GameSpot's The Lobby - What did The Division learn from Destiny?

Gentleman, let's talk about Small Pox. God, are you ready? It's so dark. I've asked you what the division you use for Totally forgot. I'm pretty sure that's what it is. [CROSSTALK] It's some variation or they made some weird disease. I'm pretty sure it's kind of what happened there. They engineered something is what happened, right? Black Friday's disease. Yeah, sure. Greed. Probably some acronym for it. H1Z1. H1. That's a video game. I know. That's a real, H1N1. And that's the bird flu right? Yes. [CROSSTALK] Bird flu. I don't know. I get my flues mixed up. Bird flu is the one that will murder you. I had swine flu. It's not that bad. [CROSSTALK] It's not even. Yeah. It was more like head. I felt like I was off my [UNKNOWN]. But I wasn't getting sick or anything. It was just like woo. Two days off work. It's great. I called up NHS Direct, which is the UK's when you're sick you call them thing, and they're like, stay home. I'm like, what, should I go to the hospital? They're like, no don't go to the hospital cuz you'll infect everyone there, stay home. [LAUGH] So I sat at home and played video games for hours. Mark your house. Okay there is a guy in that house, if anything happens, we know it's because of that guy. Just draw like a pig snout on your front door. And then you're done. Anyway, let's talk about The Division. It came out last week. I wasn't here. You all made a bunch of videos about it. Great job. That game looks okay. Yeah, depending on which version. It's actually pretty amazing if you've looked at the 3 versions. XBox One is easily by far the worst. [UNKNOWN] in that rabbit hole. I can see the Youtube thumbs down. [LAUGH] Just [UNKNOWN] already. All right- So I want to talk to you about a bunch of stuff. Obviously, we talked about this for a lot last week. But there's two kinda things I want to talk about. We'll talk about the PVP stuff in a little bit. Sure. But first of all, I want to float this idea where a bunch of people who work here in the office, who have been playing Destiny for Ever. Since it came out, every expansion pack we got back in and we started to talk about it. And we posed a lot of, is X game better than Destiny stuff all the time, and it gets really trite and whatnot, but I genuinely want to ask a question about if The Division has sort of like In its launch and in the type of game play it has. If it's learned from some of Destiny's shortcomings. Because this is a game that I've been playing only for about two days. I wasn't really into the Alpha very much, but I'm really enjoying the game. I think maybe the difficulty balance for the Alpha was set a little bit too easy or something, and I wasn't finding it challenging. But for whatever reason, I'm really enjoying this game. Solo in a way I never played Destiny. So I want to pose this to you guys. You play a lot of Destiny right? Yeah. And I know Eric you obviously play a lot of Destiny as well. So have you had this experience at all that like you were enjoying this game more or less. Or it's providing you more of a I don't know an interesting palette of world to play in, and does that even matter to you? If we're going to compare to Destiny and my experience vice a versa Once you hit the end game, it's very different from early, right? Early to middle. Because I was playing early to middle with Rob and/or solo and it was fun. Because you're doing story, you're doing campaign, and that stuffs better than what launch Destiny was. But, when you hit end game and you start having to grind out the Dark Zone or do really hard missions that you can't do solo I really miss all my Destiny friends. I'm playing on the XBox One right now. I don't know as many people on XBox One. I did that because I know that the DLC is coming out sooner and so it will be better for content for us. And I don't wanna level again on PS4 so that cross play stuff might actually be good. However, Just getting to the end game, which is like man I really, this sucks playing solo. Like I don't wanna do this, any, like really anymore. It's more motivating when you're playing with a group, even if it's not your friends necessarily, to you communicate You're like okay, it's such a huge thing because that's what the skills are for, like I'm gonna use my ultimate now, or I'm gonna put pulse up. All right, let's use the marker in five, I'm gonna count down five seconds, all right we're gonna hit that target all at the same time. You know, like There's that communication. When you're playing kinda by yourself, it's like eh. And the matchmaking, yeah, albeit, it's good because you can matchmake with other people, but you don't get that same comradary, you don't get the communication and then it just falls apart. And for me, that experience In [INAUDIBLE] end game, is in this one I guess, but then again I had a group in Destiny. So who knows? I might not have, if I was playing by myself in Destiny. Who knows? I might have fell off too. Like, that's literally the reason why I stopped playing