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Death can’t stop capitalism. Though airport-bookstore-novellist par excellence Tom Clancy may have recently shuffled off this mortal coil and up to the Big Tension-Filled Whitehouse Briefing Room In The Sky, the late author was never shy about renting his name out to things he didn’t have much to do with creating. So while Tom Clancy’s The Division – Ubisoft’s major bid for a slice of the modern MMO market – might logically seem like it should be the last major new media franchise to have the words “Tom Clancy’s” tacked to the front of it, we can probably expect that particular apostrophe to continue to be deployed in future, as now more than ever, the name is a brand rather than a bloke.
Thus, anyone who’s been keeping up with previous Clancy games (or books, or their film adaptations) will have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Tom Clancy’s The Division. Tapping into some of ol’ Tom’s favourite themes (think: world crises, technical fetishism, and a deep fascination with /carnal passion for the American military industrial complex), the game tells an “It could happen tomorrow!” story of a New York City devastated by the outbreak of a variation on the smallpox virus. With countless thousands dead and existing societal structures overwhelmed and collapsing into chaos in the city, the player steps into the snow-filled streets as an agent of the titular Division – a secret, plain clothes government force that’s been hiding amongst the more ordinary citizenry (for reasons), preparing to ensure the continuity of government in just such an apocalyptic emergency. Striding into New York in sensible jacket and shoes, you must restore order – and ensure death doesn’t stop capitalism.
