came upon a landmark, and finally found some bad guys, and two poor hostages. So I wipe out the bad guys, save the hostages, and move on... Empty. Nothing. No one. Devoid........ void..... This game is almost entirely devoid of life!! The only place you ever find anyone is either a JTF squad, or a landmark or control point of some kind. In between these hot spots on the map, the world is just empty. Every so often you encounter the remnants of an enemy squad, usually the aftermath of a conflict between them and the JTF. Once they are wiped out, you usually don't find any others until you come across another control point.
This issue of emptiness follows you to the dark zone. Perhaps this particular dark zone was not meant for what it's being used for, but it is PITIFULLY empty. I've been playing for a few hours here now, and it is just...WOEFULLY under-populated. The circles, literally, I've been running in the DZ for the last couple of hours are ultimately what spurred me to write this post. I started out with a few other agents (not in a group, just there in the DZ.) When I got in, some of the landmarks...which, are the only place you can find any NPCs to fight it seems, like the rest of the TD2 world...were lit, most were red (in combat), and the rest were already cleared. So I sprinted towards one...cleared by the time I got there. Sprinted to the next...cleared. Next...cleared. It took me a while to actually reach an LM that actually had NPCs to fight! And that one was already in combat. I managed to land a few bullets on the named, got an item, but that was it. Combat, and all the fun, was over. So I sprinted off to the next one, three other guys right there with me, each of us trying to find the fastest path to get there before the others. Ok, so now we are in the loop...landmark after landmark. But each time, the NPCs are getting wiped out faster and faster.
It took me a moment to notice there were now at least 6 or 7 agents all running around the DZ in a big circle, every single one of us chasing after the same LM. We were dropping them so fast the next was barely back up by the time we got there, and more agents were showing up. I wasn't even able to land a single bullet on more than half the nameds at each landmark before every NPC was dead. I ran the loop a few more times before finally hitting the safe room and hopping out of the game to write this post...
This game is SEVERELY underpopulated. In particular in the DZ. I need a stronger word than severed, because the DZ is just a joke. And I think there may have only been, in total, about 15 agents in there? It is not just about enemy NPCs to fight, although I would say they are certainly the most important as that is where all the gameplay ultimately comes from. The world is just empty. There isn't really any life except at a few specific hubs...the theater, the white house, and a few scattered control points. You occasionally run into a patrol, or a group on a water or parts run. But they are relatively far and few between. There is no other life in the city, not human life anyway. In TD1, you were always encountering people. There WAS life. It may have been miserable life, but it was there. The random comments from people poking their heads out a window, the occasional person walking up for help, etc. I understand what is being ATTEMPTED with TD2 here. The world has changed, people have realized they have to live in more tight-knit communities. That is all well and good...but, there needs to be more. There needs to be more people around in general, outside of the theater. There needs to be some lone wolves, some vagrants. There need to be more factions even...for now, we have the junkie/crazy faction (i.e. Cleaners?) and the military faction (i.e. LMB). We need something like the Rioters in TD1...the couple of guys who killed a poor soul to steal the watch on his writs down an alley every couple of blocks. We also need a third faction, with different tactics, more intelligent and tactical than the rioters/gangs but less skilled and tactical than the military, like the Rikers.
And, these guys need to fill the streets a little more. It is rather boring spending so much time in this game slogging your way around encountering nothing but orange glows and a goodie around every corner, in every corner, in every fenced cage, on every roof, up every ladder, etc.
One other thing about the NPCs. TD1 seemed to have a pretty wide variety of voice acting, and it was a while before I felt things started to get repetitive. TD2 immediately felt and still feels very repetitive. Each enemy NPC seems to say the same 2, maybe 3 things. Specific enemies always say the exact same thing, the exact same way, and you hear it over and over and over and it gets really repetitive and tiresome very quickly.
"YAAAARRR! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE! YOOOURR MIIIINNE!"
YOOOURR MIIIINNE!
(Did that do the trick? Do you feel it? The angst? The twitch behind your eye? The fury? The need to scream "SHUT THE ******* UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPP!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAUUUUGHHHH!!!"? I can do it again...but I won't.)
SO, IN CONCLUSION
This game is not anywhere close to ready... Not even remotely. If THIS is, indeed, the game that is going to be released, it has some very serious problems, and is severely lacking life, and even content beyond...gathering stuff, resupplying and...popping, like a bubble of squirrel fart. Please, don't release this game as it stands today. Please, delay the release, and fix this stuff. My honest opinion here is...as it stands right now, this game...while I can see the potential there, it is not very far away...it is not deserving of The Division name. If released as it is, if this beta accurately represents the game that will be released...I feel it will anger a whole heck of a lot of dedicated The Division 1 fans such as myself. It may not be as severe as some of the missteps EA has made over the years, and I've noted UbiSoft seems to be trying to avoid that...but, I do believe that releasing The Division 2 as is will be a misstep for UbiSoft.
At the very least, the UI/UX issues are in dire need to being addressed. Especially the map, the hover behavior of the map is an atrocity, but the UI overall just...needs and overhaul. The gameplay needs some critical rebalancing before this game is releasable, and these would be the bare minimums. The player needs to be more resilient. The challenge should not come from an imbalance between NPC and PC...the two should be on equal footing. The challenge should come from the NPCs being intelligent. The underlying mechanics of how armor and health work right now are not really bad...it is really just a BALANCE thing, NPCs are significantly more resiliant than the player character.
While ultimately The Division games lead to the DZs and high level, high skill PvEvP gameplay, leaving The Division 2 largely devoid of a playable, interactive, involved storyline like TD1 had will be a serious letdown. I enjoy the endgame stuff as much as everyone else, but to leave the entire opening game devoid of any real, tangible story will just make it a meaningless and boring slog that players do everything they can to grind through just to get to the real end-game content. Without a story, the entire game will really just be a GRIND. There need to be some real, interactive, involved NPC personalities to work with you as you move through the storyline, as they did with TD1. They don't need to be the same personalities, obviously...but there need to be personalities. There needs to be a head bad dude for the Hyenas, and there needs to be an actual storyline bout them, where they come from, who created them, what...exactly...they snort, and why! There needs to be a storyline for the military faction (god, they are so bad right now, I don't even remember their name!), and there needs to be a head bad guy...or two, the Two Sons? And THEY need to have a storyline. Right now, they are just...loud shotgun dudes who scream at you at the top of their lungs while they charge... O_o
The would could certainly stand to be more richly and diversely populated. This game is due to be released in, what, a month? I don't think I'll be holding my breath for a more populated world, and if something had to slip, I'd say let that slip. But, this world is so empty, it's rather eerie even. Give it LIFE!
Ok. I'm done.
*** Edited For Content - Profanity Removed - bitebug2003