While Tom Clancy’s: The Division already made waves earlier today with a new gameplay demo during the Microsoft press conference, Ubisoft saved the real hype-stoking trailer for its own press conference. Introduced by producer Petter Mannerfelt with all the stone-faced seriousness you’d want to reserve for the real apocalypse, the dystopian third person shooter now has a brand-spanking new pre-rendered trailer to drive home its bleak setting and dour tone.
The latest trailer plays like long-exposure photography of a New York City in rapid decay following the release of a deadly virus. The game takes place three weeks after a pandemic leaves the city quarantined, and the focus of the trailer is squarely on how quickly society breaks down in the wake of a crisis. Rather cleverly, human characters are nowhere to be seen at first, as the environments themselves rapidly change to reflect how TVs and warm beds become replaced by stacks of potable water, boarded up doors, and a whole lot of blood when chaos becomes the new status quo.
The early half of the trailer appears to use in-game assets, highlighting the attention to detail Ubisoft no doubts hopes will separate the new franchise from other shooters. Once the full CG second half arrives, the game’s multiplayer focus, and faction system take centre stage. The narration implies you’ll be part of a team of activated “assets” responsible for uncovering a conspiracy behind the virus; as evidenced by the trailer, this will mean running up against gangs of roving thugs, and more well-armed kill squads that want to perform a decontamination-by-fire of everyone/everything touched by the virus.
You can see the tone-setter of a trailer below, which when combined with the gameplay demo released earlier today, will likely keep excitement for Tom Clancy’s: The Division burning red hot until its 2015 release on Xbox One, PS4 and PC.
