The Division’s story of a virus outbreak in New York City was engaging and interesting enough to keep players shooting their way through waves of enemies and tough boss battles. While the main missions were dry in story content at times, searching for the truth via uncovered recordings, ECHOs, and other clues helped to prop things up.
However, when it was all said and done, we did find ourselves looking for even more answers. It’s clear that not all is what it seems in the world of The Division. For all of its documents, videos, audio files, and ECHOs, the game still managed to leave a few loose ends, and questions that still need answers.
Now, before we jump in and take a look at some of the unanswered questions, we need to give you a spoiler warning. The following article will mention particular characters and events from the game’s story that you won’t see until you’ve completed the story. If you want to continue enjoying The Division spoiler-free, we advise you turn back now.
Will New York City Ever Fully Recover?
At the end of The Division, players learn that New York City is beginning to stabilize and will soon be capable of rebuilding now that you’ve defeated the Last Man Battalion and conquered all other major threats. However, what does the rest of the United States intend to do now that one of the financial centers of the country is essentially out of action, and a huge amount of its cash was infected with a deadly virus?
For big fans of The Division, gaining a better insight into the future of New York City is a question that is longing to be answered, and could arguably open the door to a whole new chapter of the story.
Does the rest of the country intend to rebuild it as an economic center? Or instead, leave it to become a desolate ruin of a once powerful city? Toward the end of the game, the Dark Zone is suggested to be a particularly mysterious area and the one part of Manhattan still dominated by crime and corruption.
Considering the state of the Dark Zone, it seems like it would require a lot more than the JTF and Division agents to put the problem right. Especially when the JTF struggled to control the less corrupt areas of Manhattan on their own. The Dark Zone is ultimately the heart of the problem that reconstruction efforts would face, and no clear answer on how this will be tackled is given throughout the story. At the same time, though, it seems unlikely that the rest of the country would be happy with Manhattan remaining a lawless, breeding ground for a deadly virus.
By giving fans answers to the larger question of what lies in store for the future of New York City, some of these sub-questions would become much clearer.
How Badly Were the Other Boroughs Affected?
While we did get a very brief introduction to Brooklyn at the start of the game, how the other boroughs were affected was largely left unknown throughout The Division.
Considering The Division was initially going to feature more than just Manhattan, knowing exactly what’s going on in these boroughs and if similar factions formed in them, are both issues that come under this larger general question of just how badly were these other boroughs affected by the virus. Although, with the virus being spread through the currency on Black Friday, and the influx of people moving between New York’s boroughs, it’s difficult to imagine that these weren’t similarly as affected as Manhattan.
If these other boroughs were indeed affected by the virus, then is there a need for Division agents in these areas too? If they weren’t affected as badly, could this be what Keener had planned when we see him leaving Amherst’s old lab in that final ECHO? If they were left in a similar state as Manhattan then this may be a future location in a piece of DLC in year two, or maybe the setting for the sequel.
What’s Going on with Aaron Keener and Vitaly Tchernenko?
Throughout The Division’s story you’ll occasionally hear mentions of Aaron Keener, one of the agents of the First Wave. Unfortunately, Keener was left in the Dark Zone by the same forces that employed him, leading him to go rogue and work against the JTF and Division Agents. However, it’s the very last part of the main story that raises a lot of questions about Keener.
You see, the ECHO that you find following your victory over the LMB has Keener routing through Amherst’s lab. As you take a look around the room, Keener will tell you that he’s “…got Tchernenko, a DNA printer, and a very interesting recipe book,” before telling you “…you should get in on this thing.” What Keener has planned is left completely open and may well be setting things up for the upcoming expansions or perhaps even a sequel, but the big question is, just how far is he willing to take this evil plan and where did he take Tchernenko?
The last we saw of Thcernenko he had been abducted from the safe room in the Russian consulate by Keener himself. With the LMB and Charles Bliss out of the way, Keener is now the main threat and therefore a pretty significant character in the future of The Division.
Is This an Isolated Case?
In the final virus report you pick up, Amherst talks about exactly why he created and released the virus. Essentially, the guy felt like playing God and restarting a ‘survival of the fittest’ era but with a modified version of the smallpox virus. However, the extent to which the virus spread outside of major cities is unknown.
The question still remains though, what’s actually happening in the rest of the world while all of this is going on? There is never really a proper mention of Europe, Asia, or Africa. Are there similar outbreaks going on there? Has Amherst released outbreaks in a number of different places at the same time? If so, are there Division agents in these places too?
Giving the player a wider context as to what’s going on, especially when the story focuses on a terrorist threat in the middle of one of the major cities in the world, is pretty crucial. After all, the folks over the pond in Britain would probably be pretty concerned about the news of the outbreak. All that is mentioned about the rest of the world is that there are food shortages and that’s only a passing comment on the radio, nothing else is really mentioned, nor do we know why these food shortages have come about.
Does this near-silence from the rest of the world mean that the virus was contained in New York City? Or that the entire world is having to deal with multiple contaminations? Keener’s mysterious ECHO that he left us at the end of the story makes us wonder just how long it is until another outbreak occurs somewhere, or whether, if there are multiple contaminations, Keener intends to build on them further somehow.
There you have some of the unanswered questions that The Division left us with. Perhaps these will be answered in some future planned content? We’ve got a couple ideas of what could be next for The Division too, but for now, we’ll have to wait and see.
More The Division
- Here Are the Voice Actors of The Division Cast
- The Division Endgame: What to Do After Hitting Level 30
- The Division Easter Egg Features an Ill-Fated Nathan Drake
Published: Mar 30, 2016 11:35 am