Episode 3 of The Division 2 is bringing players back to New York – specifically Coney Island – and it’s taken a long and twisting narrative road to get there. On this week’s State of the Game livestream, Narrative Director John Björling and Associate Game Director Drew Rechner took Division fans through the stories of The Division and The Division 2, and looked at how they set up the events of Episode 3.
State of the Game streams on Twitch, Mixer and YouTube. (To find out what was covered in the last episode, make sure to check out the previous State of the Game Recap.)
PRIORITY ALERTS
- Maintenance was performed yesterday.
- Server restart (no player-facing changes)
THE DIVISION STORY SO FAR
- Following the outbreak of the Green Poison on Black Friday, order broke down and systems began to fail.
- Agents for The Strategic Homeland Division had been secretly training for years in case of just such an event, and were activated to help secure Midtown Manhattan against three violent factions: the Rikers, the Cleaners, and the Last Man Battalion.
- Players began the game as an Agent activated in the Division’s second wave.
- The first wave of Agents were all but eradicated, either going rogue or getting killed after they were abandoned in the Dark Zone.
- The first first-wave Agent players find appears as a boss, Scarecrow.
- During their mission, players encountered a rogue first-wave Division Agent named Aaron Keener, who had teamed up with the Last Man Battalion along with several other Agents.
- When the pandemic first broke out, the immediate response was to contain it within the Dark Zone. Frequent supply drops to the survivors and Agents within the Dark Zone made it a lucrative place to scavenge.
- In the end, the Division discovered that Keener had manipulated the Last Man Battalion to get his hands on a Russian virologist named Vitaly Tchernenko, as well as the equipment that Gordon Amherst used to create the Green Poison virus.
- Tchernenko took shelter at the Russian Consulate to await evacuation, which never came.
- Tchernenko wasn’t involved in development of the Green Poison, that was virologist Gordon Amherst.
- Agents are sent to Amherst’s apartment to investigate him as a person of interest, and discover his equipment and research. Amherst believes humanity needs to be partly wiped out in order to avoid becoming unsustainable for the planet.
- Following the events of The Division, reporter and broadcaster Rick Valassi is still out there and still broadcasting.
- Agent Faye Lau is glimpsed in The Division 2, when you see that you restoring the SHD Network helps Agents across the country.
- Dr. Jessica Kandel, like other all other surviving virologists and scientists in the country, is involved in creating a broad-spectrum antiviral.
- At the very end of The Division, Agents discover that Keener took a DNA printer and may be working to advance Amherst’s research.
THE DIVISION 2 STORY SO FAR
- Several months after the events of The Division, agents get a distress call after their nationwide Division Network goes down. Agents all over the country are summoned to Washington, DC to help restore the Division’s network.
- In DC, players are notified that there is a broad-spectrum antiviral stored in a facility somewhere in the city, but that they need to rescue President Ellis (former Speaker of the House) and retrieve his encryption key from the hostile True Sons at Capitol Hill.
- Agents succeed in restoring the network, rescuing the missing President Ellis, and taking back Capitol Hill from the True Sons.
- Just as victory seems certain, a private military group called Black Tusk rolls into DC and places the city under siege. It is revealed that Black Tusk forces sabotaged the Division Network, and they are on a long campaign to undermine the Division and seize control of the country.
- The Black Tusk are hinted at throughout The Division 2’s campaign. There are hints as to who’s pulling the strings, but it’s still not clear.
- Ellis was working with Black Tusk all along, and he snatches the antiviral before players can get their hands on it.
- Agents take down Black Tusk’s main DC stronghold, in Tidal Basin, and successfully retrieve the antivirals.
- Players attempt to take down Ellis at a remote location in Camp White Oak, but Black Tusk succeeds in extracting him before Agents can reach him.
- Players then continue to secure a perfusion bioreactor from the Pentagon, but they still lack an expert virologist who can make mass-production of the antivirals possible.
THE STORY IN EPISODE 3
- Agents get an alarm that Vitaly Tchernenko has resurfaced in New York in the hands of Black Tusk in Coney Island.
- Tchernenko is one of very few surviving expert virologists, and would help the efforts to mass-produce the broad-spectrum antivirals.
- The Black Tusk aren’t confined to Washington, DC, and are active at a national level (at least).
- The Cleaners have adapted to the defeat of their leader, Joe Ferro, and found a new leader to unite them and new recruits to join their mission of burning away people they think are infected.
- Division Agents must go to Coney Island, secure Tchernenko, and figure out how he fits into Black Tusk’s larger plan.
- Since The Division, the death of Larae Barret has caused the Rikers to splinter into smaller groups. The Last Man Battalion, meanwhile, still have a command structure in place.
The Division 2 is available now on PC, Xbox One, and PS4, and is included in a UPLAY+ subscription. For more The Division 2, check out our previous coverage.