was because I just didn't find it fun. I think I'm fair game, I have not played that much of the division, I heard that it gets more challenging and that you really want to scroll up later on. But from what I've been playing so far, I've been, like, doing hard missions and really enjoying it. Let's speak a little bit about the world, because I feel like that's another aspect that I wasn't so much into with Destiny. Obviously the story got stripped out of it, we realized, you know, six months later that it had been completely pulled out, and they basically, like, re-jigged the game together and that's why Also un-cohesive or whatever. The Divisions story you can sort of take or leave I do feel but the world itself, detail in the world all of those little like flash backs things you can sort of dive into. It feels like there's a lot there to explore. Have you been enjoying that at all, Mike? Yeah, that's the main draw for me there. Maybe it's just because Destiny's sci-fi, it's not something I can relate to immediately. But Pete and Alexa are both from around New York as well, and I was playing with Jake and Justin last weekend, and I pulled up the map and I was like, where are we right now? And it's like, we're on 34th and 9th. I've was like, I lived Three blocks from here, and obviously not a one-to-one scale and it's not going to look the same. But it's still really cool because it did feel like New York. And then you go through the village and the Christmas lights are still up. And there's all these little stories you see in the world, and there's not a lot of exposition with those ones, but it's still there for you to find if you're looking for it, and that goes a long way toward helping me in most games. Like the [UNKNOWN] does a great job of it. The Elder Scrolls games do a good job of that, but That's what's really pushing me forward here and I really, really just, I love how the tone of it and just how it feels like really lonely the city at the same time. But at the same time you're playing with other people and you're kind of just going through these alley ways. Again not necessarily that the same is what I experienced It's a really alluring on just that environmental like tonal sense and I'm really enjoying that aspect as well. Yeah I've done a lot of like wondering off the beaten path recently where I just said I'll just pick a part of the map and kind of go over there and see what I run into. And I mean most of the side quests are pretty repetitive. Yeah they're all the same. Hostages. Similar and what not, but there's still something about it. I don't know just like wondering around and seeing like life just kind of happening that you wouldn't have noticed. You might not have ever seen. You might not have ever gone over there. But I'm really enjoying it. Again, maybe I just haven't played enough of it. You're not getting tired of this old, snowy, the same, though? You getting sick of the snow? It's just this, like, all the, yeah, some of the buildings are different, but just, in terms of, like, running around the world, everything kind of looks Similar, other than the day night cycle, which tricks you a little bit in terms of what you see. But, I don't know, I'm over the division world, as it is. What do you think about the upgrade loop that they've put in? Cuz in a way, well, I guess it's not similar in that way to Destiny. But Destiny had a sort of [UNKNOWN] area that you go back to [UNKNOWN]. And obviously in the division, that takes place all to your upgrade tree, I guess. How have you been enjoying that aspect of, like, upgrading the various, is that basically the crux of the game, as you're playing, is like upgrading your base and clearing out all those missions? I mean, upgrading the base is definitely important in the long run, because Cuz, unlocking certain buildings will give you a lot of good talents, a lot of good perks, especially the $1,000 dollar one, because that one gives you your ultimate skill, which is like, really clutch. I mean it's cool to see how the headquarters changes as well when you kinda upgraded all the way. I wouldn't say it's what the end game is, that's just part of the end game. The real end game is just min-maxing your gear. And that's really it. It's like a [INAUDIBLE] taste. really. It's more almost like Diablo than anything else. Right. Like there's so many kinds of similar mechanics. Like you are sparring for loot. you are trying to upgrade your loot. You have to craft your loot. [INAUDIBLE] Like you Trying to Yeah. Rolling the dice in that sort of [UNKNOWN] kind of way. But in Destiny you had the raid and that was kind of the end game thing you did to try to acquire that loot. There isn't I mean The vision there, like you still do Dark Zone and you kind of get that stuff, but there isn't like really that tier of game play, yet. Yet. That you do that you're like, okay this is the thing I'm striving and getting all my gear for to then do something harder to get the best gear in the game. Right now it's just you're trying to make the gear in the