Tom Clancy’s The Division 2: Battle for Brooklyn – Everything You Need to Know
It’s been five long years since the last Division story DLC, Warlords of New York, graced player’s screens. Sure, the game has gotten continual support in the form of seasonal updates since that time, but The Division 2 has crawled along without a significant story update since March of 2020. As of May 27th, The Division 2 finally receives its latest story expansion, and it’s set in the most nostalgic locale of all. Remember the E3 trailer for The Division 1? The snowy Brooklyn streets were many fans’ first glimpses into The Division and that’s where this DLC is heading back to after all these years – minus the snow. Though player counts aren’t exactly what they used to be, The Division 2 still has a devoted playerbase, and Ubisoft is banking on catching new players with its friendly onboarding features. While Battle for Brooklyn isn’t altering the core gameplay loop the base game had, it’s certainly the most substantial expansion the game has received since 2020. Here’s everything you need to know before buying The Division 2: Battle for Brooklyn.
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Relatively Newbie-Friendly
Ongoing live-service games can be intimidating to start up for the first time, but games like The Division 2 make an effort to ease fresh players into its systems. This DLC is one such example with its immediate access to the new zone and content right out of the gate. And for Gold Edition buyers, there’s an instant level 40 boost to get into the content with a better advantage.
Coincides With the Start of Year 7
Aside from the story DLC from 2020, 2023’s ‘The Descent’ was the the latest large-scale expansion the game has had. As usual, large DLCs coincide with the start of a new yearly rollout of seasons. In this case, players can get a headstart on Season 1, Year 7 with the recent beta update that went live on April 25th. The update features a prototype build of the new season, minus the new zone and campaign, for a limited time. As revealed by the patch notes, Y7, S1 introduces a new global modifier that streamlines builds with set bonuses for the Firearms, Stamina, and Electronics Attribute Tiers. There’s also new active and passive modifiers that reward smart team play. Lastly, this season introduces one new Exotic Weapon and two new Exotic Gear pieces. Yeah, modifiers and a handful of new weapons don’t seem too exciting for casual players, but the DLC itself is where the meaty content lives.
Revisiting Brooklyn
Ah, Brooklyn. Old-school Division fans yearned to return to the snowy city streets that started it all, and now they can – except, this time without the snow. The original Brooklyn stage only took place within a fast-paced linear story prologue, so expanding it into a freely explorable open-world zone is a nostalgia bomb for fans well worth downloading the game again for.
Two Large Districts
The new Brooklyn map is divided into two districts. Brooklyn Heights is situated to the southwest of the player’s main settlement, while the district of Dumbo is to the northeast. The Deep Dive video gives us a good look at the in-game map, cluing us into the face that each district has two World Missions each. Brooklyn Bridge is the most notable landmark throughout the DLC, as it neatly separates the two districts with its monolithic presence. Detailing historic environments tends to be Ubisoft’s strong suit, so it’ll be neat to visit real-life landmarks like the Manhattan skyline and the Dumbo-Manhattan Bridge Waterfront – and, of course, Brooklyn Bridge itself.
Main Missions Are Separate From the Open-World
One thing players won’t be doing is running through these Brooklyn districts within tightly crafted story missions much like The Division 1’s prologue briefly did. Instead, the devs opted to keep the main campaign missions outside of the Brooklyn map instead cordoned off within bespoke mission-specific locations. It’s interesting that they decided to do a 180 reversal of The Division 1’s prologue in this regard. Players will do all of their open-ended exploration within the Brooklyn map and the DLC’s campaign outside of it.
Story
The story picks off mostly where the last story expansion left off: with Division agents cleaning up the mess that the NYC hurricane caused. Unfortunately, the Bridge Settlement folk don’t just have natural disasters to worry about; the Cleaner and Riker gangs have mass produced a devastating new weapon aimed right at them called the Purple Flame. Much of the campaign involves stopping these gangs and presumably snuffing the Purple Flame out of existence.
Returning Characters
Longtime Division fans can expect plenty of familiar faces from previous games and DLC. Dr Kandel hasn’t been seen since her role developing the cure for the Green Poison in The Division 1, and now acts as an essential ally for the Brooklyn Bridge Settlement. We’ve already seen screenshots of Keener’s old crew in the new DLC such as Theo Parnell and Agent Hoskins, to name a few.
6-10 hour run-time
During the DLC Deep Dive, the creative director noted that the campaign will take between 6 to 10 hours to complete. Since the map is open-ended and filled with side activities, it’s likely to take 10 or more hours to squeeze every last ounce of content out of it with the main story path averaging around the 6 hours.
Open-World Activities
Speaking of content, we already have the full list of activities dotting the new map. Battle for Brooklyn will consist of three main campaign missions. This seems may seem dainty at first blush, but campaign missions typically range between two to three hours each if past campaign missions are anything to go by. There are four world missions with two in each district and four control points. The amount of living world activities is 12, while there are 16 world bosses to take out. If you like bounties, you’re in luck because the DLC features 10 of them along with 8 hunter riddles scattered about the Brooklyn map.
Most Vivid Environments Yet
It’s a delight to see the Brooklyn map looking so beautiful considering the amount of activities players will be engaging with here. The snowy winterscape from Division 1’s prologue is replaced with a vibrant Autumn landscape this time around. I’m surprised just how colorful and contrasting the outdoor environments look; it’s not exactly the kind of ambience that comes to mind when thinking of a Tom Clancy game. The foliage in particular looks highly detailed and full of warm Fall vibrancy.
World Missions Are Now Replayable
Finally, a highly requested feature makes its debut in Battle for Brooklyn: replayable World Missions. World Missions are basically the side missions of The Division 2. They take roughly half as long as main campaign missions and take place within the open world areas of the game map. As stated, the DLC includes four World Missions.
New Corrosive Ailment
Your primary antagonistic force in the DLC is the Cleaner gang. Though, the only cleaning they do is the corrosive destructive kind. They’ve somehow managed to mass-produce a corrosive Purple Flame Flamethrower which dishes out devastating ailments out to players. Corrosion reduces max armor over a duration of time, whittling down players’ max defense as long as they stay in range of the Cleaner’s attacks. There’s a special brand of stress seeing your health bar shrink before your very eyes, and it looks like The Division equivalent to that is about to be a reality with the Purple Flame corrosion ailment.
Smart Cover is Back
Division 1 players will be delighted to know that the Smart Cover skill returns in all its glory with the new DLC. It’s not exactly the same here though. Players will be rewarded for using cover points with their choice of an offensive or defensive buff reward. Specifically, the Precision Smart Cover variant enhances weapon handling and damage and provides auto-reloading of rounds. While Fortified Smart Cover gives extra armor (perfect against the Purple Flame), various resistances, including an OP stagger resistance.
Pricing and Editions
Considering the DLC’s healthy 10-hour campaign, the price here isn’t as eye watering as we’ve been accustomed to over the months. For The Division 2 players, Battle for Brooklyn can be purchased as a stand-alone expansion for $14.99. New players will have to purchase the game and DLC separate or as a bundle with the Gold or Ultimate Editions. Besides including the new DLC, Gold Edition adds on the level 40 boost and Warlords of New York DLC. While the Ultimate Edition adds on a year 1 pass, Ultimate Pack, and 1,000 credits on top of those perks.
Release Date and Platforms
Battle for Brooklyn launches worldwide on May 27th for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Amazon Luna, and PC. A Ubisoft Connect account is required to play the game regardless of platform. A small silver lining is players don’t have to play exclusively through Ubisoft’s launcher and can play through Steam or Epic.
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