The Division Resurgence’s executive producer on giving players a “fully-fledged, realistic New York in the palm of your hands”

The Division’s version of New York City is beloved. Many games have taken us to the Big Apple, but Ubisoft’s war-torn, snowy battlefield is never dull to explore. It’s a huge place, with near-endless nooks and crannies. Somehow, it’s all there to explore in The Division Resurgence. So how is that possible? The game’s executive producer, Fabrice Navrez, recently hopped on a call with me to talk about it.

Now that the wait is over for The Division Resurgence, the floodgates to New York City are open. Having clocked a decent chunk of time in the game already, I can tell you that this isn’t a compromised vision of NYC. It’s how you remember it, with a few new tweaks along the way. “New York has always been the first choice for us. First and foremost, I’m also a big Division fan. I really played a lot of The Division 1, especially,” Navrez begins. At the start of the game’s development, Navrez says that Ubisoft’s goals boil down to one key element: “How do we get the best of the essence of The Division?”

For me, like many players, New York City just hits differently than The Division 2’s Washington, D.C. Navrez tells me that going back to the series’ roots “was kind of an obvious choice, and especially with that mobile version.” While it appears the same visually, there’s something very different about it here. For the first time in the series’ history, players can explore a fully shared open world. That means you can see other agents roaming around, form alliances with them, and go on missions together. Agents are no longer tethered purely to Safe Houses or the Dark Zone.

It shifts Resurgence to embrace MMORPG traits, and it’s all the better for it. New York City is the perfect place for this, as Navrez shares with me that “The Division is famous for [its] very rich, urban, open world environments. That’s really what we try to do and what I think we achieved […] you have a fully-fledged, realistic New York in the palm of your hands.” With more players inhabiting the same space, there’s always the creeping thought of PvP. It’s natural; we all want to fight each other for loot and glory.

Navrez believes that the free mobile game’s refined social mechanics stem from the Dark Zone. “How can we expand that social feeling you have in the Dark Zone? The tension of being betrayed at some point. ‘Trust no one in the Dark Zone,’ as we say. [It’s] an extension of the philosophy of the game at the end of the day, and really looking forward to [see] how to push [that] more,” he adds.

So, will we run into each other out there? You can read my The Division Resurgence review if you’re still on the fence about joining forces.