game or hope that it drops which is like weird. Don't you get someone later in the division that kind of functions like a [INAUDIBLE] the Enchantress in Diablo. Yeah, so she, you get a recalibrating station in the headquarters after you upgrade a tech wing, and that lets you kind of roll stats on your gear to really Min max catered to the build you're gonna make. You can make like a full support build, and have, like nothing but electronics. Right. Or you can try to go super tanky and go all stamina, and that. Is that the super late game, or when is that in the game? You can get that earlier, it's just like kind of not worth it until later parts of the game, cuz you don't really need to min max as much until later in the game. Right. Like I feel, at least. We'd say spend more time playing the game than doing that stuff because you're gonna replace that stuff, you know what I mean? It's there for, when you hit or get close to 30 and you're like "Okay, this backpack's really good, but this [bag/g] really sucks!" But I can change that one thing and you're like "Okay I'm gonna change that one thing" so. That's kind of, those are the RPG-ish type mechanics. I find that cool. That's like the coolest thing for me, but to do all that stuff you need to have like credits and materials and that's the stuff you have to grind, you know? Way down. And the fork 67 says granite isn't in the game, Mike. He's not? Apparently. That's not where the Christmas lights are. All right. But there's Christmas lights somewhere else. There you go. Yeah. Game delay says I'm loving the story NPCs both main friendlies and major enemies. Seem like real people. This is really the same type of case. Is that they kind of do seem like real people and I feel like this government ****. Who literally is murdering people for losing. I'm kind of like I think I I was more critical of that when I played the alpha I was like this game's not as realistic as like I would hope when I see the word Tom God Damn Clancy put on a game as somebody who loves like Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon and even Advanced Warfighter had elements of realism but now I don't really care. But it is funny, Aaron was making good points, you find somebody who's like. Losing a dead body. Right, so you didn't even see them kill that person. And you go up there, and you **** ice them, and then you loot their bodies. It's like, there's no morality in this. They're rioters Okay, nanny. Ryzers. Division agents need to- It's a form of protest. Clear these people out. They're bad people. These cleaners, these Ryders, these Rykers, we gotta get rid of them. They've got good leads. Hey, look the Rykers are like ex-cons, right? Yeah. [CROSSTALK] And then there's dudes who are going around with **** flame throwers. They need to go. But just like poor people in hoodies, I keep murdering what I think are just lower class New Yorkers. [LAUGH] That's what this game- Cleaning out the lower east side. Basically. Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, is in video games. [LAUGH] They see you, they point the gun what are you going to do? Let them shoot you, no right? Also another weird disconnect is when you rescue hostages, you unlock the door and you go in, then you find like three shotguns in the room. Its like, are you really even hostages at this point? Organize some sort of coup. [LAUGH] Or when you give an energy bar or a soda to a civilian in need and they're like here have a pistol. [LAUGH] So, you didn't need this pistol to survive this post apocalyptic world, you just need a soda, okay. My favorite part is they don't even give it to you. They just drop it on the ground. There you go. You've gotta pick that up. Yeah, pick that up. It's a pistol. [LAUGH] Crazy. So is the only difference between civilians and the bad guys in this game is that they have their hoods down? Cuz everyone's got at least a parka on. Well, the cleaners have like masks and stuff, right? And- Well, yeah. say regular. [UNKNOWN] 99% hoodlums. Yeah, I guess that's true. Regular people. They have some type of headgear. That's fair. Just some kid that slipped on a hoodie is going to get iced because it's cold out and he's like [SOUND] smallpox, **** [UNKNOWN] are great. [CROSSTALK] have small pox. Do you know what small pox, no I won't get into that. It's gross. Yeah, I don't wanna know. Tell me, what's small pox do? So we were talking in some sort of history class way back in the day. And My teacher said there is a reason the world banded together to get rid of this. ANd then apparently if you were lying in a bed your skin would become so covered with puss and boils that it would like mesh with the sheet. So when you roll over It will just like tear off. So that's why smallpox was such a huge deal, you did not want it. Don't go out on Black Friday. Don't is what we're saying. Stay away from New York. Yeah just err on the side of caution. Who knows there might be some viral marketing campaign which might go wrong next year- I'm gonna throw up. My goodness. All right. [MUSIC]