The Division developer interview: Ubisoft reveal why the ‘seamless’ new Tom Clancy game is finally ready for release

It may have been plagued by delays, but the end is finally in sight for The Division, Ubisoft's ambitious third-person shooter, RPG hybrid.

But why the wait? As its Creative Director, Magnus Jansen, explains, recreating war-torn New York proved harder than expected.

“The Division is an incredibly large and complex game with an enormously large attention to detail,”' Jansen told eveningstandard.ca. “It’s taken a little more time to get it to exactly where we wanted it to be.”

In The Division, players team up to restore order to the Big Apple's Dark Zone - an area riddled with a virus and overrun by dangerous factions.

One of the biggest challenges was trying to recreate the city's iconic locations as if they were militarised.

“We did a one-to-one approach to recreating the city,” explains Jansen. “We took famous iconic locations and made sure their function was clearly understood.

“For example, if you take a sports arena and consider how this location would have been used post-pandemic, it might become a field hospital. We also asked how this space would be transformed if an enemy faction took over.”

But a gritty, realistic world would mean nothing if it wasn't populated by believable enemies.

“It’s been a challenge to create an AI that is dynamic enough to work in a completely open-world scenario, and one that dynamically adapts for up to four players,” says Jansen. “One of the cool parts of working on the AI and the enemy factions was to determine how the experience was going to be different – for example, a more organised faction will react very differently to rioters, who are pure chaos.”

The concept of a cooperatively playable open-world that allowed a seamless transition to PVP may have been a pipe dream for last-generation console owners, but is finally possible on current gen.

“A game with this level of visual fidelity has only been achievable with this generation,” says Jansen. “Hooking up with strangers without any loading or going into the Dark Zone with no loading menus - it’s all seamless.”

It's clear, then, that The Division is inspired by elements closely associated with MMOs. But building on this model would be futile if severs aren't up to scratch. Thankfully, Ubisoft has kept that in mind.